Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #199: Grant Wahl on covering the Octagonal

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Wahl has launched a new Substack and he's cranking out podcasts, and short and long pieces, as he covers all 14 of the USMNT's World Cup qualifiers in person. He joins to talk about San Salvador, Nashville and San Pedro Sula, and going it as an independent after decades at the top of the soccer reporting pyramid.Subscribe to Grant's Substack: https://grantwahl.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=postctaSupport Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedJoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XUBuy our merch: https://my-store-11446477.creator-spring.com/ Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Georgia. With me is Greg Velasquez in Iowa. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Welcome to the scuff podcast. Today we have Grant Wall as our guest. He needs no introduction. He's the most famous soccer journalist in America.

Grant, how you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? It's been a little while. Yeah, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. So my first question is, I mean, we're going to talk about a lot. We're going to talk about your new substack

and your coverage of the World Cup qualifiers in general. But let's just start with some specific stuff. Which stadium had a more electric atmosphere? The Cousquetlaan in San Salvador or the Olimpico in San Pedro Sula? El Salvador, which I wouldn't have predicted, but I also didn't have any previous familiarity with. So I hadn't been to El Salvador before. That stadium was a lot more full than I expected it would be.

be. It was more full than officials said it would be in El Salvador. And just the anthem singing from the fans blew people away inside that stadium. And I don't think people were expecting it. I don't think the U.S. players were expecting it. It's one of the loudest anthems, maybe the loudest anthem I have ever heard inside a stadium. And it made me think from the perspective of a Salvadoran, I think that was the first time they've ever, they've had a full stadium of any sort since COVID began. And their team is playing its first game of World Cup qualifying. So hopes are still high. They're playing against the United States.

So there's a lot of motivation there. And it was deafening. And just in a really cool way, like it wasn't hostile there. You know, Salvadorans actually kind of like the U.S. over the years, over the decades. And Honduras, actually, that stadium has always been welcoming. I've had sort of my own issues with safety in Honduras over the years. But that was outside the stadium. Inside the stadium in Honduras, very welcoming.

I got papooses to eat before the game. I think some of the hostile crowd stuff that we see being reported in some of the stories are a little bit exaggerating on some of the stuff about throwing urine bags and feces and vomit and things like that. It's actually just a pretty cool environment to be in. Yeah. I mean, maybe some of that stuff is a thing of the past more or happen once. I think so. I think so. And I still actually would go so far as to say I went back at one point to look at contemporaneous newspaper accounts of games in the 90s just to see if players talked about stuff, particular things being thrown at them. The only thing I could find of crazy

stories at the time was in Costa Rica for an away qualifier in the 90s where players said, U.S. players said they were being hit with batteries and coins and things like that. Nobody ever talked about urine bags or vomit or animal heads at the time. And I've kind of gotten to the point now, right? I am pretty convinced that this has been embroidered and exaggerated over the years, even the stuff that supposedly

happened in the 90s. And it's become kind of apocryphal. Yes. Real quick on the anthem, I noticed that the Paramount, on the Paramount broadcast, the speakers couldn't even handle it. Like, they didn't.

It blew the, like, blew my, blew the speakers on my, TV off. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me. And also, I mean, like, the level of quality in some of these international feeds is, it's pretty haphazard how if you see the sausage get made on site, like, it's pretty amazing that a signal gets out of there at all, actually.

Does the Kuska-Lan have a traditional press box and all that? Not the we saw. So where did you sit? They had the U.S. media in essentially ordinary seats, no desk, no, I had no power. So I had to conserve my laptop energy. We eventually got a Wi-Fi connection. But essentially we were in ordinary seats in the stadium that somebody had put a piece of paper on that said, preenza. So, you know, like in, in Honduras, I'm.

really glad we had no Wi-Fi at all so I was really glad I was able to use my cell phone as a hot spot and it still worked even though there were a lot of people in the stadium because otherwise I had no way of connecting and like writing my three thoughts at the final whistle and you know publishing them you mentioned you mentioned one of your podcasts after the games you've been doing just so people who don't know you've been doing a podcast after every game producing a transcript of the podcast, which is, I think, useful for a lot of people. One of them you said, this is like the, the Cuscatlana is kind of the classic Latin American, Central American style stadium, the jewel box.

