Latest / Your Dark Companion Podcast / World Cup Dreams & Ugly American Expectations | Tyler Kern | Ep 232

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World Cup Dreams & Ugly American Expectations | Tyler Kern | Ep 232 · Your Dark Companion Podcast

• Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder, sports talk. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. With the big mic. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it. We got a lightning strike, boys. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. The Texas Rangers win the world series. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano league teams. Don't what? You said tip? Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. Keep jamming. The the ticket colon. Nothing but a big jerk off set. Is this a cool night or what? I wish somebody would hear that and go, bullshit. I'm back. Don't worry about that. Is the toilet running in there or what? No. The toilet you said the toilet paper is on the floor? The roll is on the floor. What's it doing there? Who put it there? Not me. I'm probably the last person in there, I must have pulled it off. I'm sorry. I have no had no cause to use it today. Did you get extra aggressive with the toilet paper? I don't even think I did it today. Guess Fine for your life in there. Where is your where is your? Uh-oh. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't have a good answer. Do I need it? No. But I can't I can't show you on your headset. Pretty big mistake to make, Shoopy. That is a pretty big mistake to make. I'm gonna try calling it. You wanna go looking around for it? We're on. Okay. Alright. If we're on, we're on. We are on right now. I just wanna throw that out there. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess we're just gonna have to somehow live with that mistake. It's in the other room. Yeah. Here it now. Yeah. I can't remember what your voice mail is. Yeah. But it's it's out there, and it needs to be in here, and it's not here, and it's out there. So, you know Hey. This is Mike Leiner. This is voice mail. Leave me a message. Pick up your phone, Shoopy. Yeah. You freaking idiot. That's a good start to the show. That's an awesome start to the show. We love it. I can scarcely think of a better way. Look who we have today. Oh. Yes. It is Tyler Kern. Yay. I know him. Yes. We are dipping into our own stolen waters here and fishing out one of our colleagues here, but it's very, very timely. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but this thing called the World Cup What is that? Is going on out there. And that has to do with soccer. Oh. No. Football. Football. Soccer. It is soccer. I played soccer. To me, football is football. I played soccer, and it will always be soccer. Yes. It will always be soccer. It should always be soccer. Now in other parts of the world, even the free world as we know it today, if they wanna call it football over there, fine. Knock yourself out because you don't play football the way we play football here. But for us, in this great land of ours, let us have our football and your soccer. It's beautiful. We get both. Yeah. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. Plus the word soccer originally came from the British because they needed a way to differentiate their, their sports from rugby. Right? So they had rugby, they had soccer. Association football is how they shortened it to soccer. So it came from them anyways. So whenever anybody gets a little, Yeah. A little touchy about the subject, say, like, this was y'all's doing. It's fine. Everybody it's fine. Let's all just enjoy it together. Where else do they call it football over there at all, or is it always soccer? They they call it football, but the word soccer came from them. So it's it's it's all good. They call it football. You'll you'll rarely hear somebody say soccer, but that is their term. Yeah. Interesting. That we just took, you know, and it's great. It differentiates things. It's easy for us. We love it. We do. Well, I've been looking forward to this for a while. Yes. This World Cup thing is happening. It's a big deal. And, that's what they tell me. Yeah. They tell me it's a very big deal. They tell me that there are no deals bigger than this. And when this is all over with, I'm going to see for myself that there are no deals bigger than this, not even the Super Bowl, which is football. It's not all that soup. No. But they're going they tell me that I'm going to see once and for all that on the sporting landscape in this great world of ours, on this spinning blue marble that we occupy, there is nothing athletic bigger than this. Okay. They present me with that, and I'm going, really, man? Really? Because I am an ugly American, and I don't care who knows it or what you think. You know the second But today today, we have Tyler Yeah. In here. And Tyler does a soccer show here on our little network and channel. You can find them on our website, stolenwatermedia.com, where you can find all of our stuff. Lots of great stuff. It's a really good website. Really good. Yes, it is. Bookmark it. I'm very, very proud of it, I must say. You didn't have much to do with No, didn't. I I didn't. Didn't. You probably funded it. But I but I'm connected with it. You conceptualized and funded, but you didn't execute. Right. Right. It's always nice to be connected to good things. That's what I'm doing. Yes. Running his coattails. Aren't we all? Yeah. Well, anyway, today, we're going to have Tyler explain to me exactly what's going on with this World Cup. It's a big task. In general? We only have Yeah. I know. Was gonna say I know it's a big task. Got a lot of fit in. Scarcely think of anybody better than you to do this. So how many teams are in this thing? 48. Do they call them teams? They call them teams. They call them teams. And look, I'm not trying to a be fair question. Mean, that gallery is laughing here and I'm not I'm not trying to be funny. Cause don't they call like uniforms kits or something? Yes. They'll say kits. They'll call the field the pitch. Those are kind of like British Britishisms. Yeah. Now I'm on that. And look, I I think I don't think soccer fans can be a little uppity about this sort of stuff. But I don't think that we I'll say we. I don't think we should be because look. I I don't think you have to check your previous sports knowledge at the door when it comes to enjoying soccer. Yes. There's some lingo and some terms and stuff like that, but every every sport has that to a certain extent. It's the fact that it feels foreign. I think that's a little bit scary to enter into sometimes. And you get these uppity kind of soccer folks that Can I say just one more thing to impress Yes? I'm not trying to piss you guys off or anything like that. I just don't know. No. And that's It's why a game, man. If you go back and watch, like, the first few episodes of of the show that that we do, the Sunset Soccer Club, I started it with this idea that soccer really should be for anybody and everybody who wants to know about the game, care about the game. Like, come on in and let's all enjoy this thing together because that's really what the World Cup is all about. What makes it so awesome is the communal aspect of it. And all of these different fan bases all cheering for their teams across the world And the impact that that has, because there are very, very few things that actually bring people together these days and sports is one of them. And being able to have an event of this magnitude here in The United States that unites so many people, think is a really awesome thing. And so I don't want to set up barriers and to set up things that say, oh, you dumbass. Why don't you know that about soccer beforehand? No. Let's say like, hey, if you don't know this thing, let's talk about it. Let me explain to you what I love about this game and why I find it so appealing. I like to think of YDC as something that brings people together. That's exactly right. But that's just me. Alright. So Yes. How many sides are in this thing? 48 teams. 