Welcome to the Total Soccer Show and our preview of World Cup Group D, the most significant group of all, for it contains Turkey, Paraguay, Australia and your United States of America men's national team.

We're going to give you a lowdown on everything you need to know about these teams and this group, so do stick with us. My name's Ryan Bailey. Joining me today, oh hi, Taylor Rockwell. What's up

with you? Hello, my friend. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to know that any listener, the US is

now their team. Congratulations, welcome on board. You've joined the Graham Ruthven Hypeight train for the US. Well, for the next 45 or so, Taylor, your team will be Paraguay. That's who you're going to be talking about. Indeed. Graham Rathven here. Hello, Graham. How are you? Or shall we say, Turkey correspondent, Graham Rutherland. That's right. I've got the shirt and everything. I mean, every turkey shirt for the last

10 years has been the same. So this isn't even the new one, but it's basically the same as the one

they're going to wear at this World Cup. Ryan, I am personally looking forward to your Australia

preview, just purely for the, I presume there's numerous Bart versus Australia references

in there. You better flame and believe there are, Graham. Yeah. Yeah. I'll try to limit the accent. Yeah, well, I was just going to ask, you're going to do the whole thing in the accent. Please keep that for the Patreon. Struth, maybe. We'll see. We'll see. I'll be doing Australia, as Graham notes. And here to report on the United States of America, Joe Lowry. Hello, Joe. How are you? I'm great. I think every four years, or, you know, I suppose twice every four years if you do this for the Women's World Cup, also, we should get Ryan on the Dutch and the Australians. I feel like those are the accents, Ryan, that you deliver on consistently every single time. It makes me happy.

They're some of my favorites.

Thank you very much.

That's very kind of you to say. The format of these World Cup previews, we're going to go through the story of the team heading into the World Cup. We're going to let you know a bit about their nickname and their backgrounds as well. Then we're going to talk about the managers and the tactics and the key players, the players who won't be here and in true total soccer fashion, the VSP, the very specific prediction for every single team.

Before we get there, a little bit of housekeeping.

You might have noticed if you listen to these here episodes that we are doing it live in California in a matter of days. Let's call it hours until TSS World Cup

Live at the El Ray Theatre. Graham is coming close. We're going to be treading the boards of Hollywood.

Marvelous. Eight days a week and a day until our live show in Los Angeles. Our special guests

will include the Cooligans. I think Alexis may have been at the Arsenal trophy parade this week, so he seems to be getting over the Champions League final quite quite fine. And I'm very excited for him to have a big argument with Taylor about Artetta and his tactics and how much Taylor loves watching Arsenal and had a great time watching him in the Champions League final. That'll be the main event. We'll keep that for the main event of the show.

Tom Boger and Paul Tonorial are also coming along. We'll have them on stage for a chat about the USM&T and the World Cup in general. It'll be a great night. I'm really looking forward to it. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, TSSWorldcup.com for tickets. Excellent stuff. You just said the phrase eight days a week. Are you hinting another special guess we might be having on the stage? Paul McCarty. The Beatles. Or just someone who doesn't know numbers or how many days around the week. Could be anyone. Paul McCartney, I think he's still locked in the faunda, of course, the sister venue of the El Ray Theatre, so maybe we can

just cart him along to our event for the night. I'm sure he'd like that. I'm sure he'd like

that very much. TSS World Cup Live June 11th in Los Angeles. Come and join us if you'd like to link in

show notes. Thank you very much. But for now, let's get to the USMNT, Joe. Why don't we start off with that relatively familiar team for us? Would you tell us the story of this team heading into the World Cup? And it's nickname. No nickname? I'll do a nickname. The nickname is USM&T. Nobody else ever says anything other than that for this team. It's either US, United States or USM&T. Really a lot lot of the nicknames that we've tossed out into the world, I'm sure, never get used. But they sound nice,

and then we can talk about them in this bit of the podcast, because we struggle to make up enough length on these types of shows. That's the only name that you need to worry about. The USA fact. I've been tossing out national anthem facts and I'm going to continue to do so for all of my

previewed nations. The Star Spangled Banner has a one and a half octave range, which is just diabolical in terms of the musical structure. Very, very difficult to sing unless you're well trained. Michael Lou Blay, though, could probably do it. And Graham, of course, knows how good of a singer Michael Lou Blay is. He believes it to his core, not an American, but we'll take him as an honorary because he's just that good. Story of the team heading into the World Cup. On the field,

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