It's a pre-sus stadium was like that. Can you, I don't know what that means. Can you explain that? Like, what's this classical model of a stadium in Latin America? I mean, maybe the best example is La Bonoenaura and Buenos Aires for Bocad Juniors, where I, when I think of sort of a classic Latin American soccer

stadium. It's not fancy, but it's awesome. It's got atmosphere. It might smell bad. That's okay. It might not even have seats for everybody. That's okay. It's loud.

It's not sanitized. But it's what I think of, it really gets, I think, to the essence of the game and the essence of being a spectator at a game. And I hope those stadiums never truly go away, you know. The closest thing in the U.S. to it is RFK Stadium, which unfortunately is condemned now, so no one's using that. But that's sort of what I'm saying with Akuskut-Lahn. And what's happened over the last five to ten

years is China as a government has been going around the world and building infrastructure projects for all sorts of countries that it wants to influence. And that includes a bunch of African countries. It includes countries in Asia, South America, and Central America. And so I run into this from time to time where this is the case with the, the, the, the, fairly new Costa Rican national stadium. The Chinese government built that for Costa Rica in exchange to then get a bunch of its natural resources. And the Chinese will bring over all Chinese construction workers and basically set up a small Chinese city in a central American country and build the stadium. Now, the one in Costa Rica is a lot more antiseptic than the old Supriza was. The atmosphere

is really lame now because there's a running track around the fields. It's almost too nice from my perspective. And even though the U.S. has continued to perform miserably in Costa Rica, no matter what stadium they play in, I think eventually the U.S. has a decent chance of getting some points in Costa Rica, in part because the stadium is not nearly as hostile. So now the Chinese have announced with El Salvador, they're going to build a new national stadium in El Salvador.

as well. And so the Kuska-Lan is going to basically be what Supriza is now, which is a club stadium. And the national team games in the future are going to be played in the new national stadium of El Salvador, built by the Chinese, presumably less atmosphere in that stadium. Bummer. Bummer. Bummer for James Monroe, too. He must be spinning in his grave. There's a new doctor in town.

I mean, Yeah, I think, you know, like even college football stadiums in the States now, they have like, you know, big screens with graphics going all the time and music pumped in in every stoppage. And we don't use stoppage in college football, obviously, as a term. But, yeah, it gets annoying. It's nice to go to Wrigley Field or Fenway Park where things are a little more traditional. Maybe that's the closest thing we're going to have going forward.

So I'm curious what things were like in between the post-game press. in Nashville and the pregame bus ride to the stadium in San Pedro Sula. Like what was your sense of how the team was feeling after being let down by Weston McKinney, you know, who's, we don't, it's not been reported exactly what he did, but he violated COVID protocols in some specific ways. What was the, what was the vibe you were getting from the team as someone who was there in both locations? It was tense.

It was tense from the. the moment the results was determined against Canada because even in the post game interviews, Greg Berhalter was like, we're disappointed. And he should have been. You can't drop points at home in World Cup qualifying no matter who the opponent is. And the McKinney situation only added to it because you had a feeling that if McKinney had been on the field, the U.S. had a better chance of winning the game. So the fact that it was a disciplinary action that sent McKinney home, that, and so like part of the process, right, in between the two games was learning that McKinney was being sent home.

And just to put it in perspective, none of us could remember any instance in the history of the U.S. men's national team of a player being sent home in the middle of camp for disciplinary reasons. So that's pretty crazy when you think about it because I did some research on this and talk to people. There have been a few occasions over the years when some guys have been surprised when other players have not been set home based on their disciplinary behavior, often involving friendlies in Amsterdam, which I thought was interesting. But, you know, and these were big games.