48 nations are in this World Cup. Now, this is expanded from 32, which was the previous number that they'd had in World Cup. So 48 It's the first 48 team field? First 48 team field, which means this is the largest World Cup that we've ever had. 32 teams will qualify for the knockout round. So the way this works is there's 48 teams broken into 12 groups of four. You're going to play the other three teams in your group. Now the top two teams advance from every group. And then eight of the third place teams are going to advance to make 32 teams that advance to the knockout round. So every nation is guaranteed three games, no matter how good you are, how bad you are, whatever, you're guaranteed three games, which means everyone gets to watch their team at least three times, which I really enjoy. What happens if a number two and number three team in a group wind up tied? So there's different tie breaking kind of scenarios, right? The first being your goal differential. So let's say that the first team won, like their overall goal differential, their plus minus ends up being, let's say plus three and the other team it's just plus one. Then the second place team is going to be the team that has the higher goal differential. The difference between the number of goals they scored versus the number of goals that they allowed. There are other tiebreakers as you go down the most, like total goals scored is your next tiebreaker and then on down the list. And so very rarely do you finish in a situation where they can't find a tiebreaker of some sort. Do all of these teams play together throughout the year or or do they put teams together like every four years when the World Cup rolls around or how does this work? It's a great question. It's Thank you. If you if you think of it similar to, let's say, Olympic basketball, right, where you can pull players from anywhere across the world and around the world. Right? So all of these guys play for club teams that exist in other countries. Let's say that imagine a scenario where there's 20 leagues comparable to the NBA around the world. Spain has a league. Italy has a league. England has a league, and The United States has a league. And all of these guys can play professionally in any league that they choose. And then as long as you have citizenship and a passport from a country, you are ill you are able to represent that country on the international level. So it's the job of the coach for each country to then choose the squad of players that he wants. Right? And that comes with a lot of controversy. Who you choose to bring into your team and who you leave out. Similar to maybe like the World Baseball Classic or, you know, any one of these kind of international tournaments, it exists like that. So you have to make a choice of, do I want this player? Do I want this player? And the coach of the US men's national team is a guy named Mauricio Pochettino. He's Argentine. He's had a really successful coaching career, in England and a couple of other stops. And this is his first time coaching at the international level. So one of the things that makes this really unique is that these players are all playing for different teams around the world, very rarely play together. You get a few camps throughout the year where you're able to bring all these players together and have them play a couple of exhibition matches and practice together. But it's a real skill for a coach to be able to impart the ideas and the tactics that he wants to employ with his team over a short period of time with these players. Got to get those ideas across. You have to establish who's playing where and how exactly you wanna set up and play because tactics are a big part of the game of soccer. How much time do they have leading into the World Cup to actually practice and have exhibition games and all that? The before it gets US has played two exhibition games leading into the World Cup. So they're done with that portion. They've been in camp now. Let's see, the roster was officially named on May 26. So we've kind of known who that whole group is since then. They played an exhibition match against Senegal that they won three to two, and then an exhibition match against Germany that they lost two to one. Both of those, you don't take a ton away from the result. You just it's it's like preseason NFL. Right? Like Yeah. You wanna see some of the guys play together. You get your starters out there for a half or so, pull them all off the field, put on everybody else, and that's kind of the the way it goes. So you get the team together in a camp for about three weeks before the World Cup starts. And then The US's first game is this Friday. So where are all these what are all these these guys doing in non World Cup time? Like the rest of the the this happens every four years? Happens every four years. Alright. For the rest of those three years and some change. What are they doing during that time? So those guys are all playing for their club team primarily. So if you think of the same way that LeBron James suits up for Team USA every four years when the Olympics rolls around, but in the intervening three years, he's playing for the Lakers or for whoever he's playing for these days. Same thing with all of our all of our players for the US men's national team. So the best player for The US is a guy named Christian Pulisic. And he plays for AC Milan in Italy's league. AC Milan, a really historic club, one of the three or four best teams in Italy, and he's one of their three or four best players. And so he plays there most of the time, but all of these guys are constantly kind of moving teams and figuring out where exactly they're gonna play in those intervening years. Really, like, that's where their money comes from is playing for these club teams. And so The US has high profile guys in Italy, a player or two in England in those leagues. Each of these leagues has styles in and of themselves and have hierarchies within the teams and that kind of thing that is really fun to get into. And really my introduction into soccer came from watching the World Cup in 2002, overnight because it was in South Korea and Japan that year. And then going on to figure out like, okay, all of these guys play somewhere. Let's go find where they play. And then I would watch those games. And that's kind of how I fell in love with the sport in general was just, oh, I I like these players. Let's see where they play. Let's watch those games. And then four years later, the World Cup rolls around and I knew all of the players a lot better and was excited to see them again. So all these guys from Italy, how did how would they wind up here? I mean, is there a draft or something, or or do you just go out and sign them as free agents to come play for Team USA during the World Cup? Or how how I mean, how alright. Don't laugh. God. I got the question he's asking. Okay. Look. I'm only 11 here. Okay? Okay. So think of it the same way again as like the dream team. Right? Michael Jordan didn't have to get drafted or or do anything special to play for Team USA in that ninety two Olympics in Barcelona. Right? He was a member of the Chicago Bulls. And because he was American, he got to play for the dream team. It's the same situation. Right? Anybody who is an American soccer player is eligible to be brought into this team by the coach if he chooses them. There's no draft process. But of the hundreds and hundreds of Americans playing soccer around the world or here domestically, the coach gets to choose a roster of 26. The 26 ones that he thinks gives him the best opportunity to field the best team out there for the World Cup. And this all revolves around the kind of team he wants to have and the game of soccer the way he wants it played and finding the guys who can play it the best? Exactly. Yeah. That that's exactly right. And a big thing about soccer is, like you mentioned, how you want to play. Right? And so there are a lot you can really do a deep dive into tactics. Right? I think of soccer very much as a chess match where you can play in different formations. You can bring in more defenders and play defensively and kind of sit back and try to do what's called like a counter attack. Right? You can be really aggressive and play a different formation in that way. But