Wins & Losses - Clay Talks with Alexi Lalas - The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in Clay Travis Wins and Losses. For those of
you who have not listened before, we've done a lot
of these, I think over forty now, and the idea
is these are long form conversations, not a lot of
commercial breaks, but that will be just as good if
you listen to them today as if you listen to
them in five or ten years. And we're exploring the

(00:22):
idea of the wins and losses that exist over the
course of someone's career, can be in sports, business, media,
can even be a big story in general, just a
really fun conversation allowing you to be a little bit
more in depth than you might be able to on
television or certainly in a quicker radio interview. And our

(00:42):
guest today is a guy that I have been watching
since I was a very young man. Alexei Lawless, one
of the most famous American soccer players of all time,
recently returned from twenty twenty two World Cup. I guess
technically it was the twenty twenty one World twenty twenty two,
all the years run together out in Qatar, which I

(01:04):
believe is the way you're supposed to pronounce it. Alexei,
have you recovered from being on the road for that
long in Qatar in the Middle East for the most
recent World Cup. Well, I can keep my years straight.
What is going on with you? Are you okay? My man?
Holy I'm getting to be an old man, like I know,
we just moved into a new year. But they all
run together. Well, look, I know we live in interesting

(01:24):
times and it's been a hell of a we'll say
last three years or something like that. But yeah, so
twenty twenty two, in November December, we were in Qatar,
and yes we decided to call it Qatar, and a
wonderful success from a box perspective and a broadcast perspective,
but also from a soccer perspective, one of the great
World Cups, especially when it comes to the final, and look,
you followed sports finals can often be real letdowns, and

(01:48):
this was anything but as a matter of fact, there's
a lot of people that believe that that's final with
France and Argentina and ultimately Messi holding up that trophy,
was the greatest final in World Cup history. So all
well went on and off the field and I'm back
and I am safe and sound. I can't couldn't be
more n happy to talk to you. I'm really excited. Yeah,
I think there's a strong argument to be made that

(02:08):
that is the greatest soccer game, potentially of all time.
And I think certainly when you consider the number of
people who watched probably the most watched soccer game of
all time, which is a good combo as well. And
so you let's start for wins and wass as we
start early. So you obviously came to prominence in the
nineties as soccer started to take off in the United States.

(02:32):
But I'm curious when you were a kid growing up,
were you a soccer exclusive player? Did you play other sports?
When did you start to realize, hey, I'm pretty good
at soccer and maybe focus on it. I'm just curious
how you came to become such a lightning rod in
many ways for American soccer. Yeah. So I grew up

(02:52):
in the suburbs of Detroit. I grew up in this
seventies and eighties, and you know, MTV and Bubblem and
Little Caesar's and all that kind of stuff. And I
grew up in Michigan, and I know you're whites from Michigan.
It is the law there. If she hasn't told you
that you also have to play hockey no matter what.
Yeah I am. I am from a generation that played
multiple sports. I you know, I'm not gruffy old manning

(03:15):
it because the world has changed. Obviously sports have changed
with specialization. But yeah, from a young age, I was
playing all different types of sports. I actually played more
hockey growing up than I did soccer, but eventually I
just gravitated to it. I loved the international aspect of it.
I loved the creativity and the way that you were
given autonomy in a way that other sports don't have

(03:37):
it where you know, let's be honest, when you're watching
a soccer game, once that whistle blows, the coaches have
very little to do with ultimately what happens. And you
can't say that for a lot of sports. And so
I loved that that responsibility and like I said, the autonomy,
being able to do whatever I wanted once that whistle blue?
Did you get? Do you think you could have been
in a NHL professional hockey player if you had gone

(03:58):
all in on hockey? Oh? Absolutely? And I played at
a very high level. I was freaking awesome. I loved it,
But I know I grew up I grew up, you know,
skating on ponds and flooding the uh you know, the
driveway and doing all that kind of stuff. So yeah,
I was huge. I'm a huge Red Wings fan, always
have been. UM. So hockey was a huge part of

(04:18):
my life. And you know, the hockey culture in Michigan
is something to behold. And so it's obviously very very
different than what soccer was, and I loved many many
parts of it. But like I said, I also, you know,
my father's from Greece. He was a professor, and my
mom's a writer, and you know, this is what happens
when you get a kid who comes over from university

(04:39):
to the States, a Greek kid, and marries a girl
from Jersey, and so this is what you get. Um.
But you know, soccer was there, and you know I
grew up also going back and forth between Detroit and Athens, Greece,
and so I also got that that sandlot type of
existence that we associate so much with baseball and other sports.
But in Athens, where I was the kid, I was
the red kid. I would go down to the corner

(05:01):
to the sandlot and just kind of sit on the
side until eventually a kid didn't show up in goal
and say let's throw the American and goal. And then
I worked my way up, learned some swear words in Greek,
and then they let me play on the field. And
you know that that type of existence and that type
of a background and childhood within sports really really helped,
whether it was playing hockey or whether laying soccer. And

(05:22):
I definitely think that playing other sports, and in particular
playing hockey really helped my soccer. Did it toughen you
up the fact that you play I mean, it's interesting.
I didn't know the hockey background, but you played a
very physical style of soccer. Do you think that that
was partly connected to having grown up playing hockey, which
obviously is super physical. Sure, you know absolutely the movements

(05:46):
in hockey, obviously, the ruggedness and the physicality that's involved
in hockey. I definitely used that in the soccer that
I was playing, you know, with the understanding that there
are rules and things that you cannot do. But I
looked at my my physical attributes as something that could
help me in different ways. And you know, the hockey players,

(06:08):
you know, they are a very different breed in terms
of the way that they think about the sport, the
way that they think about themselves, I guess, even the
way that they think about the world. Also, there's plenty
of hockey players that you will see actually warming up
playing soccer. And obviously the international connections is probably the
most closely associated with soccer of the sports out there.

(06:28):
With the international aspect that started a while ago, but
really is dominant right now when it comes to the
NHL and that sport. I mean, it is a very
very international league and it's a very very international game.
Were you a defender in soccer and in hockey or
did you play all positions? Like, at what point did
you become a defender in soccer it's kind of specializing

(06:52):
or was that something that was a late thing or
was it something that fit your personality? How did that
end up happening. I played on the wing from a
hockey perspective, out there on the left wing, and I
was right hand sells on the off wing, so I
could cut in and do that kind of stuff. And
even from a soccer when I was playing soccer, I
was a much more of attacking player. And what happened

(07:12):
is I went to Rutgers University, State University of New
Jersey over there Exit nine off the turnpike because it
was the only place that I could get into. And
the coach said, listen, we're going through a rebuilding type
of years here. Have you ever played defense? And I
completely lied to him and say, oh yeah, I played
lots of defense, but I would do anything to actually
get on the field. And the rest is history, as
they say, from a defensive perspective in soccer. But it

(07:34):
was an opportunity that I saw. And you know the
reason why I ended up at Rutgers University. Like I said,
I was getting rejected at all these places. I was
coming from Michigan. My dad was desperate and he called
up the coach and said, hey, listen, I got this kid.
He's six four, he's done some things in soccer. He's
an okay student. And the coach said, well, let me
see you. We drilled the sixteen hours out to New Jersey.

(07:56):
We met with him for a couple hours. He said,
I can invite you to preseason. I can get the
agriculture school. And I was like, signed me up, not problem.
We drove sixteen hours back, I packed, and then they
came back and my dad basically slowed the car down
enough to kick my ass out Exit nine over there
in New Brunswick and New Jersey, and you know, I
fell into a really really interesting and very very different

(08:17):
environment scholastically and athletically than I had ever been exposed to.
You're a smart guy. Could you not get into Michigan
or Michigan State or they didn't have athletic programs that
focused on soccer? How did you end up at Rutgers?
You said that was the place you could get into.
What was the story there? I just got rejected in
a lot of places, and Michigan didn't have at that point,

(08:38):
Michigan didn't have a varsity soccer programs. You can believe it.
This was the late eighties, and so you know, I
was desperate and that you know, you're I have a
seventeen year old daughter right now who's going through the
college process, and it is completely You've got a few
years before that, Clay, but it is. It is completely
different than back certainly back in the eighties when when

(09:00):
I was doing it, and so I just needed somebody
to say yes, it didn't really matter where and from
a soccer perspective, though, you know, the New Jersey area
in the New York metropolitan area. It's a huge hotbed.
And so what ended up happening was I was surrounded
by much better quality and the strength of schedule that
we played put me on a national footing and platform.