So it wasn't just him being sent home from a camp where there were a couple of friendlies being played. These were the first games, the first World Cup qualifiers when you need to set a tone. And can you imagine how this conversation would be going with the two of us right now if the U.S. was on two points instead of five? It would be different, right? You guys talked about that at length, you and Landon and Witty on the podcast about how that was a very good discussion because it would be, it would be bad. It would be really bad if we hadn't had that great second-half performance at Honduras, essentially. Yeah.

So, you know, to answer, to go back to your original question about what it was like for me to be covering this team, like, things were tense. There's very little time between games. So the day after the Canada game, I'm on a plane to Honduras. The U.S. flies in first thing the next morning. and we have media access. This is match day minus one, so the day before the game. And, you know, like I've done this for a number of years,

so I know the differences between what it's like covering a team when spirits are high, like they were before the El Salvador game, and when things are tense, and as they were before the Honduras game. So, you know, like for my substack stories, I'm writing a magazine-style story off of every game. I, ahead of the game, typically try to get a one-on-one interview with somebody from the team that will get used in that story. So I was able to get Matt Turner the day before the Canada game. but it's also natural, and I've come to expect this over the years.

When things get tense, it's harder to get interviews like that. So I was not able to get, I put the request in. I was not able to get a one-on-one interview the day before the Honduras game. Yeah, that's not surprising. And that's just, that's not surprising. You know, it's part of life. I was able to do other reporting because I was pursuing the McKenney story, Jeff Carlyle at ESPN ended up getting most of it first.

Daniel Nora at Thu de N.A. had some as well. And a bunch of us were pursuing that story because it was obvious that more details needed to be reported about what McKinney actually did. So I also spoke to a former national team player who played for multiple coaches, just because I wanted to get a sense of how strict the camps were under Bob Bradley, Yergen Klinzman, Bruce Arena, and thought that might be an interesting discussion to have in my story, which I ended up including in my story.

Because I'm still intrigued as to like, how did McKinney get caught? You know? Are you still pursuing the story? It's worth pursuing further. I need to do that between now and the next games. It's less of a time pressure, I think, right now. Right.

But I'd like to learn more. We'll see if that's possible. but, you know, one thing that was different about because of COVID, this camp, players had a room to themselves. So there were no roommates. So I don't think a teammate narct on McKinney, but I'm still curious as to, is it a little bit like Bob Bradley? Were there monitors in the lobby?

Is that what Bradley did? Because that's what Bob did. And no other U.S. head coach has ever had monitors in the lobby. That's Bob. Bob only. You know, you mentioned earlier that there's never been anything like this. I mean,

the, the big controversy, the big scandal in the history of the men's national team is, of course, the, we don't have to get into it in detail. It is still, I think,

pretty sensitive. But the whole John Hark's, Eric Winald, the thing. Did you talk to anybody about that and how, like, did somebody get sent home from camp? Or did it emerge later?

and he got kicked off the team. I'm not clear on the details of that. Yeah, nobody got sent home from camp. What did happen, I remember being on the call with Steve Sampson. It was like a couple of months before the World Cup in 98, where on this press call, he announced that John Hark's, the captain, had been cut from the team and would not be going to the World Cup, which was stunning news, but it wasn't in the middle of a camp.

Now, I do recall there had been another. story because there were so many rumors that had popped up that did pop up connected to the Harks thing that I think after a game against Belgium he had he had led a group of players out on the town and been out all night and maybe that had to do with him being cut but that was never really totally nailed down and it certainly as we now know wasn't reason he was cut. So there were a lot of wild rumors, as I'm sure you and your listeners know, about what McKinney actually did.