without going too deep into the weeds in tactics, how a coach really wants to play matters in terms of who he calls up to his and impacts those call ups of those players. And it's probably pretty safe to assume that any player that's asked to be on the team says yes. Are there any players that have turned down for different reasons or is it pretty much coach calls you, you're like, okay, I'll be there. It's a great question. One of the biggest conversations in international soccer are dual nationals. And so we see a lot of that with Team USA where a player can hold citizenship in multiple different countries. And so where we've seen that most often are American Germany, like German Americans Mhmm. Where US servicemen stationed in Germany have children and like with German women and those players can determine who they would like to play for. Same thing as well with Mexican American kids. We have a kid, I shouldn't say kid. He's, you know, 22, 23 years old now. He's a kid. Yeah. He's a kid. A player named Ricardo Pepe on the US men's national team roster who was born in El Paso to parents who had crossed the border, and he was eligible to represent both The US and Mexico and had to make a choice. And that's a really nuanced and difficult choice. I know a lot of people say like, oh, if you don't wanna play for America, then we don't want you. Think it's a lot Yeah. Yeah. And like there's there's the uber patriotic way to look at it from that perspective. But I think that this also gets into a complex conversation about identity. Right? If you are born to Mexican parents who would grow up watching the Mexican national team, cheering for Mexico and that sort of thing, simply the fact that you were born in The US doesn't necessarily mean that that's where you kind of place your identity as a as a soccer player, as a human being. And so these are complex conversations that, that players have to have and make a determination. And so one such player this time around was a, a young 19 year old defender, named Noke Banks, who is one of these German American players who wanted to leave open the door to play for Germany potentially one day. So turned down the opportunity to play for The US in this particular World Cup. Once you play in an official FIFA sanctioned match, you are what's called cap tied to that particular country, which means he could no longer go back and play for Germany once he's played an official FIFA match for The United States. And so anything kind of above an exhibition level match means that you are tied to that country forever and are ineligible to represent another one. So it's And you said the rest of the way, like the rest of their careers. Rest of their career with exactly. That's, that's who you're with. So it's a big decision when you make it. And so players take their time and try to figure out, okay, which country do I want to represent? Cause I can't, I can't go back on this one day. Yeah. Cause I know with the, like the world baseball classic, you know, it's, they also base it on, you know, it can be where their grandparents were born and Mhmm. Stuff like that. And as far as I know, they can kinda switch nations each WBC. Interesting. So there's a little bit more flexibility there. But, yeah, I didn't realize that once you pick a nation, you're there. You're there. You're there once you play an official match. And look, this this comes into question for countries that aren't just The United States. Right? Like, most of France's team are eligible to also represent the African country that their parents immigrated from. Like, you see that in, across just about all of these national teams that the world is such a melting pot these days that all of these guys have the option to represent different countries. And so it's important to, when you make that decision to feel sure that you're, you're playing for the country you want to play for. So about what age are they making that decision potentially? Depends on how young you are when you turn professional, but these days you've got kids that are emerging as emerging prospects at the age of 18, 19 years old. And so nations are trying to get them into their system at younger and younger ages. And of the ways you kind of come up through the soccer ranks is you play on under, what's the best way to say it? U 16 teams, which means if you're 16 and under, U 17 teams, U 18 teams. So The US is constantly keeping an eye on these pools of players that are coming up as teenage prospects. And you have under sixteen World Cup, 17. So you kind of know the prospects that are coming up similar to baseball. You might be watching like your prospects develop in the minor leagues. The US is doing this as well with with players. Every country is. And so you kinda have an idea and you're beginning to recruit these kids who could potentially go and play for another country. You're recruiting them at, you know, 16, 17 years old to make sure that they stay as a US player kind of throughout the course of their career. It's crazy. What's the recruiting process like? The Olympic development program is very difficult. Yeah. So, okay. I this is a conversation I think is important to to have. Right? Because I think it gets to what makes soccer unique and maybe why The US isn't better at soccer on a global stage for for for the men. If you look at a 16 year old kid that is a highly thought of prospect in American football, let's say he's a quarterback and everybody knows this kid's gonna be good. His career path to get to the professional level is very well defined. Right? Everybody knows. Yeah. Okay. He's playing in high school. He's going to get recruited by college. He's going to select the college. He's going to go play there. Maybe now he transfers once or whatever, but for the most part, he plays at that college. He's going get drafted into the NFL and that's how you become a professional. Unless he's Brandon Sorsby. Yeah. In which case What are your thoughts on that? We can come back to that. I went to Texas A and M though, so screw Texas Tech and anything they're trying do. That path is very well defined. For soccer, it is much harder to define a clear linear career path from if you are 16 and outstanding. These days, they're trying to build up local academies for the professional teams in these areas to be able to bring in players at younger and younger ages and begin training them as pseudo professionals at very young ages, 12, 13, 14 years old. Cause this is what happens in Europe. The idea of college sports doesn't exist in countries like Spain, Germany. So they're professionalizing these kids at really young ages, bringing them into soccer academies and training them to be really, really good. We have not developed that system in The United States yet in a way that fully realizes and develops the talent that we have at our disposal. And so when we have conversations asking why isn't The US better at this yet? Part of it is that we just haven't built that pipeline to the fullest extent to take advantage of the fact that we have incredible athletes here in The United States. And the other fact of the matter is that we aren't raising kids just like playing soccer in the yard, playing soccer in the streets. Things that develop the intangibles of a sport that you really can't teach. But you see kids learn on the blacktop when they're playing basketball together or in the schoolyard when they're just throwing footballs around. We don't have that in quite the same way that you see in like Brazil where a kid can juggle a soccer ball walking down the street. That's just not something that we have at this point. And so I think those are important things to keep in mind when we talk about how we're developing talent in this country and maybe why The US still lags behind on the men's side of the game. Is there any kind of well, I think I know the answer to this already. I just don't know how how well I'm gonna put this. Let's talk about it. But is there any kind of league that these guys would play in, like minor league baseball or something like that? Is it would they go there and play and hone their skills and get better to where Team USA might call them up? It's