Hey there, welcome to Food Ball with Grant Wall.

Thanks so much for joining me.

Our interview guest today is Oakland Roots and Soul President Lindsey Barons.

Before we get going, you can sign up for a subscription to my writing site at grantwall.com.

It has all my writing, including magazine-style stories and on-site coverage of the men's

and women's game, that's grantwall.com.

In segment one, Chris Whittingham and I will break down the soccer news.

We'll have my interview with Lindsey Barons in segment two, but let's bring in Whitting

now.

How are you, my friend?

Grant, you're back from vacation.

How are you, sir?

I am back from vacation, and I'm very relaxed and recharged, and you know, it did what

vacations are supposed to do.

I went to a wedding with some friends on a Greek island, hung out there for another,

I don't know, almost a week after we're got a lot of reading done, did keep an eye open

for the World Cup 26 venue reveal, which we'll talk about here in a second, but other than

that just didn't do any work whatsoever, it's a good time of the year for that, because

there's not as much soccer going on.

How have you been?

Yeah, it's been strange, the lack of soccer, it's good to have MLS back because there

are some days where you open up the FOTMA map, and I feel like the FOTMA map has like

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