That type of stuff pops up on Twitter, given the climate that we live in today. And it's almost always wrong. No one's found any evidence that some of these wild rumors that there was any truth to it. But also when nobody releases what actually happened, that then causes rumors to happen. And so I'm glad that Carlisle got his story up. Yeah. It seems like, so as to get to sort of the, well, one more thing about on that first sort of tip, the, you know, it feels like you are taken with the, like sort of the romance for lack of a better word of the, of, of, the away World Cup qualifier in Central America.

I certainly am. I'm very envious that you're going to be at all these games. You got to go to these two that started off the qualifying process. Do you get the sense that the players have an understanding or a feeling of that? They do now. And I think when you only have six players on your roster who played in World Cup qualifying before, of course, most of these guys had no clue what it was. like to play in an away qualifier.

Like, yes, Tyler Adams had played in Conca Cap Champions League with the Red Bulls in the Kuska, Dlan. Okay, but like that atmosphere was nothing like what it was in the qualifier. So he had at least the experience of going to El Salvador. So that's something. But, like, you knew that a guy like Sergenio Dest would have no clue what it would be like. and I have no idea if that influenced

to have a relatively poor game but it might have and that's the thing for as much talent as this American group has on paper there's aspects they didn't have coming into this

and they have more of now and I'm curious to see if they do better in Panama next month having had this experience under their belt now I guess I just think of it as like a real privilege.

What a privilege to get to play in San Salvador in front of a crowd that is that engaged and listening to them sing the national anthem like that. I mean, that's a life experience that, you know, very few people get to have. And I wonder how much the players sort of are thinking about it that way. Or are they like,

oh, dang it, I got to go play on this bad field in El Salvador, you know? Matt Turner, when I spoke to him, really did seem to understand the privilege aspect. And he said that what he was doing the second he stepped on the field before that game

was just take everything in, enjoy this, like see what it's experience what this is like because not that many players will have the opportunity to do this. And so in El Salvador, for example, it wasn't just the anthem, which was amazing. It was they had fighter pilots fly overhead. Like you would see often in a big game in the U.S.

They had fireworks going off above the stadium for the first five minutes of the game. Like it didn't stop when the game started. It was totally wild. Stuff I hadn't seen before. Cool. So when it comes to like Burrhalter and the and then metanarratives that come out of this window, I feel like there's sort of two major competing ones, one that is sort of pushed by Burrhalter, which is, hey, this is a young team.

It's going to take, there's a learning curve when we go to these away qualifiers or even play a home qualifier against Canada. There's everybody's learning. It's going to take some time for them to figure it out. And then there's the meta narrative that I think is more in line with this with scuff global headquarters here, which is like set the players up to succeed, simplify the system. Don't roll out a, you know, a sort of unfamiliar formation in a way qualifier in Honduras and expect the results to be good.

Where do you fall on that continuum? Like, because it's, because obviously there's truth to both things. Yeah, I'm, I'm much farther in, uh, the scuffed perspective direction. I, just because I am still amazed that Burrhalter put out the formation that he put out and assigned the tasks that he assigned to certain players, uh, whether it's Tyler Adams at right back, whether it's putting James, Sands in the position that he put him in. You know, he took some other risks that paid off, Ricardo Pepe.

Yeah. Starting him, an 18-year-old in his first U.S. game and in a way, World Cup qualifier, and the kid ends up scoring the winning goal. That worked out, you know. Kudos to Greg for that. It wasn't a total failure. And I thought Greg subs. Yeah, and I thought Greg subs, like, he recognized the mistake for the most part at

halftime, even though I still wish he would have put Adams centrally at half time. I don't think it was a coincidence that most of the U.S. goals came after Adams went central. Or do I? Eventually. But, like, there is something to what Greg would say about guys needing experience. But I don't think it's as big a deal as maybe he was making it out to be. You know, like this team now has already achieved something. winning in a way qualifier that the veterans in the previous cycle didn't do once in the final

round of qualifying. So I'm like by the time October rolls around, even now, actually, I'm a little done with the young guys perspective. Like they've seen it now. You know, there's not that much to learn about it. But it also gets to don't be overconfident. Have respect. for what you're dealing with here.