a great it's a great question. So for a long time, like Ashley mentioned, like there was a kind of a US residency system or like an an Olympic training system. There was like an academy in Bradenton previously where The US used to bring talented players from around the country to train at this facility in Bradenton. They got rid of that. And now it is up to local professional teams to scout their region and to do a good job of bringing these kids up through their academy system, which is an effectively a minor league system for soccer throughout the country. The problem is, is there still aren't enough professional teams across The US doing this so that a kid, if there's a kid that's really good in Arizona or something like that, maybe FC Dallas hears about him. Maybe a team in Southern California hears about him or something like that. But I still think there's probably kids falling through the cracks in various spots. Is this all done I mean, it sounds like this is all done very word-of-mouth. I mean, is there like in baseball, if there's, you know, a good high school kid coming up and major league teams are thinking that he might not be, you know, far away from making the jump to the major leagues, then go watch him play in high school Mhmm. And scout him there. Do they do that in soccer? So the challenging part is that the high schools are not the best place to find the talent these days. Similar to maybe like the way AAU has revolutionized revolutionized high school basketball, club soccer teams are really like where the talent is Yeah. Before you maybe get to some of these academies and and that sort of thing. And so Yeah. Teams are constantly on the lookout for kids at showcase tournaments and that sort of thing. We actually have a massive one here in Dallas every year around Easter called the Dallas Cup. It's like the biggest international youth soccer tournament in the world. Oh, that's what that is. Here in Dallas, every single year, can go watch games at the Cotton Bowl. I've called games for them for years and always have a blast doing it. And you actually will see a lot of guys that are in the World Cup this summer have come through the Dallas Cup and played for different youth teams, be them be it club teams or academy teams from around the world. So it's these academies that are always keeping an eye out for talent within, like, a specific region. And so FC Dallas scouted Ricardo Pepe when he was out in El Paso, moved him to Frisco to play in the FC Dallas Academy when he was 12 or 13. He ended up being really freaking good. They played him for their what's called lower level team. Let's call them a minor league team, North Texas SC. He was their first signing. He played really well for them. They brought him up to FC Dallas. He played one year at FC Dallas, and they sold him for $20,000,000 to a German team. That is the system working about as well as it can work Yeah. For an MLS team. How many academies like that do we have around here? Not not enough. Right? But at FC Dallas, I think we have a great example of an academy working really, really well locally. But I mean, are there others for, the FC Dallas Academy team to go play? Or how does that work? And so they've recently kind of built out that system a lot more in a system called MLS Next, which is now kind of the minor league system for these lower level teams, these academy level teams to kind of play one another around the country. And so it was a little bit clunky starting up, and they stepped on some toes of youth soccer in the process. The youth soccer world is a tangled web of connections and a lot of money. A lot of politics. A lot of A lot of things go into it. MLS Next stepped on the toes of a lot of that. But what it did was formalize a lot of the soccer that goes on at the younger levels that begins to bring these, bring these players up. And honestly, the results that we've begun to see from this, US players at lower age levels that get called in from these various teams to make up a United States 17 level team. These teams have started playing a lot better soccer and have started competing with some of the better nations in the world. And I think it's continued develop along development along those lines that eventually are going to allow The US to truly compete on the national stage on the men's side. We've been doing it on the women's side for years and years and years, going back to the team that won the World Cup in 1999 on the women's side. We're ahead of the game And we have been for a long time on the women's side, not so much on the men's side. There's catching up to do. Women always doing better than men. We're always falling behind y'all. That's true. It's true. The investment's always been there on the women's side of the game because of title nine, right? That, that pushed investment into women's soccer in The US before other countries had caught up. And so we were ahead of the game on the women's side. On the men's side, we were behind by a hundred years. It is crazy though. I'm saying MLS Next is a 150 clubs and more than a 100 or more than seven fifty teams across The US and Canada. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. So it's doing a better job of spreading out, developing that network, finding talent where maybe previously it fell through the cracks. The challenging part is, and people will talk about this in any conversation about soccer. Soccer's an expensive sport to play in United States. Everywhere else around the world, it is a free sport to play. And that is where you tend to find the best talent. But in The U S it's, it's an expensive sport to play and you weed out some of you, maybe you're potentially best players by doing that. Well, what in The U S is not an expensive sport to play? Everything's a subscription. It's a good point. Maybe football. Right? You you do it in you do it through school. Yeah. You do it through school, but you gotta have gear and you gotta, you know, find a a place to play when you're younger than True. Than money. High school level. Me too. Yeah. It's tough. But look, the reason that the world loves the game of soccer and the reason why the World Cup is such a big thing is all you need is a spherical object to play the game. Right? Like, anytime you travel, you see people playing with whatever they can find. I mean, was in Kenya when I was a kid and saw a bunch of kids playing with just whatever they had balled up and then duct taped into a circle, you know? And so that's what makes this game such a global game is at the end of the day, all you need is a sphere and something set up to to be a goal, whether it's trees or, you know, your shoes at the end of the field. And I think that's what makes it so amazing is that anybody can play it. A crispy shrimp ball. A crispy shrimp I don't know. Do you love soccer, Tyler? I do love soccer, Mike. I do. Good. Because I wanna talk to you a little bit more about it. But right now, we gotta stop down for just a minute. If you need to chill out for a few seconds over there, you can do it. 