(09:20):
So from a soccer perspective, it was everything that I
hadn't had and really kind of set me up to
have success later on. What was soccer like in Michigan?
You grew up outside of Detroit. For people who don't
know the geography there, that's where my wife is from
Oakland County. We actually got married in Birmingham at the
community house. For people who have been to Birmingham, Michigan,

(09:40):
it's a fantastic place. But were you primarily like now,
soccer is a very travel culture, right, there's a lot
of travel teams. It's very competitive to get on that
team or that team or this team. Was that the
case in Michigan at the time, or were you primarily
playing high school? Middle school? Like? What was the process
by which soccer evolution occurred then in the nineteen eighties

(10:02):
in Michigan. So I had been exposed to it, like
I said, when we were going back and forth to Greece.
Yea Greece. But then, you know, I did everything from
a very young age that a lot of the kids
still do today. I did mom and dad coaching and
orange peels and juice boxes at half time. And then
even back then, there were some travel leagues, and yes,
I played on a travel team and we started to

(10:23):
get at a higher level. But I'd be lying to
you if I looked at or played soccer with an
eye to the future. It was just something that I did.
My parents, like I said, they did not have an
athletic background, and as long as it kept me out
of trouble and it was something that I was good at,
they were cool with it, and as long as I
kept up my studies to the extent that I could.

(10:43):
So yeah, it just it was something that just fit
from a young age. But it was wild West back
then compared to what the kids have now. And I
know I found old saying that, but it warms the
cockles of my red headed American heart too to see
what this generation has at its disposal. I don't begrudge
them at all. I think it's wonderful. It makes me
incredibly proud that they don't have even close to you know,

(11:04):
the problems, and like I said, that wild less type
of existence that was soccer back then, even from a
young age, in terms of youth soccer to high school
soccer to college soccer. I did play high school soccer,
which even that in and of itself is a talking
point when it comes to sports nowadays, as how many
kids are specializing and you know, playing club soccer and
playing a travel team and not even being allowed to

(11:26):
play high school soccer. But I've benefited immensely from playing
high school soccer. And I'm not just talking about as
a soccer player, but as a student and as a person.
I remember a story, and we're talking to Alexi Lallas,
this is wins and losses. I remember a story about
Barry Larkin, who was one of my favorite baseball players
growing up. He went to the University of Michigan undergrad

(11:48):
and I believe it's I believe it's been publicly out
there for a while, but both Shimbeckler, who was then
the coach of Michigan had a lot of success, would
show up at Barry Larkin's baseball games and call him
a woos because he wouldn't come play football. Because Barry
Larkin was an elite athlete. I think his son later
played NBA. I mean, they got some good genes there.

(12:09):
You said you played hockey and then you made the
switch over to a soccer You're a big guy six
three six four, so maybe it helped. But did you
get trash talked at all for being more interested in
soccer than than than than playing hockey in Michigan at
the time. And I want to read this to you
as part of that, because I said I was going
to do it earlier on the Clay and Buck Show.

(12:31):
I was reading the Babylon b and I thought this
was funny, and I bet you even would laugh a
little bit. NHL player says if he wanted to support
the Gays, he'd be playing soccer again. That was that
was the NHL getting They had that controversy over whether
the guy would wear the LGBT h story proverov or not.

(12:52):
But did you get picked on at all in the
eighties for being like, yeah, hockey's kind of this macho sport.
I love it. You say you were good at it,
could have been a potentially an HL player, and yet
you got drawn to soccer. Did you have any of that?
Barry Larkin syndrome where guys would be like, why are
you being a whoos and choosing soccer? Yeah? I mean, look,
I lived through the age where it was starting to

(13:14):
transition into a much more for lack of a better word,
acceptable type of sport for you know, for young athletes.
Because when we were kids, Alexei and you're a little
bit older than me, but not that much, soccer was
considered a whoos sport for kids to play. Right, I
played high school soccer, and if in Tennessee, if you
compare that to say, playing high school football, like I

(13:37):
would have been considered a whoos for being a soccer guy,
and that was even more prominent. I would imagine when
you were playing and started to make that transition into
becoming a professional soccer player. Yeah, And so what it
made what was good is that when you got your
ass kicked by a soccer player like myself, it was
really embarrassing if you were shooting your mouth off. But

(13:58):
you know, I heard it all I heard, like you said,
it's for us, is it's for it's for girls. It's
it's not for guys. It's communist. A bunch of guys
running around in tight shorts and nobody ever scores, and
there's no physical nature to it, and it's not you
know all it's you know, all of those different things.
I absolutely heard, I laugh at them, I ignored them

(14:20):
in you know, my size certainly certainly helped out. And
you know, as as you know, as you can attest
to sometimes from afar, you can have a perception of
what it is and then when you actually see it
played or play it yourself, it can change that perception.
But look when I when I look at this generation
now that grows up, they look at soccer as anything

(14:40):
else in terms of their their palettes that they have
of sports, whether it's to play or whether it's to watch.
So the perception of soccer has dramatically changed in the US.
I think, you know, I think for the better. But
you know, it's still it's still not king and in
terms of history and in terms of popularity, but it's
it's a whole different ball game and it's a whole

(15:01):
different sport than it certainly was when I was growing up. Yeah,
there's no doubt. And I think that's interesting because for
people out there, depending on the age and as they
listen to us, the analogy I would make is. When
I was a kid, and obviously I was a huge
sports fan, the only international athletes I knew were tennis players, right.

(15:22):
I knew Boris Becker, I knew Ivan Lindell, Stefan Edberg.
Like we could run through all that era of great
tennis players and you saw the Americans compete against them. Nowadays,
I would say, tennis by and large is not anywhere
near as much talked about as it would have been
in America when I was a kid growing up. But
when I take my kids to elementary school and when

(15:43):
I go pick them up, Alexei, I am stunned by
the amount of international soccer jerseys. I see American second, third,
fourth grade kids in the Nashville area where I live.
They all, because of the FIFA video game, have favorite players.
They all have an opinion on Messy versus Ronaldo. Right

(16:04):
in the same way that Jordan lebron Is discussed. There's
a lot of debate about who the greatest soccer player
is of all time. It's amazing to me in a generation,
how that has changed so significantly. I bet even to you,
if you go back to when you started playing soccer,
that's kind of staggering. How much knowledge there is internationally

(16:25):
about the game now embedded in our society. Yeah, I
mean it's insane. You hit a bunch of a bunch
of things, including, like you said, the FIFA video gaming
that was a game changer in terms of the education
of players, of teams, of leagues, of tactics, and everybody
was playing it and therefore everybody, whether they realized it

(16:46):
or not, was gaining an appreciation and an education for
it for what it is. The other part is, I
mean when you when you want to watch soccer in
the United States, there are people that I have friends.
I have friends that are over in Europe that are
jealous of the amount of soccer that we have at
our disposal that they are able to watch on a
continual basis. I can pull up any game from anywhere

(17:06):
in the world, and so you have a generation. Now.
When I was growing up, we were literally trading v
VHS tapes, yeah, from you know that We're bootlegged from
games and programs from over in Europe in order to
get it, or we were going to the local soccer
store to pick up what was the Bible for US
American soccer people, which, as a magazine called soccer America

(17:30):
and that's where we got our information, and so it
is completely changed. And like you said, this generation right
now doesn't see soccer any differently than other sports out there,
either in terms of their fandom or in terms of
playing it. Okay, you mentioned being a redheaded kid in
Greece sitting on the sideline watching all those kids play,

(17:52):
and I want to kind of go back to that
time and build on it a little bit. So your family,
your dad, I think you said, was was Greek and
raises you here. What are the chances you play soccer
if your dad is not Greek? If you don't have
that interaction and that experience in your life of being

(18:12):
over there in Europe, in Greece, sitting on the sideline
watching those kids play in the dirt, how much do
you think that impacted your decision to embrace soccer as
the sport that you would pursue at the highest level.
I definitely think it impacted me. But it was a
function of being a kid. Obviously, the culture over there
in Greece is rooted in soccer, and it was a

(18:35):
function of being lonely and trying to make friends, and
this was the avenue that you used over there, and
I still yea, so, yes, yes, absolutely that happened. But
I'm also still from a time where the advent of
youth soccer and ayso and all these different leagues and
the realization from a lot of let's be honest, a
lot of parents and a lot of schools and a

(18:55):
lot of communities that this was a way to get
people active that didn't cost as much as other sports.
You didn't have to be big to play it, and
so I think that really lent itself to what you know,
to what was going on in a consistent basis and
why I gravitated to it. But yeah, I mean if

(19:16):
my father wasn't Greek, I still think that I would
have been involved in soccer and been exposed to soccer.
But having that, you know, that organic type of experience
from a very young age, absolutely that impacted me. I'm
curious what you would say about this. I've argued this
for a while and you obviously would be an expert
on this. So I think a lot of people will

(19:37):
enjoy it. Basketball when it used to be a huge
insult to say to someone, oh, he plays like a Euro.
If you're a basketball fan and you listen to me,
you'll remember it. It used to be an insult. Oh
he's a big man, but he doesn't want to bang inside.
He wants to step outside and take threes. Then what
ended up happening was the European style of basketball conquered

(20:01):
in America because America, we were teaching basketball like, hey,
it's football, right, Like, you're a defensive end, you do this,
You're a quarterback, you have this role. And what became
the way that basketball was taught was soccer like in
that you played a one to five right a point
guard to a center, but you had to be able

(20:21):
to handle the ball, and you had to be able
to play every single position. And it's a much more
beautiful style of basketball and much less regimented. And I
think Americans have come to embrace actually the way that
Euros play basketball. But the European style of basketball is
just an outgrowth of the way that Euros played soccer.