And also, don't drop points at home. I mean, like, that's actually maybe for me the most concerning part of this entire three-game window is dropping points at home. It's not so much the away games. You know, it's good that they got three points in Honduras. But if the biggest problem in the last cycle was losing at home to Costa Rica and Mexico.

So you just drop points to Canada at home. If you're the U.S. and you've got two home games next month, you better get six points. Yeah. Well, and you know, it's worth pointing out that in the home qualifier we lost against Canada,

we gave up an equalizer six minutes after scoring because our veteran right back, DeAndre Yedlin, fell asleep on the most dangerous player in the region. And then our veteran centerback, John Brooks, didn't track Kyle Aaron in the box. So that doesn't have anything to do with youth. and right just and in brooks was was at fault in the honduras game on on their goal as well so um it's not just about youth and and you know i look at the three players for the u.s who actually

played all 90 minutes of all three games matt turner miles robinson tyler adams turner's a little old yeah but miles robinson and Tyler Adams had never played World Cup qualifiers before. And they're two of the rocks on this team. Let's talk a little bit about some other stuff. So, you know, your wife is a doctor and a very well-respected one. I wonder if the idea of international travel is a little bit of a touchy subject at home, given the, you know, the COVID climate.

Not really. You know, she equipped me really well on this trip. And I had taken, I just started traveling again about a month ago for work, you know. And so she equips me really well with COVID self-tests, which is what you need to get back into the U.S. if you're flying internationally. You know, those are like 20 bucks each. I can take care of it myself with a proctor online at my hotel in Honduras and don't have to deal with trying to find somebody. to test me in those countries.

And sometimes it's really expensive. Like at Newark Airport, they were charging $300 for a COVID test. Like, that's ridiculous. And one thing I've also found is that if I'm flying internationally, including back into the U.S., if I'm leaving or flying back in, I need to show that I'm vaccinated, as does every other passenger, or that I've had a negative COVID test in the last two or three days. that's not required on flights internally in the United States.

So if I get on a flight in Honduras flying back to the U.S., I feel much more comfortable about the COVID situation on that flight than I do if it's a flight from Houston to Nashville. That makes sense, yeah. And then on the ground, I don't know. I mean, like, it's not any different really. Actually, the scariest situation COVID-wise for me was Nashville on this trip because downtown, it's a big tourist area. And like a lot of other people, I went to the assembly food hall, a bunch of different restaurants and, you know, people from all over the country, some soccer fans, a lot of not soccer fans.

but 95% of the people in that place indoors were not wearing masks. That's the South. That scared the crap out of me. And so I'm obviously wearing my mask full time indoors. Now, thankfully they had some outdoor seating areas. I would get my food with whoever I was with and go sit at an outdoor table and eat there. But the approach, the attitude. toward COVID in Nashville was a lot more lax than anything I saw in Honduras or El Salvador.

Interesting. Yeah. So let me get the, let me get your take on the, on the Jesse Marsh Twitter fiasco where he, where he, he liked the, he liked a tweet that was critical of Burrhalter. And then he comes in and he says, you know, clearly I didn't understand. I'm not very adept at this Twitter thing. What do you think of that? I don't, I don't want to get you in trouble but you know to the extent that you uh yeah i mean i mean like look it was there um and and i don't know you never know i i try not to to take any leaps i i had tweeted something interestingly when i was in leipzig visiting marsh last month um i tweeted something it wasn't related to jesse at that point just like saying you shouldn't do journalism

based on what somebody might like on Twitter or who they follow. I'm also well aware that that is a public thing that is easy to see, and people, whether it's journalists or not, are going to notice things. You know, like Christian Polisic, I think, has dealt with this on some of the things he's liked on Instagram. And so am I going to do journalism on Jesse Marsh? liking that tweet no oh come on we need 3,000 words on it but clearly like jesse was made aware

that he had done this i have no i have no idea what the story is behind him doing that um and if i were in his position i don't know if i would have even put out a tweet yeah like he did um because at that point he's like calling attention to it yeah because not that many people probably had seen it. But, yeah, it's a weird one. You know, all I know is what Jesse told me on the record and off the record. Like, he wants to see Greg Burrhalter succeed. He wants to see the U.S. succeed.

