Adam was going crazy for 2pm EST to get here today

There's the man, Curt Johnson, Chief Soccer Officer, NCFC, and the North Carolina Courage. CSO is a great title, by the way.

I wish somebody would give me a title, Chief Radio Officer, but they're smart enough to not do that. It's coming. It's coming. Oh, no. Alright, so I'm going crazy.

I cannot wait until 2 o'clock today. We won't see lineups for a little bit. Would you make any changes to what we have seen so far? I would. Yeah, yeah, I think you got to get Raina or Aronson in the starting lineup, I think.

Who would come out? Well, I think yeah, the center forward. I love the concept of putting Waya in as a center forward. Get all your best players on the field.

But I think the main thing is just keep getting better. The team, if they can just keep improving each game, obviously the second half of the whales excluded, they've played three out of four very good halves. Give us two more and we take the W and move on. Yeah, well, obviously we can't we can't move on without a win today and that we're going to talk about goal scoring in a second. Because you mentioned the two draws, two very different feelings. I think there was a sense that there was it was a 1-1 loss to Wales as opposed to the feeling that it was a nil-nil win over England. Did you feel the same way? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I did. I mean, as well as they played in the first half and, you know, dominated possession, you know, get the goal to come away with a tie. And again, more importantly, regress in the second half and how we played. It wasn't that they played great. It was more that, you know, we weren't as good. I think was was the frustration.

Yeah. Look, the goal was really a mistake, a decision, a poor decision by Walker Zimmerman to even challenge. He could have just stood up and played defense on Gareth Bale.

There wasn't much for him to do. And to be honest, balls on the ground by Wales in the second half weren't causing the problems that balls in the air were. But if Zimmerman just plays defense, then they probably get out of there with a 1-0 win. So with all of that, they probably still were good enough to do that. I loved the defensive way that they attacked England. They were as good as England is in the midfield.

The United States midfield kind of won that match. No, I think so. You know, I mean, look, I think we've got a lot of guys that can play with the ball that have that have played enough with each other to understand one another. You know, they appear to be highly motivated, cohesive, and they can attack. They're dangerous. Yeah. We just got to stay away from, you know, the self-inflicted wounds. And I think we'll be fine today.

But easier said than done. Iran is talented. You know, none of us know a lot about them, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of talent. No, I think they're really good and they're a difficult team to play against in normal circumstances. And now you add the fact that they don't need to win. They could, 0-0 is great for them. They're through.

They go through with a draw today. How do you play against, how do you attack a team that doesn't have to score to advance? And, you know, the United States has had goalscoring issues really for the last several years.

How do you approach the game knowing that they're just going to sit back? And it's doubly challenging because Carlos Quiroz is a, you know, somebody that has his fingerprints all over U.S. soccer. I mean, he's served in a lot of important roles, coaching roles in U.S. soccer over the years.

So he knows the United States. He knows our players very well. And, yeah, I mean, look, I think we've got the players that can break them down. And that's, okay, you're going to break them down through the run of play or you're going to break them down through set pieces. Well, a lot of times in the past in World Cups, we've relied more on the set pieces, maybe a little bit less on the individual or combination play breaking them down. I think this team is better at breaking them down, you know, individually. We have plenty of players that can beat people one on one, you know, make a play happen on their own. I want us to be better on set pieces because the combination of the two is how we reach our next level as a team and maybe make a little run in this thing. Christian Pulisic's free kicks corners were better against England than they were, no question about that, against Wales.

Kurt Johnson, chief soccer officer, NC Courage, NC FC, who has stood out to you over the first 120 plus minutes here? More than that. Wait a second. It's 90 plus 90, 180 plus minutes.

My gosh, I can't do math anymore. Yeah, I mean, maybe, you know, the ones that I was not necessarily concerned about, but, you know, wasn't sure what we'd see. Tim Ream, I think he has, he's been really good. And there was a lot of discussion about who were the right center backs, you know, and he's shown really well.

You know, I'm a defender at heart and in practicality, so, you know, our outside backs in particular are left sided back. You know, I love watching him play. Yeah, Jedi Robinson's great. Yeah, he, the combination of the ground that he covers, the tenacity he plays with, the fact that he puts defenses on their heels and makes them worry about him. Yeah, he turns the ball over some and all that, but I think those two on the left sided, left side of defense have been huge for us. I expected Pulisic to play well, I expected Eunice Musa to play well, I expected Tyler Adams to play well, but I think those two have really impressed me. Yeah, it's interesting, they've played really well for Fulham too.

I watch a lot of Premier League and they have been dynamite. The selection of Tim Ream came out of left field for a lot of people because he hadn't been included in the qualifying process really. It's been over a year since I think he had been in the team and, like, out of nowhere, he chooses Tim Ream and then they ask him, what about that?

He goes, have you watched Fulham? I'm like, well, yeah, well, why hasn't he been part of this whole mix? It's been very cool to watch, but you're right about Jedi. Jedi's been dynamic, but he was really good throughout the whole qualifying process.

I thought he was one of their best players. All right, who scores? I think we're going to need two goals today. Who scores two goals? It doesn't have to be the same person, obviously. Who's getting them?

Okay, I'll go off the beaten path a little bit. I'll say Walker Zimmerman, finally, on some type of set piece. Because we've been so poor the first two games, you've got to feel like we can be better at that. And then I'll go straight up Pulisic. Christian Pulisic and Walker Zimmerman. Look, I don't care who scores them. I don't care if Matt Turner scores them off a header. All right, now this is a big picture thing for Curt Johnson of NCFC because I thought this was very telling. More than 20 million people watched USA England in this country on Friday. When you've been in soccer your whole life, when you see that number, what does it say to you?

What does it say to you? Go to Frontier.com for complete offer terms, eligibility, and service performance details. Speak when based on competitor advertised feeds and markets.

Service is subject to availability. You know, I mean, growth, but it's more than that. As you know, everybody compares TV numbers to other sports and some of it's apples and oranges and everything. The bottom line is people love the sport in this country. And that's something that a lot of people have invested a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and money in to get to this point. And it's so rewarding. It's so exciting to see the hard work of so many people be rewarded with the growth in fandom, the growth in coverage, the growth in the level of the talent I think that this team has. It's all, it's everything. It's a swirl of all of it. And I just hope that they can seize this moment, play their best, because I think their best will put them through.

And I think their best could win a couple more games. And then you just never know what happens. So, yeah, I just, it's a groundswell of energy to continue on because it hasn't been an easy fight, shall we say. No, it's, you know, it's still kind of new here, even though new is a relative term. New relative to the, you know, baseball has been around since before the turn of the 20th century. You know, football early in the 20th century. All of these sports have been around here for such a long, long time.

And we're really in the toddler stages of where we are as a soccer playing country. But man, it's addictive and I love it. And the World Cup, I've always liked the World Cup. I love the World Cup, but I'm, I've been more interested in the sport over the last year than I have ever been. And it's just awesome. And I thank you very much for your time. Just one last point.

Sorry. The Men's World Cup fuels the women's game and the Women's World Cup fuels the men's game. And that's the beauty of the sport. It feeds on one another.

It does. And the women have been ahead of the men in terms, obviously in terms of success. But I think it's really helped the interest level for everybody, that the women have been so good. And I think the men need to catch up.

But hopefully they'll start that process today at 2 o'clock. Kurt Johnson. At KurtJohnson17, if you want to follow him on Twitter, he kind of doesn't tweet a lot. He just says thank you to people, which is fine. Thank you very much, sir. Talk to you soon. Enjoy. Thank you. Restrictions apply. See your local Boost Mobile store for details.