(20:42):
Do you see that connection? Would you buy into that
thesis in terms of the evolution of the sport, yeah,
I mean the way and even just in terms of
my lifetime, the way the game is played I'm talking
about soccer right now is fundamentally different than anything that
I grew up playing. You know, to your point about

(21:04):
you know basketball, if you the interesting thing there, the
irony is that it was almost a return to what
basketball once was if you ever watched Hoosiers or something
like that, you know, the emphasis on passing the ball,
the emphasis on being able to shoot the ball, that
we've kind of went away with, and understandably so, because
dunking and showtime and all that kind of stuff, that's

(21:25):
what people wanted to see. But the problem was that
no matter what, no matter what is successful, somebody will
come up with something that is able to take it down.
And I think very very quickly from a basketball perspective,
they said, oh, fine, this guy can't dunk or this
guy doesn't do the showtime stuff. But it'll step back
even though he's a big man and be able to
drain threes. And that is points on the board, and

(21:46):
that can change a game, and that can keep jobs,
and that can win championships. And so that becomes valuable
in the game today. From a soccer perspective, right now,
possession of the ball and the ability for individuals to
keep that ball is and that comes down to individual
technique that has started at a very very young age.
Certainly Europe has a long history of recognizing that it's

(22:09):
all fine and well to be a huge star and
to score a bunch of goals and stuff like that.
But the fundamentals, and that applies to any sport. The
fundamentals in life are essential and they will always be essential.
They are ever green, regardless of what style are you
going to play. If you don't have the fundamentals, you're
already lost. Because you have that, you know that base
that is not there. So this leads into the other part.

(22:32):
I was gonna get you to break down the number.
I'm sure you see it all the time. The number
one criticism that I see of soccer in the United
States every four years as it cycles up and everybody's
paying a lot of attention that sports fans make is
they say, oh, the reason the United States doesn't dominate

(22:52):
is because our best athletes don't play soccer. My argument is,
you're missing the boat, and curious how you would analyze this.
Our athletes who play now soccer for the US are
wildly talented, but if you just looked at raw athleticism,
it isn't What is the focus here in soccer because

(23:14):
what they do so well with all these academies in
Europe and everything else is they find kids who are ten, eleven,
twelve years old, they put them into those academies and
they have had hundreds of thousands of touches and technique, experience,
and talent that most American players do not get in

(23:35):
our country. And what's fascinating about it to me is
we have this idea of Europe as like socialist and
not very capitalistic necessarily, which isn't always true, right, But
they are incredibly, incredibly competitive and you know, will get
their best talent and develop it in a way that

(23:56):
doesn't necessarily happen in the United States. So it's not
raw letticism that the United States is missing. It's the
amount of technique and talent and repetitions that the Euros
and other places have gotten their best talent through. How
would you assess that that. I'm sure you hear that
conversation all the time. Oh, if we put Lebron and

(24:17):
if we put you know, whoever the best athletes are
in the world into our soccer academies in the US,
we would win championships. I don't buy that necessarily. I
think it's about the repetition. Yeah. I mean so, first off,
just from a pure numbers perspective, I know how much
you love Dad. If you were to put if you
put everybody that played a sport and just had them

(24:38):
playing soccer, the chances are or you had your best,
that you would have more better players out there, and
certainly more competition because more players would be playing against
each other. That's that's undoubted when it comes to someone
like Lebron James. For example, how tals Lebron James six eight? Okay,
so he's sixty eight. There are no six eight players

(24:59):
that are dominated soccer. So just know that when we
say our best athletes, you have to qualify that with
an understanding, in an agreement about what an athlete actually is.
If I if you didn't know who Leo Messi was
and you saw him walking down the streets there in Nashville,
you wouldn't have no idea that there goes arguably the
greatest soccer player ever to play the game, because textually

(25:22):
he just looks like a guy that's walking down to
his I don't know his insurance agency. Messi is five eight, right,
is he five foot eight. Basically for people out there
who may not know his size and stature, you would
never know that Messi was the greatest soccer player in
the world. Whereas if you see Lebron James, he's six
foot eight, he stands out right shack ain't hyden anywhere.
So soccer players like hockey player. I always say, Alexie,

(25:43):
I'm sure you'll appreciate this. Like I used to see
all the Nashville Predators out back in the day, the
hockey team. A lot of them weren't very well known
because hockey wasn't the biggest sport in Nashville, and so
they'd be having beers hanging out at the bar, and
every now and then I would see a guy who
didn't know who they were and like bump into them,
and you know, I would be like, oh my god,

(26:05):
this guy is about to get utterly wrecked because he
had no idea he had just bumped into a hockey
player who fought sometimes for a living. Because they're relatively
average sized dudes, right, and they don't look like that
much different than the regular guy would have in the bar. Yea.
And also, you know, when you're talking about the development

(26:25):
of American soccer players, there is a stunt thing that happens,
and it's and it started to dissipate over the years
because there are developmental academies and obviously the professional game
is increased and there are many more pathways and opportunities
out there. But there comes a point where players say,
either I don't want to play anymore because I don't
see any future. When we say future, usually it is

(26:47):
tied to you know, the next level, or going pro,
or making a lot of money, or you know, dating somebody,
whatever it ends up being. But you know, that's still aspirational,
even though we recognize that even in all sports it's
a very minute amount of people that are actually able
to do that. But not having that for so many
decades that was detrimental to the sport. And it started

(27:07):
a change now because they can see opportunities, even if
it's just stars in their eyes, that is an incredible
driving force. But I will say this, as we continue
to grow, I think there's a real kind of moral
question that we have to answer, and that is what
is our responsibility to these young athletes that we are specializing,
that we are at times having them by pass school

(27:30):
for what is our responsibility because we focus so much
on that ninety minutes. The soccer game is ninety minutes.
Sometimes we forget about the other twenty two and a
half hours. And I would submit to you that we're
not just creating better in this case, we're talking about
soccer better soccer players, but we're hopefully we're creating better
young men and women that are going to lead what
I feel is the greatest country in the world. And
advocating that responsibility that would pain me, and that would

(27:54):
hurt me, and I think ultimately you would be letting
yourself down. You'll be letting your country down, You'll be
letting the player year down and these people down, and
you will be letting the sport down that leads in
Alexei Well, I think that's really well said because I
argue with my kids all the time, and I think
this is true for anybody out there who's a dad, grandpa,
or if you're a kid out there listening to this
discussion right now, You've got to make sure you use

(28:17):
the ball, that the ball doesn't use you, right, And
that's a big part of anybody, no matter what sport
you're pursuing, no matter what your talent level might be.
And it brings me back to you going to Rutgers.
Was that a for you when you went there for college?
Was that a culture shock to you? I know, you
traveled back and forth to Europe some, but you're going

(28:37):
from Michigan. Now you're suddenly at Rutgers basically kind of
in the outskirts of the New York City, you know,
environment that could be a culture shock. Was it for you?
Or did you immediately thrive when you got to college,
not only in athletics but in the classroom. So you know,
I grew up, like I said, in the suburbs of Detroit,
and I went to a small prep school there, and

(28:59):
I suddenly myself in the you know, the State School
of New Jersey, thirty thousand kids, like you said, right
outside of New York, and I'm thrown into this, you know,
this very very different environment. I will tell you that
what I did, and maybe this is just a coping mechanism,
is I didn't speak to anybody for about the first

(29:21):
month that I was on campus, and I scared the
crap out of a lot of people off the field,
but on the field that actually worked out okay, because
I was playing with a bunch of kids from New
York and New Jersey, and basically they looked at Michigan
as it might have been for them, as the other
side of the moon. So I was as alien and
foreign as you could possibly be coming from Michigan, and

(29:41):
that I wasn't saying a word. It just scared the
crap out of them, and that actually benefited me in
terms of establishing a starting position. But you know, it
was just it was. I mean, New Jersey in and
of itself is a trip and takes a little getting
used to, but I consider myself and adopted New Jersey
and out, and you know, I had a wonderful time.

(30:02):
And like I said, it changed everything for me in
terms of the soccer and you know, the education and
the different people that I was meeting. It was. It
was good. I'm it was a little bit daunting and
scary to begin with, but you know, you adapt and
kids adapt, and you know, it's either sink or swim,
and like you know, I'm not a great swimmer, but
I figured it out eventually. Okay, So the World Cup

(30:25):
is in the United States In nineteen ninety four, I
was playing soccer in high school at the time that
it was here, it was a big story, but I
feel like it kind of snuck up on people a
little bit. Right When did you start to think in
your head, Hey, maybe I could be on this US team?