He wants to see Tyler Adams, his players, succeed in all the other U.S. players. And he's also said, look, at a certain point, I would like to be the U.S. coach. but I fully support Greg Burrhalter publicly and privately. This situation, not great, but I don't think in the big picture, it's going to be that big of a deal. Okay. Do you think he meant it? Do you think he meant to, ah, we don't have to keep on going on it.

Let's see. So, you know, with Jesse struggling a little bit, I know you said either in one of your long-form pieces or one of the podcasts, you pointed out, well, Jesse Marsh isn't going to take the USMNT job, even if everybody wants to fire Burrhalter. What if, you know, what if Leipzig continues to struggle, you know? I mean, he could, if they don't get a bunch of good results in the, in the Bundeslieu over the next month and a half, they have a somewhat softer schedule. He is, his seat's going to get super hot.

It would, you know, and I think like the next four. to five games in the Bundesliga, Leipzig needs to get some wins because those are very winnable games. They did get a very difficult draw in Champions League, obviously. So they're Atman City on Wednesday. They've got PSG in their group. That's like a comical draw when you think about it.

But like Jesse Marsh's bosses know that at Leipzig. And, you know, I didn't talk at length to the Red Bull Leipzig, bosses when I was there. I was mainly talking to Jesse and Tyler Adams. But they've said in the German media that they understand that this is not on paper this is not as good a team as the team they had last year. They've lost players. Most of them to buy her music, unfortunately.

And in some elsewhere. And so they're going to cut some slack, I think. I actually do believe this. I don't think, and I think people have American fans maybe have some PTSD with Bob Bradley and his experience at Swansea, where he got fired after 72 days or something. But it's a completely different relationship that Bob Bradley had with the people running Swansea than what Jesse Marsh has with the people running Red Bull. You know, Jesse's been a Red Bull coach in New York, Salisburg, as an assistant in Leipzig.

And so here's a guy who, you know, I think is not as much on the hot seat now, I think, as some people might think. The loss to minds was not good to start the season. 4-1 to buy are not a great score line, but if you watch the game, Leipzig was in that game in a lot of ways. So I don't think they're expected to win at Man City, but these upcoming Bundesliga games, yeah, if those aren't wins mostly,

then I think that could get dicey. Okay. One more sort of epidemiological question. the, you know, the Premier League policies for red list countries, are those, you know, which seem kind of, well, I'll just, I'll just ask the question straight. Are those politically driven to some extent, or is there a valid basis for the, for that list? And when I say politically driven, I just mean like sort of late, maybe like some lazy ideas about the rest of the world, you know? That's my read, which is probably not much different from what you're seeing. You know, I'm not an expert in this area and my wife is, but I haven't talked to her about this particular thing.

Fair enough. I just think that it's, you know, right now, one of the worst hotspots in the world for COVID is the United States. And yet we're not on many red lists. So that's a little strange. I'm not complaining, by the way, because it would be harder for me to do my job if we were. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you feel bad for Jamaica that, you know, to what they're going through with some of their players from England. You've been at the game or near the top of it, top of the media pyramid for as long as almost anyone.

