Tommy Vietor

Yeah, it's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable.

It was good until you just said that, Tommy.

It's so lovely to see you there.

I wrote the book.

If you have had the memories of the World Cup, it will reignite them.

I hope you can relive them again as powerfully as you did the first time.

And if you're a newcomer planning to watch the World Cup, it will give you the depths, the nuances to understand and feel all of it.

Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan poet, once wrote, football is a pleasure that hurts.

And we're about to experience all of it.

Oh, winning it, Tommy.

I know I sound to many of your new listeners that I'm from England, but I love America so profoundly and like a way I like to believe slips me somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Kenny Powers.

um so i adore this team i first came over here in 1994 ahead of the last time the men's world cup was here it was meant to turn america immediately into a football loving nation it's taken a lot longer but the united states and the economist was just found to have soccer be the third most popular sport in the world which is mind-blowing amazing because i write in my book that before the 94 world cup tommy

A similar study found out soccer was 67th most favorite sport and tractor pulling, I crap you not, was 66.

Where are you now tractor pulling?

So to some degree, the winner of the World Cup from a US perspective will be the massive fan base.

that it leaves behind.

We've always joked on our show, soccer is America's sport of the future as it has been since 1972.

Like it's perpetually the next big thing.

I think this World Cup will cement it, normalize football in our sporting reality.