00:00That's a talent gap still there between the top four teams or maybe even the top eight teams.
00:05Do you agree?
00:07Yeah, there is still a talent gap.
00:09I think the gap has, I think it's shrunk.
00:11I think we do have some talented players, not enough for a country of 330 million people.
00:17I mean, we should have 23 better players for a country our size.
00:22When you look at Norway has 5 million people and they found 23 guys who are better, you know, probably
00:30than our 23 guys.
00:32And we have 330 million and they have 5 million there.
00:35That's a whole other debate for another day of why that is.
00:38I mean, we have a lot of other sports, you know, for the rest of the world.
00:41This is it.
00:41The top 23 athletes in those countries play on their national team, period.
00:46You know, that's every every kid who grows up in any of these other countries.
00:50I mean, I guess in Norway, there's the Nordic sports.
00:53There's the winter sports.
00:54And that's what always dominated in Norway.
00:56And the big change in Norway is that not only are they winning now gold medals, you know, cross-country
01:02skiing and stuff like that, which they've always dominated.
01:05All of a sudden now they are they look like a soccer power, even though they haven't been in the
01:11World Cup in 28 years.
01:12So this is their first time in the World Cup in 28 years.
01:16And the U.S. has been in World Cups when Norway was not in the World Cup and did not
01:21qualify.
01:22Again, that's also partly because the European qualifying is harder than qualifying from CONCACAF.
01:28You know, qualifying from Europe is harder than qualifying in our region with the countries that the USA is competing
01:36against.
01:37So there's still a gap.
01:39Yes, there is still a gap, even if you're the United States is the U.S., Mexico and Canada were
01:45the three best teams in CONCACAF in our region, which includes North America, Central America and Canada and the Caribbean.
01:55You know, that's still not the same as being one of the top teams in Europe or one of the
02:01top teams in South America.
02:03The South American Federation, CONMEBOL, still has more depth than CONCACAF has in our region because outside of U.S.,
02:12Canada and Mexico, there's there's a drop.
02:16So I got to ask you here to Michelle and we'll have to expand this into the next segment here.
02:23But, boy, one thing I noticed.
02:25So, like, the best players in Argentina are the captains of their team.
02:29The best player in Norway is the captain of his team.
02:32The best player in Germany is the captain of his team.
02:35How come that doesn't translate to America when you're supposedly the best player?
02:40And inside of a minute here, how come our best player is not the team captain?
02:46Well, I think probably the head coach must have not thought that Pulisic was captain material, maybe, because, you know,
02:53he skipped the Gold Cup last summer.
02:56Is that really your most committed player when he decided to pick and choose what events he was going to
03:02play in?
03:03You know, so I think he wanted a player who, you know, Tim Ream is a is a guy who
03:08was so dedicated and no, not the best player, not the best player on the team, but maybe but maybe
03:13the best leader.
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