How would you characterize the evolution of the relationship between the U.S. Soccer Federation and the media in that time frame? There's been a lot of turnover at the top of soccer house, but not, you know, it's still Michael Cameron, you know? Right. I mean, like, and I don't know how much listeners are aware of all this. So, like, yeah, the press officer for the U.S. men's national team is a guy named Michael Cameron. He handles interview requests, press conferences, things like that. He's been in the job for a really long time. So we're talking about basically since Bruce Arena's first tenure.

So we're talking about 99, maybe. He had also been Bruce's press officer at DC United at the start of MLS. On the women's side, Aaron Hafeitz has been the press officer for the U.S. Women's National Team going back to the 90s, the mid-90s. Neil Beathy is the sort of the chief officer on the media side for the U.S. Federation. He's been with the Federation since around 2003, maybe 2002, right around there. So you're right. There's been turnover at the very top of U.S. soccer, but on the press side, it's been a lot of the same folks from over the years. And so obviously, I've covered hundreds

of national team games, men and women, so I've definitely built a relationship over the years with all of the media side people. And I will say this. I mean, I think there is this sort of among some parts of the fan base, this idea that U.S. soccer blacklists media members. And I don't think that's true. I mean, I, and I've never, I've reported plenty of stuff over the years that I'm

sure they weren't happy. I know they weren't happy went public. But I've also never been. punished for reporting that type of stuff. There was a sense like with this McKinney stuff, because I saw this stuff on Twitter last week, of the U.S. soccer media is not publishing what happened with McKinney

because they're afraid of U.S. soccer. And that's just stupid. It's in false. We were trying to get the story and get it verified. And that's not the easiest thing. It takes some time. Right. Yeah, I guess my, you know,

my thinking on that was like there might have been an editorial argument against getting that story because, you know, this idea that it was going to hurt somebody or something. And I was, I was, I know you're not thinking that way. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe you never got blacklisted because you worked for Sports Illustrated for 25 years. I, I don't believe the whole blacklisting thing either. I just want to just sort of playing devil's advocate here, you know, you're the.

Yeah, I mean, like, I'd love to know who has been blacklisted at all. Right. like, and I guess at that point it's like not being credentialed when you want a credential. You know, like, I, and there's always, and keep, keep in mind, there's like some fringe elements in the soccer media sphere at times that I know they've had to do some work at U.S. soccer to figure out is this person, you know, is this, is this a journalist? Right. And sometimes it's not always... I'm sure they've wondered that about me, to be honest. But, you know, like, if you start reporting things that are flat out wrong,

will you get blowback from U.S. soccer, probably, as you would from any organization. Which is why you have to be bulletproof in your reporting. But if you're just being, if you're just criticizing or, you know, or you're reporting accurate information, even if they don't like the information being public. I'd never heard of anyone having any issues with that from USA. Yeah, you'd think the press corps would unite on that and put a stop to that. Oh, yeah. What's it been like working with Landon?

He has this intimate appreciation for the experience of World Cup qualifier. It seems like he's having, you know, he has to straddle the fence of former player and current commentator. It's a little bit of a difficult fence to straddle. I've really enjoyed working with Landon. And I thought he would be good, which is why I had this idea in the first place, like do podcasts with Landon Donovan. Chris Whittingham's doing great, joining us, just talking about each qualifier.

Landon brings so much experience. But he also is bringing insight, which not every former player brings. And in a way, like, I'm glad Landon is enjoying coaching and, you know, is continuing to do that. but I also thought he was becoming pretty good in the media on television when he was doing stuff for Fox, and he was going to be part of Fox's booth for the games in the 2018 World Cup with John Strong and Stu Holden, but then Landon decided to come out of retirement as a player and sign with Leon. And so that sort of scrapped the plans for having him do stuff with Fox for the World Cup, and now he's coaching full-time.

