00:06that these world cups have are important and i think about that have come up to me and still
00:11come up to me and say that was a great fun and so we have the opportunity again this summer
00:17to use
00:19to expose not just you know not just people that maybe haven't watched soccer and certainly a lot
00:26of kids that maybe haven't participated in soccer and to give them hopefully you know plant the seed
00:31and give them a dream and then when that world cup is done who knows maybe many years from now
00:36they look back at 26 and say that was awesome well i think back to what american soccer was back
00:45in 1994
00:46and all of the changes that we've seen by the way the summer of 1994 gets you mls which started
00:53in 1996
00:54even you know the summer of 99 with the women's world cup we use these moments to create leagues you
00:59look at the infrastructure that we have with the stadiums that we have the training facilities
01:04that we have you know the knowledge that we have when we think about the american community and
01:09culture don't let anybody tell you that america isn't a soccer country all right
01:16yeah i didn't realize what the world cup was uh especially the power that my life changed
01:23forever in that summer i lived the power and due to an individual but again i also saw what it
01:28could
01:28do uh to a culture but more importantly you know i i've told this story before a couple weeks before
01:34the world cup in 1995 i got on a plane and i sat in my middle seat in economy with
01:40the u.s team
01:41because that's what we did back then and i was down i was sitting next to an older woman and
01:45we struck
01:45up a conversation and she turned to me and she said what do you do i said i i play
01:50soccer she said what's
01:51your job and she said and i said i told her i play soccer and she said son she said
01:59son how do you make
02:00money i said ma'am i play soccer and a few weeks later i'm in front of a billion people
02:07running
02:07around but that's just to show you where we were and we've come a long way
02:15you know this is a generation that's been given everything that's a good thing i'm not being a grumpy
02:19old man about it i'm telling you it's a good thing i'm incredibly proud of that but with that
02:23comes higher expectations so what we want to see this summer is progress and we want to see things
02:28that we haven't seen before we have high expectations but i think they're fair expectations
02:33and yes they have to win um but i think they also have to capture our hearts and minds america
02:38wants
02:39to celebrate america i know but i think this is the greatest country in the world and i think americans
02:45want to unite and they can use this world cup to come together and celebrate oh by the way on
02:52our
02:52250th birthday so there's a lot to be excited about and there's a lot to celebrate
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