Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and on today's episode, we're going to be taking a look at Concaf Olympic qualifying.

To do that is a man who has, despite being pursued by other podcast nationalities, pledged his loyalty to, I guess, the American

podcast landscape. It's Joe Lowry. Joe. Way to do that, buddy. Oh, yes. I have, in fact,

turned down offers from England and a number of other nations. I am a multinational podcaster,

and I'm just, I'm really excited for the future here, Taylor. That makes me really happy. We are going to release a hype video later on of you asking people if they're ready for your podcasting, which is, I guess, our way of transitioning. We are going to talk about the Concorda Olympic qualifying, as I said. We're going to talk U.S. roster, the U.S. opponents and some of their key players. But first, we're going to start with the news that Eunice Musa has declared he will play for the U.S. men's national team. Here's the full quote that I could find. I think it was pretty clear for me to decide to play for the United States. First of all, I think it makes sense to represent the country I was born in. The moment I decided to play for the United States came one day when my heart told me that this was the best place for me.

The project that we have now and for the future is so exciting.

And it's a great pleasure to be able to be a part of that.

I cannot wait to get started. Joe, I think as I have sort of given away on past episodes, assumed that it was going to be a very uphill battle to get Eunice Musa to commit to the U.S. men's national team to the point where I was sort of like, if he does, that's great. But I feel like he's going to play for England. Thus, I was very surprised when this news came so quickly and so positively for the U.S. Were you surprised? What was your reaction when you saw it? I was surprised, but just because of how the news came out, I wasn't expecting to wake up,

check my email and see an email from U.S. soccer in there with five different links to

content they created about this whole situation.

So I was surprised, but I think I was always more optimistic.

Maybe it sounds like a slightly more slightly more optimistic than you were.

Just because of the connection that the coaching staff, that U.S. soccer's coaching staff, the U.S.

men's national team's coaching staff had with Musa. Nico Estevez is one of Berhalter's assistant

coaches and Estez was at Valencia as a coach. And he did a couple different things with Valencia in La Liga in the past, before he came and joined up with Berhalter. And so they had that connection with Estabas. They had that kind of in that England just didn't have, and they used it. There was a great article, I'm sure you read it Taylor by Jeff Carlisle and ESPN. They used that connection, and Carlisle wrote all about this.

Go check it out, listeners, if you haven't already.

They use that connection to maintain a line of contact with Musa consistently over the last,

you know, 18 months or whatever it was.

They've stayed in touch with him ever since he arrived at Valencia from England.

They used that connection so while they

were diligent in their contact with Musa and their relationship and developing that relationship.

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