Summary: Anto is joined by Sports Illustrated football correspondent Grant Wahl to take stock of a wild week in Italy having been at San Siro for a wild AC Milan-Juventus match and an historic win for the United States over Italy in Genoa. We get into the nature of Italian football culture itself and how even a figure like Jurgen Klinsmann can still be a lightning rod in a country like Italy where the sport is a national obsession. We examine the Italy-US match itself and some of the key talking points including the emergence of Michael Bradley and Fabian Johnson and how Klinsmann has begun to evolve as the coach of this team and if he finally got the first signature win to put his stamp on the program emotionally for the both the players and the supporters who needed to find some confidence in the direction of the program itself. We climb under the hood of how Michael Bradley has developed at Chievo Verona under Mimmo Di Carlo, the massive decision Clint Dempsey has in front of him this summer and how the long absence of Landon Donovan might have created further questions about the relationship between Klinsmann and Donovan himself. Then we turn to the matter of a new MLS season to gauge whether this is a very important season for the league in the sense that growth is happening with each passing year but television does remain an ongoing blind spot on a national level, as manifest by the ratings. We also look at the power structure in the Western Conference to evaluate if this is having an affect at least on the short term and which clubs might be the movers and shakers outside of the top favorites. We close on the matter of New England Revolution and the challenge before Jay Heaps and how the strength of their midfield might just be the way back for the Revolution this season.