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The reason I know this is because I too am rowing around this world in more pain than I've ever known in my whole life these days. And I tried this. Doesn't make it go away totally, but it does make it better. It does make me able to get through the day without being in a whole shit ton and world of pain. Now if that sounds good to you, you need to drive by the House of Healing and talk to them about this. Their owner is a registered nurse, and they approach everything from a very medicinal standpoint down there. This is not some head shop that I'm gonna send you to where they're gonna give you a roach clip and a a mess of zigzags and send you on your way. That's not how it works at all. Now if you wanna talk to them about the other stuff, well, like I say, it's all done all all very medicinally, but that is there. The CBD House of Healing is located at Northwest Highway and Plano Road in the northeast quadrant of that burgeoning intersection. Look. You got nothing to lose. If you were in pain, you probably want something done about it. Go to the CBD House of Healing. Let them do something about it for you. Tell them you heard about it from us here on Low YDC and start your healing process at the CBD House of Healing. We love it. We do. Thank you. It's awesome. By the way, Shupi, I found your phone in your bathroom closet. Took me forever to find the damn thing. In my bathroom closet? Yeah. With the closet off your bathroom? I don't know. Oh. I had to go way farther into your home than I would have preferred to find it. Into the into the bowels of Yeah. That's feel like I invaded your privacy. Further into it than I would have preferred too. Well, Becca needed your phone. She's gotta tweet stuff. The hell? We're doing it to help you. To share the show. Yeah. Alright. Yes. We're all about sharing the show too. You, the masses. Yeah. Yeah. Need to share the show. Alright. Tyler Kern is with us today. You see him on the Sunset Soccer Club right here on the Stolen Water Media web website, stolenwatermedia.com. It's where you go for all of our podcasts. Tyler's there. All the rest of them are there. If you like, Alex and Rob and those guys at the clubhouse, they're there and all the rest of them were there. We got some good stuff going on over there. So check that out if you have not done that already. Alright. My head is spinning with soccer stuff here. Do we need to bring it back to the World Cup? We really got into the soccer we I know. We did get into soccer season. Yes. We do need to it back World It it it's a it's a wild it's a wild ride, the soccer world. Yeah. And I did realize it was that entangled and and I probably let that go a little bit too far. That's what we're all about here, though. But, yes, I do want to bring this back to the World Cup. Let's do it. Because this is not something that I'm terribly familiar with, but you are. That's why you're here. That's right. Alright. Who are the teams to watch in this thing? Big teams to watch. Your favorites, your betting favorites, even Spain, France, always, you know, perennial powerhouses, right? France has made the final. The last two World Cups they won back in 2018, made it to an epic final in 2022, where they lost to Leo Messi in Argentina. Who's another team to watch. They are always outstanding. England has a solid squad. They haven't won the World Cup since 1966. That's a long damn time. It's a long damn time. They've only won it once in 1966 on home soil. So a lot of people think of England as like this great soccer nation. It is because they have the best league in the world. But they've only won this thing one time. That would be the English Premier League? The English Premier League. See? I like that. You know. I like that. Mike knows his soccer. Tell me I'm not a badass. Mike's a badass. That's right. That's right. So you have the English Premier League. They won it back in 1966. But this is a really hard tournament to win. You have teams like Portugal and Belgium, The Netherlands who have really great squads who have made it to finals of major competitions in the past in The Netherlands, and they haven't won it before. So there's some teams to watch that are extremely, extremely talented. But your favorites for this tournament are Spain, France. Brazil is always a favorite. I don't love them for this tournament. I think they're a little old in some spots and not quite as powerful maybe as they've been in the past. Some people might have big memories of them winning in 1994, the last time the World Cup was held here. But, yeah, I'm going, Spain and France as your favorites. I'm gonna pick Argentina to repeat as tournament champions actually. Alright. There it is. Damn. Yeah. There's the Tyler Kern prediction. That's it. That's it. The Netherlands is my dark horse. If you want a dark horse team, I think they're, if you are in the We all love a good dark horse. If you're in the betting market, they're 20 to one right now, I think. And they've made the final three times. I think The Netherlands is maybe the most one of the most impactful soccer nations in the world. They had a really big figure who kind of changed the way that people thought about the game, a guy named Johan Cruyff, who played in the 1970s for The Netherlands. But they're a fun team to watch. They're gonna bring a big crowd to Arlington. They play against Japan, in the group stage in Arlington, and they always travel really well as a fan base. They wear orange. It's awesome to watch. And so The Netherlands here in, in, Dallas Fort Worth is going to be, it's going to be a great team to see. Who else is going be coming to Dallas Fort Worth? You get England to Croatia in a match. It's going to be a, it's an epic rematch of a, of a semi final that happened back in 2018 between England and Croatia. Two really good soccer nations again. And that's gonna be a really competitive match. Messi plays a game in the group stage here in Arlington. I believe they play Jordan here. Is he not a little on the elderly side? He's old, but but he's good. He's 39 now, but he can still run things. And so, and people love to see him. Look, he's the best player of all time, in my opinion. And people want to get a glimpse of him while he's still playing. This is almost certainly his last World Cup. And so be a good time to see Leo Messi. Now who else would be in that conversation in your view? As far as best player? All time. Obviously tattoo. Tattoo came and spoke at my elementary school when I was a kid. Loved tattoo. Got an autographed picture. It was awesome. That it against tattoo. That's that sounds like a a story that deserves its own podcast. Yeah. Pele is a is a player that a lot of people will know and is frequently cited as one of the best of all time. A lot of what he did was in Brazil and not televised. You only really saw him during World Cups back in the day. Yeah. But he did it over a long period of time. People got to see him play for the New York Cosmos in the old NASL days here in The United States. And so Pele is frequently mentioned Diego Maradona, a fellow Argentine, along with Leo Messi, a guy that did it in the eighties and previously won a World Cup with Argentina, something that Messi hadn't done until the last World Cup. There's kind of a mark held against him. He wasn't as legendary as Maradona until he was able to bring a World Cup back. So Maradona also mentioned. And then Johan Cruyff, who I mentioned before, tall, lanky Dutch guy who said he had two great loves in his life, playing soccer and smoking. And he really and he played like he didn't he didn't love to run, but he's an example of why great athleticism doesn't always win on the soccer field because he thought two steps ahead of everybody else. And he had this philosophy that if he ever had to really sprint, go at an all out sprint, that he had already messed up because he liked to think that he could see the game developing in front of him before other people couldn't. So he knew where he needed to be before other people. So he never really had to run. So he could smoke his entire career. There's an epic picture I have with Did he you smoke cigarettes or Cigarettes. Yeah. I have this great picture of him at halftime of a World Cup final smoking a cigarette in his in his jersey in the locker room. Love Johan Cruyff. Sadly, he passed away from lung cancer. So we don't have him with his name. There's a lesson there. There's a lesson. Stay away from cigarettes. Cigarettes And are try banned for running. Yeah. Jog. The opposite of what he did. Right. Jog a little bit. Yogging. He might have won a World Cup though. So He almost he almost did. He made it to the final in 1974 with this Dutch team that revolutionized the way we think about how to play the game. They developed this system called Total Football, which meant players could interchange positions kind of seamlessly and had this understanding of how to play with one another that has now been adopted really widely throughout the soccer world. But at the time, people were a little bit more rigid in terms of how they thought about positioning and where you played on the field. And his team in 1974, he then kind of took this philosophy and brought it to coaching. Eventually ended up coaching Barcelona, one of the