All right, so I'm gonna jump right into it with a, a, a first kind of question, and that is, Andy, how would you characterize the political and cultural role of Fußball, or soccer, in both Germany and the United States? And what, if anything, has changed over time?

Uh, I mean, the, the question is vast.

I'm not even sure how to approach it.

Um, I mean, uh, clearly, um, in Germany, Fußball is a civic religion.

It's, uh, it's absolutely ubiquitous.

It's what I call hegemonic sports space, and it's hegemonic sports culture.

And it's, in fact, in many ways the only one.

So I, I, I would agree with you really, really strongly that, uh, there's such an intimate connection between German politics, culture, um, a- and soccer.