So this gives him an outlet these podcasts to be part of the conversation, to be part of the media covering the game. And I think he's missed that a little bit. I admire him putting in the time as a coach, which is not even an MLS. So like he's not in the spotlight that much as a coach these days. But I like the way he sees games. I thought he was pretty pointed in what he said about Weston McKinney before we knew what happened. In a perfect world,

would Landon have said, I know what he did, but I'm not telling you, probably not, because that puts me in a bit of an awkward spot. But in terms of what he said about McKinney, you know, really owing his teammates now big time,

I thought that was strong. I thought it was interesting. that he said that because they're represented by Wasserman, Richard Motzkin's group, both of them. And so that was just interesting to me, I guess. Just shows that people can say what they want to say. You know, these structural ties are not the end all, be all of everything. Right.

And I want Landon to be not holding back. I wanted to be going over the top in his criticism, but I'm not really worried about that. I don't think he's got any axes to grind or anything in this current group. He wants to see the U.S. succeed. And he's a really good voice to have that I'm a little surprised that one of the television broadcasters hasn't brought him in for these World Cup qualifiers. But we sort of use that to our advantage on our podcast.

I agree with you. I think the podcast discussions with you and him and Chris are excellent. Like really fun to listen to. So, okay, your substack, is that completely independent or is it part of your arrangement with Metal Arc Media? So I'm essentially a free agent and just able to put together gigs as I see fit. And, you know, then the people involved I'm working for need to sort of be okay with it, but everyone is. So I have this site on subs. stack for all of my writing moving forward. You can sign up for free. You'll get content. You can also sign up for paid. Some stuff is going to start going behind the paywall and I'm doing on-site journalism. Essentially, I want to be doing the quality soccer journalism that I always did for Sports Illustrated. And I'm actually pulling out an old Sports Illustrated thing and how I'm covering every U.S. World Cup qualifier, where it's kind of old school sports illustrated

from the early 2000s, the print magazine, to write magazine stories off of big games. And they stopped doing it because people stopped wanting to wait for days to hear about a game. But the lag time was the reason why they started going away from those stories. And so if I did what I, if I do what I did back then and post the story at 9 a.m. Eastern in your inbox, that's still going to be a story, I think, that people want to read and want to pay for if there's, like, unique content in there that you won't see elsewhere. So that's what I've been doing for these first three qualifiers and we'll continue to do. And then I'm going to do magazine-style stories like I did on Jesse Marsh and went to Leipzig for it. So with Substack, I am getting a little help from Substack to get things going as I build a subscriber list.

And so I'm building that list, wanting to be self-sustaining and hope I can do that over the next year or so. But separately, I'm doing stuff with Metal Arc Media, John Skipper's group for my podcast. and the podcast with Landon. They're licensing it. That's a separate deal. I'm looking to do a separate deal for some television, hopefully be able to announce that soon. And so just piecing together good gigs

and excited about being my own boss and having success building these things. You know, the podcast were already bigger than any of my podcast ever were at Sports Illustrated. And I've got a good relationship with Sports Illustrated now. That's good to hear. The people who are running that place. Yeah, like, we're fine.

I wrote some stories for them. So I was glad to end on good terms there, but it's also just really exciting building something new. Yeah, one less question. So why do that? Why go off and be your own boss instead of signing up with the legacy, you know, media company? Surely you could have found a gig with one of those? Yeah.

I mean, I turned down offers with more traditional media. I kind of feel like I want to see if I can make it on my own. substack, a site that's a subscription site that's going to be my quality and be my own boss, doing the things I want to do. And the modern media situation, as you know, is pretty difficult in a lot of ways. And the advertising is gone and mostly. And so even Sports Illustrated struggled a lot in recent years as they try to figure out how to move forward. And you're seeing people, writers, prominent writers, go to substack.

And I like the subscription model and being incentivized to do quality, not quantity. So we're going to give this a go if we're here a year from now and somehow it's not sustainable. It's a World Cup year. I think I can probably get a contract writing with traditional media. But I wanted to give this a shot because I think this is the future. Yeah. Hey, Godspeed to you. You got to go record an interview for your podcast.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you. Thanks for having me.