Kicking off the World Cup

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The World Cup. Every four years, national soccer teams from all around the globe compete for the world title. This time around, Qatar is hosting the tournament and it kicks-off this weekend.

REICHARD: During the qualifiers earlier this year we spoke with Adam Belz, host of the Scuffed Podcast—a podcast that’s all about the US Men's and Women’s National Soccer Teams. He’s back now with a preview of what he calls the biggest sports event in the world.

BUTLER: Adam, let’s begin with the basics. Earlier this year, 32 teams from around the world qualified to compete in the 2022 World Cup. How does that get narrowed down to the final two teams a month from now?

BELZ: They are divided into eight groups of four…In the group stage, you play the other three teams in your group once each. And at the end of that round robin stage, the two teams who did the best go on to what they call the round of 16—the first knockout round, which is single elimination.

The U.S. needs at least one win and a draw to proceed to that round of 16. We face Wales on Monday—it’s their first time at the World Cup in 64 years. Then we play perennial favorite England the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s followed by another challenging match with Iran on November 29th. How likely is it that the U.S. men’s team will advance?

BELZ: It's not going to be easy. I think the whole range of possibility is in play. We could go three and out in the group and go home with our tails between our legs. I think that's totally possible. Wales and Iran are good teams. England is considered one of the contenders to win it all.

If the US Men’s team was to go three and out, is it like the Oscars? “It’s just an honor to be nominated?” Or in this case, at least the US Men’s team qualified this time around, unlike 2018?

BELZ: I think it depends a lot on how they play, you know…if we lose all three games in the group—but they're all exciting games—where we tried to score goals, and we did score goals. And, and we fought hard and we didn't look like we didn't look like a bunch of wimps out there, then I think we can be proud to have been at the World Cup.

But it sounds like that’s not quite enough…

BELZ: You know, getting to the round of 16…besting two other teams in your group. That's…enough, no matter how you do it, really. But I would say even if we get knocked out in the group, as long as we play with energy, and give fans something to be excited about in those games, I think that would be you know, a success.

There’s been a lot of attention leading up to this World Cup on poor working conditions for migrant workers building the venues, the lack of proper accommodations for the million plus spectators, the US team logo in the press room including a rainbow…yet I’m amazed at how much space on social media has been devoted to the bland US uniforms.

BELZ: I think a lot of people don't like the uniforms. For me, I think if we get out of the group, and say we win a knockout round game and go to the corner quarterfinals, which we've only ever done once. Nobody's going to care about the uniforms. It's going to be about results.

So as someone who follows this closely, what are you looking forward to seeing over the next 10 days from the American team?

BELZ: I'm excited to see Christian Pulisic, Giovanni Reyna, Tim Weah, Yunus Musah, and Weston McKennie, and Tyler Adams are all healthy at the same time. This young team has struggled with injuries over the last year and they've never fully coalesced. I think, to see them all together, healthy playing on the biggest stage is going to be I think, really fun. And I'm cautiously optimistic that we’ll surprise people because of how poorly we played in our last friendlies in September. So we have everybody underestimating us. I think that's a good place for us to be at.

Globally, the World Cup is bigger than the World Series, the Super Bowl, and in many ways it’s even bigger than the Olympics—as national teams made up of the world’s best soccer players compete against each other. What’s special about this young US team—even as we admit it’s highly unlikely we’ll finish in the top 8?

BELZ: Yeah, the roster comes from all kinds of different walks of life. It's made up in large part of the children of or the grandchildren of immigrants. The children of military members who served overseas. We got players from Missouri, Georgia, New York, Washington, Texas, California, a lot from New Jersey, and of course, Christian Pulisic, from Hershey, Pennsylvania. And, you know, one that one of the players’ dad is a carpenter in suburban St. Louis. One of the player’s grandfather is from Croatia. Tim Weah—his dad is the president of Liberia. And Tyler Adams also grew up in New York, was raised by a single mom until he was 13. And now he plays in the Premier League for Leeds United. So I think sort of the melting pot of the U.S. represented on this team, something we can all be proud of.

Adam Belz is one of the hosts on the Scuffed Podcast, we’ll include a link in today’s transcript if you’d like to hear more of his detailed analysis of the US Men’s and Women’s Teams. Adam, thanks so much for joining us this morning!

BELZ: Thank you!

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