Episode 185 - SKC Listener Mailbag, new player rumors(!), and the World Cup is here!

We are back!  Cody has returned from his sojourn to the North and just in time for us to prepare for some kind of tournament that is being played here this summer?  Cup of the Worlds or something?  Is this like the Intercontinental Challenge Cup or something different?  Jokes aside, we are hours away from the kickoff of the 2026 World Cup and 7 weeks of soccer overstimulation to our senses, so it is good that we are getting together beforehand to discuss this sport that we all love.That said, this is a Sporting KC podcast, and it has been a minute since Cody and I have discussed SKC, so we do have a few mailbag topics to dig into while that team is on hiatus during the World Cup break, including a player rumor! and hopefully as that break continues some news will start to trickle in regarding more potential transfer moves and how the team is preparing for the 2nd half of the season.  Obviously the USMNT is kicking off their home World Cup campaign on Friday, on the heels of a couple decent, let’s call them professional performances vs Senegal and Germany.  Certainly a vast improvement on the last window vs Portugal and Belgium, and there are some interesting tidbits I think that we can take away from how these games went and how personnel performed that could inform the way this team will try to play this summer.There were also a couple supposed soccer games in Brazil for the USWNT, and they served a useful lesson for that team, if not really how to play the beautiful game, but rather how to survive when the opponent will simply not allow it to be beautiful in the first place,