largest soccer teams in the world. He coached them in Spain and kind of brought these ideas that have now been expounded upon. And it's the way that everybody tries to play these days is have positional fluidity amongst players and this idea that you can move in and out of different shapes and structures of how you play the game. And so it's a complex system in a way of thinking about things, he really pioneered in the seventies. Hope that really opens the game up too, doesn't it? It opens up the game in massive ways. And I think that if you want to if you are watching soccer for the first time this World Cup and want to deep dive into what people find especially interesting, if you want to go a level deeper, start reading some blogs. There's some really great blogs out there about tactics and about how teams set up to play. And you begin to see that, that there's a whole world out there and big discussions about how you play the game. The same way that, you know, someone, somebody like Bob Sturm loves to get into the weeds on how a defense is structured, you know, for the Cowboys and breaks it down. Are they in a four three? Are they in a three four? Those sorts of things. You can have those same conversations about soccer. You see, oh, is this player overlapping and moving further up the field than maybe you anticipated? Things like that are tactical adjustments and shifts that happen throughout a game that are fun to talk about if you wanna go a level deeper than just watching and enjoying a game. What about the goaltenders in this thing? Who are some of the goaltenders to watch here? Big goalkeeper for a goalkeeper. Goalkeeper. It's not hockey. Goalkeeper. They're goalkeepers, right? Yeah. Goalkeeper. Yeah. We'll say we'll say goalkeeper. Think do the same thing, but you got to get the jargon right. Yeah. I'm supposed to be an expert. Mike is an expert. Right. You know, a big a big shift that's happened over the last decade or two is previously goaltenders, goalkeepers were just the person meant to stop the shot, right? To to make saves, keep the other team from scoring. But in recent decades, one of the things that's been asked of goalkeepers is to play with the ball at their feet a little bit more often, to be used as another person in the overall formation and and used as somebody who can actually pass the ball effectively from the back of the field and be the first person in the attack, actually. So they're not looking for the goaltender to start or maybe even participate Mike, you're about to go down a rabbit hole. In the offense. Mhmm. That I'm gonna I need a mic for. Ashley wants to to dive in on this conversation. No. But Oh. But now goalkeepers are being asked a little bit more to make passes from the back and begin a phase of play in the attack. So that has become a bigger and bigger thing in the game. And so some of the keepers that do that at a really, really high level, the keeper named Allison who plays for Brazil. He's played for Liverpool for most of his career now. Really, really talented keeper at at playing from out of the back. And so he's one to to keep an eye on for The US. We will see who ends up starting for The US, but it's a developing skill for for goalkeepers at the international level to be able to kind of play and be a player that can receive the ball, pass back to them, to their feet. Because if a player makes a pass from their foot back to the goalkeeper, the goalkeeper's not allowed to pick up the ball. Right? That's important to know. So the goalkeeper has to be able to then play it with their feet effectively. The goalkeeper can't pick up the ball. Not if it's passed to him by a teammate. A teammate turns Okay. Looks at the keeper, passes it with their foot back to him, he's not allowed to just pick up the He can catch he can catch a shot. Exactly. He's allowed to make saves. Mike, they suck. Can catch a crack. I I thought they had the really sticky gloves and stuff. They do have the really sticky gloves. Refuse to catch balls nowadays. It's ridiculous. Just take it off the face? Pretty much. Cool. France's keeper is a guy named Mike Mignon, who's quite good. A keeper to keep an eye on. There's a reason why France is one of the favorites is they have somebody at every position who is absolutely outstanding. Mike, call him by his first name like I know him, Menon is quite accomplished as a shot stopper. Those guys are still thought of as a little bit old school, but he's very good at being a shot stopper. The US has a keeper like that named Matt Turner, who is not so good at playing with the ball at his feet, but is an excellent shot stopper. And so you have to decide, do you want somebody who can pass effectively from the back or do you want somebody who's effective at kind of doing the job of a keeper of stopping shots, but that job has expanded in recent years. Alright. So who do you like? Who is your pick to win the World Cup, Tyler? I'm going Argentina. They're a little long in the tooth in some spots, but I I like the team a lot. They have some young players. If there's a young star that I think could break out at this World Cup, a guy named Nico Paz, who, plays in Italy, but he's an Argentine international, is a player that I would keep an eye on potentially coming off of the bench for Argentina. But if he comes in and develops a good chemistry with Messi, I see him being a player that could really break out. He's 21 years old, plays in attacking midfield position. So I like Argentina a lot. They're gonna be my pick to to win this thing. So that's who I'm going with. Who are you picking? I'm picking the Americans. Yeah. Everybody can build Tell me why I'm wrong. Yeah. I Tell me what Everybody can build their own bracket on our website. That's true. Everybody can build their bracket on stolenwatermedia.com. Right. Stolen watermedia.com. Build your bracket. Build your bracket. Make your picks. It's gonna be awesome. I don't know what will be in it for you, but we'll figure out something. We'll shout you out somehow. We'll we'll we'll yank something off the walls at your or something like that. Hell, I don't know. But, yes, go to stolenwatermedia.com and build your bracket. Do it. Yes. Damn it. Yes. Do it. Damn it. You just do America all the way through. Yeah. You can. Right. Who's your dark horse? The Netherlands. So I like as a dark horse. They've never won the thing. Like I mentioned, they've been a really influential country in this, over the years. Did you go see the bus? But I didn't go see the bus. I should have gone and seen the bus. What's the bus? What's the bus? Big orange bus. Are gonna be there for the march? I'm not I I I will try. I will try to be for, you know, anywhere and everywhere, you know, for the the march to the match that the The Netherlands are gonna have in their match here in Arlington. I love their team. I think they've got outstanding players at every level, defense, midfield, and attack. Think they've got great players. I I like their team. I've always kind of had a soft spot for for the Netherlands for the way that they play, for the fact that they haven't won this thing, but they've been a really influential country in the world of soccer. And I like the smaller nations, you know, the nations that have a smaller population. I also tend to cheer for Croatia, just a a country that I like with some players that I like a lot. But The Netherlands is my my dark horse team. I think can get them at 20 to one on if you are a person who does that sort of thing. Build your bracket. Build your bracket. Yeah. So who's the team that if they win, it's really gonna burn your ass? I I can't stand England. They have this song called It's Coming Home. And look, they invented the game, and so they treat themselves as like the the keepers of all things soccer. And they tend to think of people say that they mean it in a tongue in cheek kind of way, but when they sing this song, it's coming home, it makes me feel like they think it's their birthright to win this damn thing. And it's just not. They haven't won it since 1966 for a reason. They're pompous. They're cocky. They get really loud when they're doing well. And damn it, I do not want them