(30:46):
Was there a lot of conversation about ninety four? We're
talking right now about this in twenty twenty three. I
got the year right this time. It's not very far
till twenty six, which there will be the World Cup
basically in the United States. I know it all so
be in Canada and in Mexico, but there's a tremendous
amount of talk about it and has been for many years.

(31:07):
Was that the case going into ninety four? I don't
recall I was young. What kind of conversations were there
about soccer? Then? When did the US even have the
ninety four World Cup awarded? I don't know the backstory there. Yeah.
So I mean, look, Clay, the reason I'm talking to
you today on this show is because of the nineteen

(31:28):
ninety four World Cup. And for those that don't remember
or weren't around, it was the first time that the
US ever hosted the World Cup and it was significant
because the US, like we've been talking about, you know,
it was not, and maybe you even argue today it's
not necessarily certainly not relative to other countries and cultures
a soccer country, and so this was taking it to
a different land and obviously taking it to a different market.

(31:53):
The soccer scene even back in nineteen ninety four was very,
very different, and this was an opportunit tunity that I
think everybody recognized to kind of plant a flag. And
I still to this day meet people that were watching
or at games in the nineteen ninety four World Cup
that said that, tell me, that's when everything changed for me.

(32:13):
That's when I fell in love with the game, or
that's when I knew that this game had a future
if you were already in love with the game. And
I'll just tell you the story to give you some perspective.
A couple of weeks before the World Cup in nineteen
ninety four, I got on airplane with the rest of
my World Cup team. We were getting ready for the
World Cup. I sat in my middle seat as we
did as we traveled back then, back in economy, I

(32:34):
sat down next to an older woman. We struck up
a conversation. She said, what do you do. I say, well,
I play soccer, and she said, well, what's your job.
I said, well, I play soccer. And she said what
do you do for money? And I said, well, I
play soccer. And two weeks later I'm in front of
a billion people playing in the World Cup. And that's
just to give you an idea of, you know, the

(32:56):
mindset and the landscape back then. Now it is. It's
the saying goes you come a long way, baby, and
we have on and off the field. But that was
a seminal moment, as was the nineteen ninety nine Women's
World Cup. We'll remember Brandy Chastain and how that was
important for the women's game and for the game in general.
And that's why in twenty twenty six, when the World
Cup is coming back to the US, it's just huge

(33:19):
because it's coming back to a country and a culture
that is a soccer country. We are a soccer country.
We don't need to apologize for anything. As a matter
of fact, we need to lean into it. We're gonna
do it in an American way, and that's a good thing.
That's not anything to be embarrassed about. And in twenty
twenty six, I'm telling you right now, play it's gonna
be bigger than anything is ever that anybody has ever

(33:40):
seen on the field and off the field. It's gonna
make more money for FIFA and everybody that's involved than's
ever been made. And I think it's gonna be a
real moment and yet another seminal moment, and I'll be
really really proud when I'll be fifty six years old
and it's coming back to our shores. Okay, So I
want to ask a couple of questions about that nineteen
ninety four you would have made what in terms of

(34:04):
rough income off the field? On the field, what is
a start? What is a soccer player on the US
men's team making in nineteen ninety four, Like, what would
the range have been? Oh, I was probably making a
couple thousand dollars a month and they paid for an apartment,
and you know, we trained actually two years leading up

(34:26):
to the World Cup to be ready for the World Cup.
But what it did do was give me a platform
and I went from there and then went over to
Europe and played in Italy, which at the time was
the you know, the biggest and most expensive league in
the world. And obviously, you know, my salary was raised
significantly then, But that's the type, you know. I lived
the power of what a World Cup can do to

(34:48):
an individual, and it changed my life forever. I milked
it for all it was worth, both on and off
the field. I remember, I remember some of it. I
burned it at both ends for many, many years because
of that. But you know, I knew that this was
the moment, that this was our moment, This was my moment,
and like I said, you need to be able to
recognize that opportunity and grab it with both lahnds. Don't

(35:10):
let anybody take it away from you, and use it
and milk it for all its worth. So you would
have been making prior to the World Cup less than
fifty k a year to play soccer. That's probably fair,
and almost everybody on the US men's team would have
similarly been making that kind of set To kind of
put it into context for people out there, you know,

(35:33):
compared to Christian Pulistic, who might be making twenty million
dollars a year now. I don't know what his exact
salary is, probably not far off from twenty million a
year with all his endorsements and everything else. Christian Pulistic is,
you know, by himself making like scores of magnitude more,
which is an interesting marker in the growth of the
game itself than the entire US men's soccer team would

(35:55):
have been making. For instance, in nineteen ninety four. Yeah,
we weren't making a lot of money. And there were
some plays that were already playing in Europe that obviously
we're playing, that were getting getting more money. But for
those of us, you know, like myself, and if you
remember Kobe Jones and Tony Niola and these types of
these types of players. Now keep in mind, the United
States men's national team had actually played in the nineteen

(36:15):
ninety World Cup. I was a fan. I was bumming
around Europe with a couple of my high school buddies,
getting drunk and going to the World Cup games, painting
my face, never imagining that four years later I would
be representing my country in the World Cup. That's how
quickly things changed for me on the field and obviously
off the field with what was going on. But the
money didn't come later, and the money only came because

(36:38):
of the World Cup. And to your point, you know,
I had to star in a World Cup to be
given the opportunity to go and play in Europe and
go and make a living at one of the great
leagues in the world over in Italy. There are players
today that are growing up that don't even play a
single game in Major League Soccer and already have people
from Europe scouting them, bringing them over, paying them a

(36:59):
lot of money. And again I don't say that, I
say that as a form of respect and progress and
incredible pride that's going on right now, but that all
these pathways exist now, that MLS exists, right now that
MWSL FUR the women exists. All of those things came
out and started in nineteen ninety four. What was it
like to make the team? How did you make the

(37:21):
team in nineteen ninety four, And how would it compare,
say to today's tryouts and US men's team process. I
have no idea, but I imagine it's quite a bit different.
So I can tell you exactly where I was. So
we trained down in well, you know a lot about
the coast out here, so a little further down from
the coast. I'm here in Los Angeles, in Manhattan Beach.
But wait, you know, further down the coast, there's a

(37:43):
place called Laguna Beach. You might have heard of it.
So we used to train down in Mission Viejo, California.
That's where our training center was, and it was basically
this what nowadays would be like a reality show survivor
type of thing where they just kept for two years
prior to the World Cup. They just kept bringing people
in and you would start out at the Holiday Inn

(38:04):
on off of the five off a Lapase Road there
and they would give you a room, a tryout for
the week, and some meal vouchers and if you made it,
you continued on to the next week, and if you
can do not enough weeks, they might sign you and
give you a month to month type of contract. So
at the end of this two year trial and reality show,
you were just hoping that ultimately you were named to

(38:24):
the list of twenty two players. We were in the
parking lot and the final cuts were going to be made.
I vividly remember no news is good news, and so
if they don't want to talk to you, get in
your car, because we were at the beach and we
had just gone for a beach run as a team,
and you had to get in your car and go home.
And if they didn't want to talk to you, that

(38:45):
was good. I remember seeing players in that parking lot
get cuts and not realize their dream of going to
a World Cup. Now, you know as well as I,
you've you've dealt with professional players. We can be incredibly
ruthless and we can compartmentalize. It doesn't mean we don't
have empathy or empathy, but the reality is all I
cared about in that moment was myself. My roommate was

(39:05):
one of the last cuts. How about going back to
that apartment and having to having to deal with that.
But you know what all I cared about was being
on that team because that was where the opportunity. It
was how many guys got cuts? Roughly in the parking lot.
Would it have been ten twenty? Like how many three
or four? Because we have been going through the years
and so you could not even make it through a week.

(39:26):
They might say, listen, it's great, but you are getting
moved on. And so it was just you know, next
meursing up and people came through, Some really really good
players came through, and it's you know, it's like a
tryout or anything. It's it's it's down to a subjective
type of assessment from a human being and the coach said,
I like this guy. I don't like this guy. And
eventually either you were left standing at the end of

(39:47):
it all or you weren't. You're out in Manhattan Beach.
You just mentioned a great place if you haven't been
out to the LA area. Another friend of ours, Matt Weiner,
lives in Manhattan Beach and he's got to be a
good friend mine. And I'm fascinated by the fact that
Liner came through being a kid's celebrity, basically, right, nineteen

(40:08):
or twenty year old, superstar kid who played for USC
and he's a totally normal dude now right like you
would enjoy hanging out chatting with him. Everybody who's listening
to us right now, I think would like having a
beer with him. Yeah, yeah, And I think you're the
same way. But I'm curious for you. You mentioned the
World Cup. You basically became super famous overnight, right You

(40:32):
had been grinding away trying to make the team, as
you just said, make it through the parking lot there,
make the team. What was it like? There's this great story,
I'm sure you've heard it where all of the friends
cast go out to dinner in Las Vegas and the
producer or creator of that series is like, this is
the last time that you will all be able to

(40:53):
eat together as normal humans for the rest of your life,
because that show comes on overnight. Instantaneously, all six of
them become massive superstars. Did you have a moment like
that in your life where you're like, nobody knows who
I am? And then the World Cup starts and suddenly
it's like everybody on the planet knows who you are?

