Leander Schaerlaeckens

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344 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 12 Jul

Leander Schaerlaeckens’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Football Weekly · Is the USA ready for the World Cup? – Football Weekly podcast · 13 May 2026 podcast

failing to qualify for the World Cup in 2018, which was the first one they'd missed since 1986.

And so that's one of the things that's causing a lot of anxiety is that they can do it against Mexico and they can do it against Panama and all these other teams.

But we've yet to see it against Belgium or Portugal, who both had a fairly easy time of it against the U.S.

back in March.

It is, yeah.

I mean, you have to consider where this program came from.

After the US beat England at the 1950 World Cup, which, by the way, was a win that was wedged between...

very bad losses to Spain and Chile.

They basically disappeared for four decades.

From 1950 to 1990, they were totally irrelevant on the international stage.

They had a streak in the 50s and 60s where they went 11 years without winning a game.

There was one qualifier late in the 1974 cycle where they didn't have enough players to field a full team and they had to recruit a man from the stands just to make up the numbers.

This was in a 74 qualifying cycle.

They found a guy who knew how to play and that was the 11th man.

And they've turned up to qualifiers without a coach.

There was the 1966 World Cup qualifying cycle.

They actually had two coaches and nobody could seem to figure out who was actually in charge.

And then in 1983...

The federation was so desperate for any type of infusion of energy into the national team because they could only afford to play a game, if that, every year, that they entered the team into the NASL, into Pelé's old league as Team America.

They entered the national team as a club team into the league.

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