to win these type of international competitions. And so I always root against England's sorry ass and their fans kind of being smarmy about it. Look like Oh, god. So, yeah, they they sing this. This sucks. Is this the actual song? Yes. Oh, god. Oh my gosh. Alright. Who who sings You'll Never Walk Alone? Oh, yeah. And that's from a that's from a musical. Right? And so that's Liverpool's song as they walk out onto the pitch, you never walk alone. Yeah. I I get chills every time I hear the Liverpool fans sing that. I love that. No national team has claimed that that I know of. But somebody's claimed this. England has claimed this. For better or worse. This is why we left their asses. Yeah. Exactly. Do you wanna talk about expectations for The US? Yes. I'd love to talk about expectations for The US. I didn't know we had any, but it that's I mean, this is the World Cup, you know. This is the World Cup. Right? And, yes, we are the ugly Americans. But if if there are expectations for The US, yes. What got? This is the most talented team The US has ever had. Really? In terms of just talented players, players playing at really high levels around the world. It is the most it is the best collection of talent that The US has ever brought together. That doesn't necessarily mean the best team. Right? The best team that we ever had was in 2002. They made it to the quarterfinals and got robbed of making it potentially to the semifinals by an own goal committed by a German defender named Thorsten Frings. And I've just never forgotten it that The US got robbed in that game. A handball off the line, it would have been a clear goal. But The US got robbed in 2002. That was a young up and coming team with a really young Landon Donovan, a young DeMarcus Beasley, some players that grew into really excellent players for The US. This team, in terms of what they've accomplished at the club level and the talent that they have and the potential that they have to fulfill that talent is unmatched by any previous US team. And so I think having a World Cup on home soil with this collection of players leads a lot of people to have really, really high expectations for this team. Now they play in a group, like I mentioned. So there's four teams in in the groups. Right? So The US is in a group with Paraguay. That'll be their first game. Mhmm. Australia, which is their second game and Turkey, which is their third game. They are more talented, I think, than those three countries. They should win Getting those out of the group is the bare minimum. Right? I think winning the group should be an expectation. I'm not saying that they will. I think two wins and a draw could get it done for The US to to get out of the group, to win the group potentially, and to go on and play a winnable game in the knockout rounds. Can you get out of the group without winning the group? You can. So if you come in second, you automatically also qualify for the knockout rounds. Okay. Now you'll play the way that the seating works and all of that sort of stuff. You get reseeded, depending on where you fall kind of in your group's standings. Right? So if you're a second place team, there's a chance you'll end up playing a first place team from another group. And this is what's happened to The US in the past is the way that their group has fallen, they've ended up playing a team that has been better than them in the knockout rounds. Well, this is an expanded tournament. There's an extra round of knockout games. And so The US should, in my opinion, make it out of the group, win their first knockout round game, get to the round of 16, which is normally where they end up losing. And I think if the draw goes your way, I think The US could potentially win that round of 16 game and make it to the quarterfinals again for the first time since 2002. And I think that that would be a success. But more than anything, think how they play and how they play on the international stage and the ability to take it to opposing teams and really be the aggressor in some of these games will tell me more about the long term future of The United States as a soccer nation and tell you more about where this team is at than necessarily purely results. But I would love to see them make the quarterfinals. Do you think they can do that? Do you think think they can be the aggressor and be the team that takes it to the other side in this thing? I think they have the talent too. You know, in in 2014, The US made it to made it out of the group. They played Belgium in their knockout round game, and Belgium just absolutely waxed them. And it went to extra time because Belgium just couldn't score. Our goalkeeper, Tim Howard, had an amazing game, set the record for most saves in a World Cup match in that game because he was just a stone wall back there. And eventually, finally, an extra time Belgium scored a goal and made it past the US in that match. But had the US won that game, it would not have been by being the aggressor. It would have been on the backs of a heroic performance by their goalkeeper. Yeah. I think in this World Cup, The US is set up to play a quality nation, you know, a nation that is, you know, consistently thought of as a soccer powerhouse and go toe to toe and play with them on an equal playing field and not have to resort to getting all of your players back playing defense behind the ball. That's called parking the bus. Park a bus in front of the goal by getting as many players in your team back as far back as you can. Ted Lasso maybe kind of popularized that phrase with a wider audience. Park the bus, get a bunch of players back behind the ball. The US, I don't think has to do that anymore. And in the past, The US has relied on athleticism and grit and been like these plucky underdogs. Now I think we have a team that's talented enough to take that step, but it's a hard step to take. It's a big transition to make. What kind of yeah. What kind of style of play do you think The US will play? I think they're gonna be really attacking. I think they're gonna be maybe even reckless abandon attacking. Very American of them. Very American of them, but it's not how we've played in the past. And so this is a transition, I think, from what we've done previously. I think we're gonna push a lot of numbers forward and try to be aggressive in terms of how we play. I think the lineups that we're gonna select are gonna be attacking in nature. The US has a preferred formation, if you will, that has three central defenders, I think four midfielders across the the center of the pitch, two attacking midfielders, then a central striker. And so that's gonna allow them, I think, to utilize a lot of width. They have good wide players and utilize the entirety of the field in an attacking way. I think what you need to watch out for is when The US loses possession, can they scramble defensively to win the ball back? That's something I would watch for. And in counter attacking opportunities for opposing teams, how well does The US do in terms of snuffing out those opportunities? A player to watch for The US is Tyler Adams. He's a defensive midfielder, so you're not going to see him scoring goals, but he's going to be the guy that you're gonna rely on to break up opposing attacks. If he is playing at his best, he plays in the Premier League in England, and played for a team called Bournemouth that played a similar style to how I think The US is gonna play in this tournament. If he is ever injured for The US, they're screwed. There's nobody like him on The US Team in terms of what he does from an athletic perspective, the amount he runs, and the way he wins back possession for the US men's national team. So Tyler Adams is crucial. Keep an eye on him. Number four for The US. If he is doing his job, then he is the guy breaking up opposing counterattacks. We need him to do that and win the ball back for us. He's not a gifted pastor, but him winning the ball and then getting it to somebody who is is gonna be crucial for The US. Then you've got Christian Pulisic wears number 10 for The US. In international soccer, the player wearing number 10 is generally the best player on your team, the best attacking player. Christian