(41:15):
And if so, what was that? Like? Oh? Wow? So
if I ever write a book, I probably you know,
the preface will be setting a scene of after the
last game that we played as a US in that
ninety four World Cup. We lost to Brazil, who eventually
went on to win the World Cup, and there was
an after party and I'll never forget in the middle

(41:36):
of the night, sitting at a bar and on one
side of me, uh you know, his large ulric uh
you know, uh from from Metallica and just doing shots
of tequila and Yegelmeister with the guys from from Metallica
and looking around going what the hell is going on?
You know, this is back when they were drinking. This

(41:56):
was a long time ago and everything, but you know, again,
my life confundamentally changed overnight because of the power of
the World Cup. Now, I also looked a certain way,
and I cultivated an image. You know, nowadays the kids
call it brands, but you know, I was thinking about
my brand well before. You know, I grew up and know,
I've done a lot of music, and I grew up,

(42:16):
you know, watching the MTV generation and everything like that,
so I knew that. You know, I've always considered myself
a performer and an entertainer, and that's not a pejorative actually,
you know, you you train for what for your sport, right,
which is the same thing as rehearsing. You go on
a field, which is the same thing as a stage.
You're in front of an audience, which is the same
thing as a crowd. You wear a uniform, which is

(42:38):
the same thing as a costume. And I've always believed
that performing and performance is a huge part of athletics,
and I love that I gravitated to that, and so
the way that I looked, you know, it resonated, and
you know, people knew who I was, and I had
a lot of huge red hair, a big red goatee
and all that kind of stuff. And it was very
comfortable for me, but it was you know, it was

(43:00):
by design, and it was something that you know, I
cultivated over over that time and continued and used to
my advantage both on and off the field. But yeah,
it was. It was nuts and it was wonderful and
I I, you know, they were wonderful times. I've since
you know, grown and gone into different things. And obviously
I wish I could still grow that hair, but that's
you know, that's not going to happen anytime soon. But man,

(43:24):
Oman Clay, it was. It was a wonderful time to
to be alive and to go through that craziness. It's
hard to you know, equate it with anything, but you know, I,
like I said, I didn't find it problematic in anywhere way,
safe or form. The thing that I find so interesting,
the thing that I find so interesting about it is

(43:44):
most people become famous over time, right, so you can
adjust to the way that your life might change. There
are relatively few people who become instantly, very very famous.
And to your point, you're six foot four, you've got
a big red goatee, you're very flamboyant and noticeable, you know,

(44:05):
on the field, but also you're big enough. You were
talking about MESSI earlier. When you're five foot eight, you
don't really get notice. Six foot four guys in general
kind of get noticed, right, And so what would you
tell yourself? Because we talked wins and losses, I'm sure
there's some things you did and you're like, that was
the dumbest thing I could have ever done. You had
to learn it. What do you wish you could have
told yourself, if anything, right before that World Cup, that

(44:29):
you were going to learn over that ensuing seven six
eight years as you became more and more of a
prominent public figure. I mean, I think that I had
a pretty good head on my shoulders. I mean I
made mistakes on and off the field, just like everybody else,
and I have regrets, not a lot of them, but
I certainly do. I mean, look, Clay, let's be on

(44:51):
if the worst thing in your life, if somebody wants
to take a picture with you or tell you how
great you played, or you know, to get an autograph,
then you live a charmed life. And if you're an asshole,
all right that can't deal with that, then I can't
relate to you, okay, And I'm not saying that that
we don't have bad days, or that I probably at
some point wasn't you know, it was accommodating as as

(45:14):
I should have been. But I've always tried to remind
myself even when that happened, and in that moment, I'm
not the smartest guy, but at least in that moment,
I was smart enough to know that if this is
if this is your life changing, okay, and this is
ten fifteen thirty seconds that this person is going to
spend with you, and it might not be fair, but

(45:35):
that's what they're going to judge you on for the
rest of your life. I want to make it good.
I want to make it positive, you know. And it's
not that I have to go around chasing people to
make sure that they loved me. But again, it's just
a small little picture and moment in their life, and
I want to make sure that that happens. And so
I would just reiterate and remind myself from a young age,

(45:56):
never ever lose that. And I like to say that
I haven't, but I went on and I you know,
I did things on and off the field that you
know didn't work out, or you know that I failed,
or that I would consider, you know, a loss and
made mistakes going forward. I try to limit them. I
tell my kids all the time. I you know, I
don't I don't mind that you make mistakes. I just
don't want you to make the same mistakes over and

(46:16):
over and over again. And so far, so good. Was
there anybody you met during that time you mentioned doing
shots with Metallica, but which is pretty awesome. Was there
anybody you met and you were like, I can't believe
that you know who I am? Um, let's see. Uh.
I remember sitting outside of UM about to do Letterman

(46:37):
and Bill Murray came up and sat down and say, hey,
you know, he started to tooth the shit about it,
and I was like, this is got to be filmed.
This has got to be you know, they don't have
candid camera anymore. But yeah, that was that was a
little weird. Even you know, when I was talking about,
you know, the shots from Metallica, there was there were
celebrities all over the place. Robin Williams came in. Um.
It always weird, uh, you know, for for those that

(46:58):
don't know the ninety four World Cup was there of
a lot of lobbying and uh, you know, just a
lot of effort on a lot of people's parts, including
Henry Kissinger. And so before we played our first game,
which by the way, was in the Silver Dome Rest
in Peace in Pontiac, Michigan. Oh yeah, ten minutes away
from where I grew up indoors in that dome there,
Henry Kissinger came around and shook our hand in the

(47:21):
locker room before we went out there, and I just
was like, Wow, this is this is amazing, you know,
and I'm you know, I'm a lover of American history
and history and this, you know, this was this iconic
person who meant so much to the world and obviously
to our country and also from a soccer perspective what
he meant. So that was, you know, that was mind
blowing type of stuff and it and it just never stopped.

(47:42):
You It never ceases to amaze me how many people
that you wouldn't sink are into the game, are into
it and the knowledge that they have when they come up.
And you know, I'm just as star struck as anyone.
So we're talking to Alexei Lawless. This is wins and losses.
I am Clay Travis appreciate everybody out there, listening um Alexei.
When you look you step off the field in nineteen

(48:04):
ninety four, you guys have just lost to Brazil, who
goes on, as you said, to win the World Cup
that year. If I could have immediately transported you now
all the way up to twenty twenty three, has soccer
evolved and grown in a way that you would have
thought that it would have over You know, that's almost

(48:25):
thirty years now. As we get ready for twenty twenty six,
what do you think would have surprised you about where
we are sitting here right now in twenty twenty three.
What do you think might have disappointed you? How would
you analyze that path in terms of the impact of
soccer in the United States and what you guys playing
in ninety four did to help seed the area and

(48:47):
the ground basically that we're standing on today. Yeah, I
don't think that I would recognize my country relative to
soccer in a good way. I think I would be
blown away. And I can tell you in nineteen ninety four,
while we had ambition and aspirations for things to change

(49:09):
and for evolution and growth and explosion, I don't think
any of us at that point envisioned what we look
like in twenty twenty three right now. And look, I
know we kick ourselves for what we aren't both on
and off the soccer field, but the reality is we
also have to take a step back and pat ourselves
on the back for how far we have come. It

(49:29):
is night and day, Clay, what the game looks like now.
And we're America. So we want it all and we
want to win everything, and we want to be the best.
And I get that. That's what makes us great and
that's ultimately what has made us gain so much in
such a relatively short pod time. If you look at,
for example, you know, Major League Soccer, Okay, and what

(49:50):
they have done over the last thirty years, it's unprecedented.
If you look at soccer in the United States just
in terms of the growth, unprecedented when you put up
against other leagues. Are the sports other countries now, there's
still plenty to do, and so you know, you look
at the infrastructure, the soccer stadiums that have come online,
the billionaires that are invested in the game, the men's

(50:12):
and the women's game, the players that we that we
are producing, the broadcast that we do, all of those
different things. It makes me feel incredibly proud and excredibly
excited for the future because if you extrapolate it out
and say, all right, this is what we've done in
the last thirty years, who knows where we could be
in the next thirty years, Which leads to a question
you kind of hinted at it. The women have won

(50:33):
World Cups, a lot of people look around and say,
the next step, obviously is to advance to the you know,
the semi finals, right where the US has not been
in the modern era. Do you think that the United
States in your lifetime or in the lifetime of people
who are listening to this interview right now, will win
a World Cup? Well, if if they're really old listening

