Hello,

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the total soccer show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and today, while Joe continues to wander the wilds of South Dakota,

I'm joined by the man who has covered between one and one thousand games this summer.

It's Jeff Ruter.

Hello, Jeff. How you doing, my friend?

I'm good. It's funny.

Joe has arguably never been geographically closer to me at a time we haven't seen each other. And yet, he feels so distant right now. I know, man. I'm sad for that. I believe he is visiting in-laws in South Dakota, who I believe moved from Minnesota. So I feel like that was a personal thing. They knew you were there. They didn't want it too close to you. so they moved to a different state. Sure. I just wish he was visiting some outlaws from South Dakota. That is like a 50 times better story, frankly. No offense to his in-laws. I'm sure they're lovely folk. I'm sure they are. Don't get in trouble, Joe. You're doing great. If Joe is associating with outlaws, I'm assuming he's doing the books. Joe doesn't strike me as outlaw necessarily, more as like the accountant for the outlaws. Or like the guy in the heist who has to be face forward, front and center and talk to the person who's getting swindled to give him a false sense of security. Right. Like I think Joe could do that and just kind of ramble about like these really cool, like, homegrown players who have been breaking out this year and gotten 400 minutes for their club. And this is why they look like they could make it, you know, down the road for the US-Men's national team. Like, you know, I think that you could get a 30-minute diet drive going there. And that's plenty of time for us to do the rest of our thing. That is a perfect point, Jeff. My question then becomes, I feel like usually in the movie when the the character does that, when it's Matt Damon in the ocean's 11, the glasses go on? Do the glasses go off when Joe does that role? Or do you put on a second pair of glasses? Yeah, I think then he takes off his hat and unfurls like a ponytail that no one knew that he had and everyone is just so, like, who is this made of mystery? We thought we knew Joe Lowry. And suddenly it's Jose.

What's going on?

Well, Joe is not with us, but we will be talking about some things of, I'm assuming,

interested, Joe, including the MLS All-Star selections, a few players on the move in Major

League soccer.

But we're going to start with the Gold Cup because Jeff was there on location for the USA's shootout win and for Canada's

shootout loss. I guess you could say Guatemala shootout wait if you wanted to. We're going to talk

US. We're going to talk Canada. But first, Jeff, how was the day covering two games, a doubleheader?

How long were you at that stadium? I was at the stadium for eight and a half hours,

which is a long time. But it was interesting because it would have been longer, but, you know,

thank your union rep, because the stadium workers union had to get there earlier. And there was like

a mandate of you can't work more than 11 hours in a day. So there was like a hard cut. The game with the, the US and Costa Rica ended

around 830 central. We go down to the press conferences. And it was pretty much like you can go back

to the press box and have 30 minutes to keep writing, but we are kicking you out at 10 o'clock sharp

because we need to send everyone home for labor reasons. And so, yeah. And so I ended up writing the other story from home in sweats, which is always my preference, frankly. So like, I'm not mad. Yeah, but it was a long day. Sweets kind of frowned upon in the press box. And I'm assuming also in the summer, probably. It's punch there yeah you need to like really crank the ac to your preference and maybe if you have like a little

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