Pulisic wears that for The US, really, really important player. And the last player I'll mention is Weston McKenney, a midfielder for The US, really versatile player. He's from Little Elm. He's a local Texan and has Weston McKenney. And played for, a number of the biggest clubs in Europe, currently currently plays for Juventus in Italy. And he's gonna be crucial for The US as well, because he's just kind of a do it all type of player, real kind of swashbuckling type of midfielder who gets, covers every blade of grass on the field and you need him to. And so those are the players for The U. S. That I would keep an eye out for because if The U. S. Is playing well, it'll be because those guys are kind of making it happen. How are we fixed between the pipes? Fixed between the pipes is an open conversation. I believe the keeper is gonna be Matt Fries, who was not previously known by a lot of American fans as recently as last year, but he got called up for an international tournament that The US plays in called the Gold Cup, where you play against other players and other teams in your region. It's kind of a tournament that gets played in off years between World Cups. And The US plays that tournament in their region, which is called CONCACAF. That's a long abbreviation that stands for North America, Central America, and like the Caribbean island nations. So The US plays in this tournament called the Gold Cup. Matt Fries got called up and was impressive, and that's kind of how he won his spot on this World Cup team. I believe it will be him starting. He doesn't fill me with a ton of confidence. I'll say that. Because The US has actually had a long line of really, really great and outstanding goalkeepers on the men's side. Tim Howard, who I mentioned, who set that record for most saves in a World Cup match for The US. That's an outstanding that's a that's a name you know. But Brad Friedel, Casey Keller, going back to Tony Mieola, there's another name I know. There's been a lot, there's, there's a long history of American keepers that have played at high levels. And that's kind of been the position we've been really consistent at. We don't have that this tournament. And that's an adjustment of mindset, I think. I think Freeze is fine, but he's not going to win you any games. And so they've got to be solid in front of him. The back line, the defenders that we have are, I think, maybe the biggest question mark on the team. And that's really why it plays such an emphasis on the job that Tyler Adams is gonna have to do for this team, shielding and protecting that back line from from counterattacks. And the Tyler Kern World Cup prediction is One more time. Again. I'm gonna say Argentina and perhaps Spain. I need to look at the bracket and all the different permutations, but I think that that would be Make your bracket. Don't forget to do that. Go make your bracket. Go make your bracket. Look, there's 48 teams, 104 games. My biggest prediction is that everyone should pop out to your favorite spot, your favorite local spot. Join us out. We're gonna be out at different various locations, you know. Maybe we'll hit up Birdies. We'll hit up Pedicolas, Clyde Warren Park. There's gonna be the the the FIFA official watch parties down at Fair Park. There's gonna be places to watch these games. My biggest prediction is that wherever you choose to watch games, you're gonna find a community of people there that are loving it as well. And interact with people that are maybe fans of different countries because you're gonna enjoy the heck out of it. I watched World Cup matches in Greece in 2010 and loved the heck out of it. My co host for the Sunset Soccer Club, his name's Arman, Arman Kaffai. He took me to an Iranian restaurant, back in 2018, a World Cup that The US didn't even qualify for, to watch an Iran game with a bunch of Iranian folks. And that was awesome. It's a great experience. So get in, mix it up with people from different cultures, find out why they love this game, and I guarantee you will have a better time for doing it. Share a beer with people, buy people a beer, and enjoy some soccer. Don't worry too much about figuring out offsides or the things that are confusing about the game. Just enjoy the hell out of like the cultural aspect of it because it's something that brings people together around the world. They stopped the civil war one time in the Ivory Coast just to watch the the World Cup in peace. So See what it can do? Yes. Two. Right. Well, I hope you feel a little bit more enlightened about the World Cup than you did before. I know I do. Thank you, Tyler. Thank you very much. It's been great. Thanks for having me. Yay. It's always fun to talk soccer with you guys. Okay. Alright. Let me do this on the microphone. Here. I think I we're gonna be at Clyde Warren Park on June 16, recording our show. So you can come check that out at Clyde Warren Park. We're gonna be at Pedicolis on the eighteenth and twenty fifth. So you can come out and check us out. Pedicolis is amazing supporter of soccer. Michael PedeColas always loved soccer, provides beer out at Toyota Stadium for FC Dallas fans. Make sure to go check out PedeColas. This is gonna be a great spot to watch games throughout this. Crossbar is another spot out in Richardson where we will be. Tom Boyce is one of their co owners. I freaking love Tom. He is fantastic despite the fact that he's British and cheers for England. Tom is wonderful. So if you're out in that Richardson area or just wanna make that drive, it's an indoor soccer facility. So you can go play some pickup there. They've got nightly pickup where you can go just get absolutely schooled by college kids. But they also have We need Shoopy to do that. That would be We don't. Come on, take some shots off him. He'll end up once again at the house of Yes, that's right. I will. I will. We'll be out at Crossbar. I think for the US game on the nineteenth, perhaps. Yes. That's what we're showing here. We'll we'll figure that out. But make sure to come out and join us for that. They have a bar there as well, as in the name Crossbar. So you can go out and get a drink, watch a US game. I watched USA England there last World Cup. It's a great spot. You wanna make sure to be there. There's great spots all around the metro park. Mike, you gotta tell me where you are because I wanna watch it wherever you're watching it. Come come Yeah. Come watch it with us at Petacolis on the eighteenth. We'll we'll watch Mexico on the eighteenth. The twenty fifth, we'll watch The US at Petacolis. That's gonna be amazing. On the nineteenth, June 19, we'll be at Crossbar. Come watch The US play Australia. That's a federal holiday, so you might not be working. So come out at 02:00, grab a beer with us at Crossbar. We will be there. We're gonna watch the game. We can talk about it. So we wanna meet people out and about. So if you are figuring this game out, if you just want to see what this whole scene is, come and find us. We're going to be out and about. We'll post it on our Instagram. So go find us at the sunset soccer club on Instagram as well. But yeah, come find us. Those are the places we'll be. Clyde Warren on the sixteenth, Pedicolis on the eighteenth, the twenty fifth, and Crossbar on the nineteenth. Alright. He is the great Tyler Kern. He is a soccer guy. And if you don't believe that, then just rewind this thing and watch it all again. In fact, it'd probably be pretty cool if you'd do that anyway. Yeah. Thanks, Tyler. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate you. Alright. That will do it for YDC for today. Before we go, we must tell you like we always do. We need help from you getting us out there. We need for you to put us up on your social media. Share us. Tell your friends about us. Just get us out there any way that you freaking can. Gotta help a brother out here. Okay? I got nothing going but this these days. So come on, man. Get with me here. Alright. Thanks to Shoopee. Thanks to Ashley. And thanks to Tyler. Great having you, man. Thanks, Becca. And thanks to Becca. To the rest of you. Bye. Alright. I'm gonna go take my pants off. You're Dark Companion is a stolen water media presentation.