(50:56):
to it, it could be some problems. But I do
think it. And you're a lifetime let's presume you've got
forty years left. Yes, absolutely, and thank you for giving
me forty years. I love it. I will take it
right now, sign on the dotted line. Yeah, yeah, I think,
I absolutely believe. Okay, so everything is impossible and until
somebody actually does it. Yeah, and I you know, when

(51:18):
we do when we do World Cups, people ask me
this question all the time. Can we win it? Can
we win it? Yeah? Absolutely, you can win it. It's
it's seven games. You don't even have to win all
seven all seven games. That doesn't matter with you whether
you're Brazility the United States. You need a little bit
of lucky. You need the soccer gods smiling on you
to a certain extent at different times, and things can happen.
Twenty twenty six is huge. Obviously hosting it. I think

(51:40):
that that will have an incredible draw and power for this.
What shouldn't the goal? Sorry to cut you off, but
what should the goal in twenty twenty six? B oh,
to win the World Cup? That's the goal? Absolutely, Yeah.
And you think the US in twenty twenty six would
be good enough to be able to win the World
Cup because you everything's probability, right, and you're you're you're

(52:02):
talking about that in the larger context, everybody out there
who's a sports fan understands that. You know, it's hard
to win the Super Bowl, it's hard to win the
NC Double a tournament. There's lots of people trying to
do it. We know we'll be there in twenty twenty six. Uh,
and so the goal is to win the World Cup.
If I told you the US will advance to the
round of eight, we'll get obviously out of a group,

(52:25):
will win one match. Would you sign on to the
round of eight right now? Westen? We went to the
quarterfinals in two thousand and two when we were handball
away from going to the semifinals. So getting to the
upper echelance of a World Cup can happen. I know
some people when I say that that the goal should
be to win the World Cup in twenty twenty six,
or when I said it in you know, in twenty

(52:46):
twenty two, you know, they say, oh, that's being you know,
disingenuous or you're being delusional. No, that's not that's not
the case at all. I just I believe and not
And again this isn't blind faith. This is a belief
that any thing can happen, even impossible things can happen.
And I am I taking all of my money right

(53:06):
now and going to Vegas and putting it all on
the US in terms of smart money. No, but things
can happen, and it's not completely out of the realm
of possibility. Hell, we're America. We've seen our hockey team
do something that said people said this is impossible to do,
so any absolutely anything can happen. And I don't think
that it's ridiculous to think that the men's team in

(53:29):
twenty twenty six, given what they are now, what they
will be in twenty twenty six, can't find a way
to do things that we haven't done before. And yes,
to challenge for a World Cup? Would you take the
round of eight? If I gave it to you right now?
You said you'd take forty years to a lifespan, sign
on for right now? Would you sign on to the
round of eight? Yeah, but I'm greedy, so yeah, I'll

(53:50):
take it. But you know I want I want quarterfinals
at the very least, all right, So Christian Pulisic. So
there's a lot of scandals now around the US soccer team,
and on some level I kind of take that as
a sign of how much more people care, because I
bet if you went back in time in nineteen ninety four,

(54:13):
I bet there were twenty scandals that never went public
that you're like, boy, I'm glad there wasn't, you know,
social media. I'm glad that we didn't have everybody on Twitter.
You know, I'm glad, And that's the case by the way,
for anybody that was on any team on basically any
level for much of the nineties, the eighties into the
early two thousands, I always think it's funny you talk

(54:35):
to athletes, they're like, man, you'all spend a lot of
time talking about this scandal, but you didn't even hear
about the four bigger scandals that never went public. Right
Anybody who's on a pro athletic team right now is
nodding along because a small measure of the actual controversy
ever goes public. When you see the controversies that are
out there, like the geo controversy that is out there,

(54:58):
does it make you think, Okay, this this is a
sign of the growth of America as a soccer country
and we just have to get used to these interpersonal,
dynamic conflicts. Or does it make you think, hey, maybe
the US soccer culture in some way is more toxic
than other countries. How would you assess it, as someone
who has been all over the world playing soccer. All right,

(55:20):
so we're not more toxic than other soccer countries, and
we don't have, you know, more nepotism or old boy
network or people working in the industry. You know type
situation in any other countries. Everybody's got that, okay, um,
you know for for those that are that you know,
maybe maybe don't know. Over the last couple of weeks,
they've had this, you know, this huge controversy and uh

(55:42):
uh you know and this uh, this crisis, if you will,
with uh with Geoana, one of our young players, and
his father and mother comes find out we're you know,
basically calling up and inappropriately calling up members and ultimately
friends that are in charge, whether it's Greg Berhalter, our
head coach, or Ernie Stewart who's the head of the federation,

(56:03):
relative to their son not playing, and really when you
when you look at it and read it, you know,
basically blackmailing him with the story from thirty one years
ago where he kicked his wife when they were both
in college and ultimately, you know, there was there was
you know, seven months apart, and they went to therapy
and all this kind of stuff and then they worked
it out and they were married now for twenty five

(56:25):
years and they have four kids, and this story came out.
I was an unnecessary self inflicted wound. That's the way
that I look at it. And from a soccer perspective,
Can we withstand it? Yeah, but it's not what you
know why. So initially I was incredibly sad for everybody
involved because people didn't deserve this. Greg Berhalter's wife, Rosalind

(56:47):
didn't deserve this, and Greg Burhalter didn't deserve this. Then
I got Then I got angry because again, look, you
can make a bunch of different arguments as to whether
it's to continue on with Greg burr Halter as the coach.
And for those that don't know, raper Halter was to
coach this past World Cup. He might have done well
if you think so, he might not have done well.
But you can make an argument that he shouldn't continue on.

(57:10):
But in no way, shape or form should part of
that argument be this story that was put out there
in order to hurt him, and you can't put it back.
That genie is out, you're not putting it back. And
so that's where the anger in me came about. We'll
get through this, you know, this too shall pass. But
in the American soccer, as is the case probably in
a lot of sports and a lot of industries out there,

(57:32):
you know, we eat our own and it's disappointing it's sad,
it's angering, but again, this is kind of stuff that
you have to go through, and to your point, you
know a lot of sports to deal with this on
a consistent basis. How do you balance critique in the
world of soccer where you know everybody and sometimes you've
known people for generations, you might know their parents with

(57:56):
also simultaneously those personal relationships, and then have a job
that requires you to comment on their performance in a
public way. And the reason I bring it up, I'll
give you a good example. We had Charles Barkley on
and he's no longer friends with Michael Jordan. They used
to be best friends. But he has to comment on
Michael Jordan's role as a GM or as an owner,

(58:19):
and Jordan got super upset about that, and Barkeley said,
ultimately that's painful to him, but the job requires that
he be honest. I'm sure that's happened sometimes in your
life where somebody has said you've got a great private
relationship with them, but they have a public job. How
do you balance that in terms of what you do? Yeah,

(58:41):
I mean well to me that that says that Michael
Jordan's sooft Okay, I never Yeah, I'd say that, but
I mean, that's that's sooft because he is Charles Barkley
is doing his job. I'm sure you know the same.
You know, you've probably had experienced this too. I have
had girlfriend's, boyfriend, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, grandparents, friends, acquaintances, coaches,

(59:08):
every single you know, one of these people at certain
point has come up to me, either to my face,
through text, over a telephone, or behind my back, doesn't matter,
but at some point I have had those conversations. The
best ones actually are where it's face to face in
the humb in the human because you need you just
need to let them get it out, and oftentimes that's
all they want to do. I've got one. I remember

(59:29):
once I said something about a player and his father
cornered me in the bar after the game and started screaming,
yelling and going off. By the end of the night
we were having drinks at the bar. Okay. So, and
that's wonderful. But I, like Charles, I have to do
my job and I have to say things that at
times can be critical. I like to think that I

(59:50):
do it in a fair way, and I like to
think that I do it in a balanced way in
terms of also making sure that it's not all negative.
But if I see something that I agree with or
deserves criticism, I'm not doing my job. I'm not earning
my money, or I might not get another job if
I don't do it. And that's what I want to
watch out of, you know, an analyst when it comes

(01:00:11):
to sports. That's what it does. The job and the
role demands. And I got no problem. And you know,
there's people now even in my life that I you know,
grew up playing with that I was, that I was
friends with that you know, they might act differently around,
but the best ones are the ones that recognize, hey,
he is doing his job. And while it may be
painful in that moment to have to have to hear that,

(01:00:32):
I would rather he do that than pull punches, because
then he's not doing his job. Not everybody's like that,
and some people take offense, and maybe some relationships they're
damaged and amy even some relationships are completely severed. But
I'm okay with that because I'd rather I'd rather do
this job the way the job needs to be done.
What's it like to be on the road for the

(01:00:53):
length of time in foreign countries? You'll get to be
back in the United States in twenty six. What is
covering the World Cup like and how does it compare
to playing in a World Cup? So it's very different
than playing, But there is that level of competition. There's
the internal competition with yourself, there is a competition with
the other talent that is involved, and there's a competition

(01:01:15):
relative to being at the highest stage. This is the
World Cup. Is the greatest groundhog Day from a soccer
perspective for a former soccer player that you can have.
But it is a ritual. It is a routine and
I've done so many of these now and you know,
some younger folks will come and ask me, and I
tell them, stick to ritual, stick to routine, because that's

(01:01:35):
what's going to get you through. I mean, we're having
at times four games a day and you're just cranking
through this. You've got to take care of your body,
You've got to take care of your mind, and you
have to you have to love it. I mean, I
know you've seen this phenomenon in our in our industry,
right there are so many people that use television, use broadcasting,

(01:01:56):
use media as a way station until something better comes
along and I get it. I understand that, but I
think ultimately that will manifest itself in your performance and
you will be cheating yourself and you will be cheating
the viewer. And I don't want to cheat anybody. I'm
a junkie for what I do, and I want to
be surrounded by like minded people. I want to be

(01:02:16):
surrounded by junkies that love the game, that love the
broadcast aspect of the game, that love debating and talking
about it, and that bring it day in and day out.
And look, we've both been surrounded by some greats in
the industry. And when you see them work and you
see that what goes on behind the scenes, it is
incredible because it's not what you ultimately see on the screen.

(01:02:38):
It's that iceberg type of theory where this this incredible
base and all of this work that goes on, but
that's what makes that tip of the iceberg that you
do see on screen, that's what makes it good. And
if you don't do the work and you don't have
that base, then your tip of your iceberg is not
going to look as Good's well said, and I tell
everybody out there, and one of the reasons I love
doing these conversations because there's lots of young people out

(01:03:00):
there who see the success, but they don't have any
idea all of the work that goes into it. In fact,
I think that's really incredibly common in the United States
and particularly around the world today. But I always say
before I do my radio show, I got three hours
of radio every day. I'm spending so much time feeding
my brain with information every day so that I have

(01:03:24):
a depth of knowledge to whatever topic I'm discussing, Because
if I haven't done all that research, then whatever I'm
saying on the air, ultimately you can tell that there's
no foundation supporting it. And so a part of that,
massive part of that is the passion. You have. Passion
Still there are viral videos of you out there crying

(01:03:45):
when the US wins soccer matches that that that we
end up winning. I imagine sometimes you want to cry
when the US loses in a match that you feel
like they could have won. How do you how do
you corral that passion? Right? Because I think about this
all the time. There are especially when it's one thing
when you're playing you have to learn how to manage it.

(01:04:06):
It's another thing when you're commenting on it, reacting to it.
What is that experience like in your mind, because that's
the way that many fans feel. How do you harness it?
What does that do for you as a as an analyst? Yeah,
I mean you do, I think have to understand and,

(01:04:26):
like you said, harness it. But I also think that
you know, there was a there's always been a debate
as to especially when you're talking about you know, oftentimes
I'm talking about the United States men's national team or
the US team, the women's team, men's team, whatever, and
do you use we right because I'm an American and
this is my team, and you know, it's a debate

(01:04:46):
as to whether you do or not. And we really
came down ultimately, and this has happened over years where
absolutely I want to I want to recognize that there
is a connection. I want to recognize in the people
that I'm watching that I'm here, that there is an emotion,
that there is a history that there that they are moved.
I want to be moved by the people that I'm watching.

(01:05:07):
And so it's not that you know, you should come
on and blubber every single time you're on air, but
if you feel that don't be afraid to show it.
And yes, there's times where you need to be stoic,
and yes there's times where you need to regulate what
is going on in terms of your emotion. And if
it impacts the effect for you to be able to
articulate things or to be clear or to give information

(01:05:29):
that you need, then that is problematic. But seeing human
beings until they replace us all clay with robots, I
want to see the humanity. I want to see that
that person male or female out there has a connection
and is feeling something visceral and is able to transmit
that back to me and you can see it and
you can hear it, and when it is there, oh,

(01:05:51):
it's just it's a it's a it's a beautiful thing.
And I'll tell you what. There is a whole generation
that is coming up that wants my job, you know,
and they can pry it from my cold dead, redheaded hands.
I'm going to hold onto it as long as I
possibly can. I love what I do. I can certainly
get better at at what I'm doing, but it is

(01:06:12):
incredibly I'm incredibly lucky and fortunate to be able to
do this. It is not lost on me I know,
in this day and age, you got to admit your
privilege or whatever and stuff like that. But so I
am incredibly privileged to be able to do what I
can do, and hopefully I can do it for many,
many more years. So you're gonna be calling and analyzing
games for decades into the future. I think. I think

(01:06:34):
you're really good at what you do. Christian Pulistic A
big part of whether we have a chance to ever
win a World Cup in the next decade or so,
I think will be directly tied to his development many
other players as well. Do you think Pulistic is going
to be the greatest American soccer player ever? Is that
too early of a question to even ask? And how

(01:06:55):
much of his growth as a player is directly tied
in in your mind to the overall potential success rate
for the US going forward. I think his resume may
be the greatest that we have ever had. His impact
on the game, you know that that remains to be seen.
I mean, look, he had a he had a good

(01:07:17):
World Cup, not a great World Cup, and we expect
big things from him, and I think rightfully so. One
of the most talented players that we've ever seen. But
he's also you know, he's very shy and he doesn't
necessarily like the spotlight. He's not, you know, a gregarious
social type of bigger than life type of personality. I
think he's going to get better. He's kind of grown

(01:07:39):
out of I know he's injured right now, but there
was a time where he was getting injured a whole lot.
I hope that he continues to grow out of that.
And I'm you know, Clay, Staying healthy is a skill
in sports, and some players have it and some players don't.
Christian has yet to shown that he is to consistently
stay healthy. But when he is on the field, he

(01:08:00):
and do some magic stuff. But I don't think he's
ever going to be the focal point, the lebronish type
of player, the messy type of player for the US,
in that he's going to be surrounded by players that
might take more of the spotlight. But he will have
his moments when all is sudden done, you said earlier,
hockey soccer For you growing up, hockey and soccer fans

(01:08:20):
are somewhat familiar, mirror images almost sometimes of each other. Because,
as somebody who did a national sports talk show, runs
OutKick we talk a lot about football, we talk a
lot about a basketball, certainly in baseball, and whenever we
mention hockey or soccer, people are always like, hey, talk
about us more, talk about us more. And then as

(01:08:41):
soon as you start talking about him, they say, oh,
you don't know what you're talking about. One of the
interesting things I think about growing the game of soccer
and its fandom is in the United States, uniquely, soccer
fans are elitist. They're probably over educated, they probably have,
you know, higher income, and the rest of the world,

(01:09:02):
soccer is the sport of the common man. In the
United States, soccer is the sport of the elitist fan,
I would say, And I understand there's some criticism out
there whenever you make this, but this is what I see.
You know, the Joe six pack is in the crowd
at a football game, at a basketball game, at a
football game, I don't necessarily know that he is at soccer.

(01:09:23):
How does soccer interestingly become more of a common man
sport and less of an elitist sport in America when
it's the exact opposite basically everywhere else. Yeah, So I'm
so glad you mentioned this because it drives me nuts.
As soccer people, and I'm probably you know to your point,
the hockey people are the kind of the same in
that I want as many people into the tent as possible,

(01:09:46):
and I don't want to do anything that is going
to create a barrier to entry. I want I want
people to love this game as much as I do,
and until they actually see it and bring it bring
into the tent, it's not going to happen. And so
I want to be there welcoming people in. And yes,
to your point, we as soccer people can be incredibly elitist,
incredibly snobby, and it can be a deterrent to people

(01:10:09):
or coming into the game going forward. We can also
be incredibly insecure, and I think that just comes from
not being king and having to fight and crow and
scrape for absolutely every little inch of you know, whether
it's media coverage or attention or ultimately what it comes
down to is credibility. But whether it's on OutKick or
anything else, you're a business. You are going to give

(01:10:32):
the people what they want until the data tells you
that they want something different. And it doesn't mean that
you don't try different things. It doesn't mean that you
don't recognize that your viewership and your readers have a
palette out there that has expanded. But ultimately, you want
to make sure you get clicks. You want to make
sure that you have people that are subscribing. You want
to make sure that you're giving them what they want.

(01:10:53):
And so we cannot be a charity. We have to
show that this is a sport on the field that
is worthy of your time and off the field is
worthy of your business. And to the extent that we,
you know, put put our noses in the air, or
do things in the way that we act, or the
things that we say that drive people away, that is

(01:11:14):
the worst possible thing that we can do. I don't
want to be exclusionary. I want to be as inviting
as possible as a sport for everybody in America. And
I sure as hell don't want people to feel intimidated
or scared about. But the vernacular that we use or
the you know, the the supporters groups, and the culture

(01:11:36):
that we have and the way that we talk about
the game or dress or book it ourselves, that that
cannot be a hindrance. And too often, to your point,
it is um you have traveled all over the world.
I want to give you an opportunity to give some
give some stories and or tell people where you think
they should go based on your experience. But also have

(01:11:56):
you ever felt endangered at all while you've been covering
the World Cup all over the world, Blake, I'm sure
you found yourself in some interesting alleys at different points.
Have you ever felt physically in danger? So a lot
of times I have security with me. But you know,
over the years, if you know, as a player, you know,
especially going into Central America, and keep in mind that

(01:12:19):
there's you know, there's this whole you know, social type
of aspect to it and cultural and political type of aspect.
To be honest with you, because even though soccer isn't
king in the US, we still represent, you know, for
many countries, you know, the big bag US and all
of the baggage that you know that we bring. And

(01:12:39):
so when we go down and play some of these countries,
it may be their only moments when they get to
beat up on America, when they get to say that
they are better than America at something, and don't underestimate
the power of that. And so we go down into
these cauldrons to play, and so in the stadium. There's
security everywhere, and there's moats, and there's fences, and there's

(01:13:00):
guard dogs, and there are machine guns and all this
kind of stuff to protect us as Americans from the
moment that we land to the moment that we that
we leave. Now, I've been in situations, whether it's as
a player as a broadcaster at different times in different
countries where stuff has happened, and you know, people have
you know, threatened me and do all that. But you know,
some of that comes with the territory. And yeah, at

(01:13:21):
the moment, it's it's it's not great. But like I said,
I I don't want to I don't want to deny
myself the opportunity to have these great experiences, to see
different places, to to understand and to meet different people,
and to experience different cultures simply because you know, there's
the possibility of something happening. But yeah, I mean, didn't

(01:13:42):
you get a gun pulled on you in Russia? That's
what I was trying to key the key Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I mean it was you know, that's scary, that's
not fun um. But you know, I mean, obviously they
didn't like the way I talked about the game or something.
I don't know what the hell they were angry about.
But you know it's Russia too. So we were in
my mouth of the World Cup and uh, yeah, you've

(01:14:03):
never seen our security go into action faster? When when?
When that happened? And luckily nothing ultimately did happen? Of
it happen and become of it, And I'm I'm still
here to tell the tale. Um, if you could go
anywhere in the world, you've gotten to travel all over
the place to play soccer. Where is your favorite place
that you have been both potentially to play soccer in

(01:14:24):
terms of a stadium that you've gotten to play in,
but also just a city or a country where you thought, Man,
I would love to be able to spend more time here.
This place is exquisite. Yeah, I mean, so, I know
you recently visited Italy and so I played there many
years ago. And you know, the culture just in general
is incredible, the food and the travel and these you know,

(01:14:46):
the incredible history and I know you're a big history buff.
Uh that's wonderful. But then you add this this incredible
culture and history when it comes to the game. You know,
these stadiums that they have, whether it's Sensiro Stadium in
uh in Milan, you know, these types of legendary cathedrals
that we have. You know, I played in the old
Wembley Stadium and you know that's the stadium that where

(01:15:07):
England played and where you know Freddie Mercury played in
all these different places and all these different, you know,
incredible moments through history and so being able to use
soccer to see some of these some of these places,
but seeing a country and culture through the eyes of soccer,
I think can be incredibly illuminating because soccer is so
important in many of these countries that it informs everything,

(01:15:30):
and it forms you know, politics and social uh you know,
pleasantries and obviously you know it's incredibly tribal from wherever
you are, and it infiltrates and like I said, informs
almost everything that happens on a day to day basis.
And it's really amazing to see a country because and
I'm not saying it's better or worse, I'm just saying

(01:15:50):
it's very different in the way that we look at
our sports. And a lot of people will try to say, well,
that means it's more passionate and we have more you know,
we don't have as passionate sports fans here in the US.
That's a bunch of bs. Okay, I think that we are. Actually,
I think we understand much more about what sports is
and what it isn't. And certainly there are times where

(01:16:12):
people go over the line and I think, you know,
you are a huge, you know, college football fan, that
type of passion. I'll put that up against the soccer
fans around the world. And I love though, being able
to see a country, a culture, a city, an area
relative to their sports. And sometimes you can find out
a lot about a place and find out a lot

(01:16:32):
about a people relative to their sports. All Right, last
question for you, and we appreciate all the time. It's
been wins and losses. Alexei Lallis. I'm Clay Travis. A
lot of people out there who listen to these interviews
are young, right, and or their dads or granddads. Give
it to young people and say, hey, here's how you
can learn and continue to evolve. If you were talking

(01:16:53):
to a young soccer player today, fourteen year old Alexei
Lallis playing somewhere in the country today and not only
wants to play for his national team, but he also
is interested potentially in a career in media sports media
in general. What would you tell that young person could
be a boy or girl out there that they should
be working on at fourteen fifteen years old, as they

(01:17:16):
age and as they grow, and hey, maybe there's twenty
two year old college version of you out there who's
listening right now too, what do you wish you had
known in terms of your career path? Okay, so when
it comes to broadcasting, and I get a lot of
young you know, men and women that come up and
want to talk about it. First off, and you know,
this phenomenon son a phenomena. It's just the reality of

(01:17:38):
the opportunities that we get as ex players. Okay, the
door will open to you more so than others because
you played, all right, It will not stay open forever,
and you better be ready when it does open. And so,
first off, if you are already playing, if you're a
you know, a professional, and you're thinking about a career
in broadcast, if you can recognize a went to jump off.

(01:18:00):
You know, I was thirty two years old when I
stopped playing, which is still relatively young, but I got
given an opportunity and so a jumping off point came,
and I was smart enough in that moment to recognize
that while I could have continued playing, this was an
opportunity to go and do something that possibly could last
obviously well beyond my career, but could become a career.

(01:18:21):
And you've got to have the wherewithal to recognize because
your career, I guarantee you will never end in the
way that you want. When it comes to specifics on broadcasting,
I think you and I both know that your ability
to edit, either beforehand or in real time is crucial,
especially when you work in television and you got somebody
in your ear telling you you've got thirteen seconds and
we got to get off air, and you've got to

(01:18:42):
be able to say something that is interesting, that is informative,
to make it make sure that you say it in
an entertaining way so that people aren't changing the channel.
And that comes with reps, that comes with the ability
to do something. Some of it's innate. I mean, you
know as well as I do. There's plenty of people
that we say, oh, that person will be great on
tell of. And it's different when you're answering questions to

(01:19:03):
a reporter after a game or something like that, or
obviously if you're sitting on your couch, so that all Alexi,
sorry to cut you off. But the green room, there
are dudes that I have set in the green room
with literally a hundred yards at most from the actual studio,
and I've been like, this guy is going to kill
it on television, and the hundred yard walk into the studio,

(01:19:27):
they get deer in headlights. They are a fifteenth or
twentieth as engaging as they were in the green room.
There's a big difference. When those lights come on. It's brutal.
It is brutal, but that red light I live for it.
I can't wait. If people ask me to get nervous,
hell yeah. And if I'm not nervous, I'm not ready.
I love that feeling. And now I have learned to

(01:19:47):
harness that nervous energy and direct it into you down
the barrel. If I'm talking down the barrel, if I'm
looking over at Rob Stone, I love that. It jacks
me up. I will never be able to replicate playing.
I've come to that realization over the years, and you
better figure that out quickly. But I've found something that
jacks me up as much and in many ways it
rewards me and fulfills me even more so than anything

(01:20:10):
I did on the field. The US wins the World
Cup in twenty twenty six, you get to do talk
about it on television. You finish television. First thing you
want to do when you leave the television set to
celebrate is what, Oh my goodness, well, I will be
in tears. I will be an older gentleman who will

(01:20:31):
be thinking about all of the history and everything that
has come before. I think, you know, honestly, I will
be wanting to celebrate it with people that have been
around and this is you know, this is a labor
of love. It's still a labor. It's gotten easier over
the years, but it's still pushing that boulder up, and
there are so many men and women on and off
the field that have worked so long to be able

(01:20:53):
to get to that point. So I would look around
and give big hugs to the people that will never
ever get the at it. You will never know their name,
that have worked to enable us to be in that moment. Now.
It's not it doesn't change everything overnight, but it's a
hell of an injection to have. He is Alexei Lawless,
How can people find you? What would people would you tell?
People who enjoyed this conversation, who want more listen. You

(01:21:17):
can come yell at me on Twitter at Alexey Lawless
or Instagram or anything out there. I have my State
of the Union podcast on Fox. And then if look,
if somebody's kicking a ball out there, men's, women's, co
ed naked, I am there talking about it on Fox.
That is outstanding. I am Clay Travis. He is Alexey Lawless.
This has been wins and losses.

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Wins & Losses - Clay Talks with Alexi Lalas

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Wins & Losses - Clay Talks with Alexi Lalas