Name: Defend the Goal: The Ultimate Identity Playbook with Landon Donovan
Uploaded: 2026-07-16T19:16:21.616Z
Duration: 55 min 24 s
Description: Defend the Goal: The Ultimate Identity Playbook with Landon Donovan

Transcript for "Defend the Goal: The Ultimate Identity Playbook with Landon Donovan": Welcome to the show, folks. This is Drew Russell at Rubrik. I am part of our identity security practice. I'll be kicking things off for us today. Behind the scenes here are the more important people. James and Landon are ready to go for the fun piece of the conversation. So just as a a quick agenda here, I'll be spending maybe ten, fifteen minutes talking about really what we're seeing in the identity space, especially from the, you know, call it, last six months of of trends and all that fun that's going in in the world of all, Frontier AI models, all that great stuff. James and Landon will hop on stage after that. We'll do thirty minutes of conversation from there. And I think more importantly, the the the q and a, portion after that as well. So you guys should all see that in the, the chat window there. Definitely, use that to your heart's content as we go through here. So that being said, let's, let's kick things off. It's been, it's been a really interesting time period, I think, in the sense of the amount of change we've seen over the the last year and how folks are thinking about this identity security conversation. So I think the the most important piece of this puzzle is the vast majority of the time, our instant response team, you know, either major players like CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, Mandiant, When they're dealing with real world wartime situations, everything is fully operational from the IDP perspective, and you kinda can see that with these very fancy animations around here. Where, traditionally, when we think about this ransomware recovery and all these kind of conversations pieces, that's a hard down type event. But identity is very unique in a sense that things are fully operational like we talked about. Your users are still able to to access the system. Everything seems perfect from their perspective. Of course, there are situations like this one where there's hard down events. We've seen the headlines from the MGM to the world, Marks and Spencer. You know, the list goes on and on where those occur, but those are more of the the exception than the rule at this point. The stat I have up on the slide here comes directly from CrowdStrike to where 82% of the time they're dealing with an IR event, there's no malware deployed. Right? And this is kinda where that that worst case scenario comes into play. More realistically, the way to think about these types of attacks as they unfold is you're trying to find this needle in the haystack. So you have all your day to day activity, but what your challenge is is how do I find that one user who shouldn't be there? You know, who has been compromised? Who you have to remove from the ecosystem. And then more real world, it looks closer to this. Right? By its nature, your IDPs are very, very transactional with changes happening across the board. And, really, what you get into is this needle in the haystack conversation. How do I understand what happened, and how do I move that persistent threat from the ecosystem? So this has been the the big shift over the the last year or so in terms of how folks are approaching the market. And then ensure our good firm, Agented AI, we actually had a lot of, conversations internally around this of, like, how do we talk about this? Because so much of the market is still catching up to this post malware error we talked about when everything kind of just changed on its head with the the the release of mythos class models. But I think more importantly, we don't even have to get that advanced when it comes to these AI threats. The example I have pulled up on the screen here actually comes directly from a case study that Palo Alto put together where they created a agent harness called Zelle. And the key takeaway from this, for me at least, was, first and foremost, they didn't say which LLMs or which models they were using on the back end. They made it very, very clear that they were purposely not telling us because it didn't matter. Pick your off the shelf model, not even a Frontier level request, and this is the type of features and functionality you can expect these spread actors to have. So this is a direct copy and paste from what they used. And, again, the key piece here is you don't have to have any expertise around this. Their exact language was, how do I attack the environment? In this case, you're deployed in a GCP VM, and your job is to exfiltrate the data. Like, that's all the expertise it takes once you build these harnesses. And that level of expertise is is fully removed from the environment as part of these workflows. If I think about some of the other case studies I've seen around this, this is where that frontier model conversation really comes into play and where we see that level of expertise jump up even more, you know, higher than just these these basic Zelic approaches. So in this case, there's a a UK, aid government agency that has a very, very solid cyber harness test bed that they put together, and they threw Mythos at it. And this was a a couple months ago when they first released it to the wild. And, again, very, very simple attack pattern here. There's no complex prompting done. There's no expertise required in the space. And in this case, what they're able to do is go from force to force to force and move laterally throughout the process. And that's the the name of the game when it comes to removing this persistence. How do I identify that within the environment, and how do I detect that and remove it as quickly as possible? Another interesting conversation we had as as part of some of the the partnerships we had with Anthropic is we had a, an interview with Nicholas Carlini. If you guys don't know the name, he was the anthropic threat researcher who wrote their intro memo basically saying don't release mythos to the wild. And he was abundantly clear that he is not an expert red teamer. Right? His background is in machine learning security, not necessarily these type of attack scenarios. And everything they do internally isn't necessarily designed to be a cybersecurity model. Right? Mythos was created to be a general purpose model. And just by its nature, these security expertise are, shining their way through these four fronts. You know, since then, we've had OpenEye catch up. We have some of the latest open weight models coming out of China who, you know, at least in my opinion, aren't quite there, but the writings on the wall in terms of that expertise is gonna be right around the corner for us as probably as we're close. So these are the type of scenarios that we're thinking about when it comes to how do I protect the the identity environment and all the ins and outs of of what that looks like. I had the team put together this, what we call the the war room dilemma. So this is based off of our real world experience with our incident response team as well as a few public examples I'll talk through here. Overall, the way to think about this is this is how we expect these to play out as as they occur within the real world. So much so, in fact, that I use this December, January, and February time frame as a a real world example based off of some conversations with one of the the the leading sporting good companies here in The US. This is as close to real as we can make it as part of the the conversation here. So first few pieces here is relatively straightforward. Right? You have your IDPs, whether it's AD, Entra, Okta. You know, pick your IDP of choice. Most customers, I think, are running, some variation of these three. And every day, you have the changes within your ecosystem. And throughout the life cycle of the three months here, those changes quickly add up. Whether we're talking hundreds or 20,000 or, somewhere in between number of changes each day, think about how much activity you guys have within your IDP space across each of these three areas. You're gonna have some kind of compromise event. You know, we all seen the the way this works. We roll. It's gonna be Saturday at 2AM. You realize something's happening. You'll engage your incident response firm, the maintenance, the CloudStrikes, the Palo Alto of the world. And they have one primary purpose. You know? How do I help you find patient zero and all the forensic exercises that go into responding to these threats? So in this case, the the example here is patient zero entered the environment sometime mid December. Right? That's the what becomes the recovery point objective as part of these workflows. And the the concept behind that is relatively straightforward. How do I remove the persistence from the ecosystem is the name of the game. Right? If I'm in the February time frame and I know patient zero entered back in December, what are my options? Option one is look at every chain within your ecosystem. So if you recall, we talked about roughly 285,000 changes in this example. I pulled 15 of the most common TTPs out in the ecosystem, you know, do some very simple math. I have to look at those 285,000 changes across those 15 TTPs, and we're talking about millions and millions of forensics checks. This is really where you start getting into that needle in the haystack problem. How do I understand what happened in the ecosystem? How do I identify that pockets of risk as we go out and and look for these different events within the ecosystem? Just as importantly, the ones highlighted in yellow here, once these type of attacks occur, so golden ticket being the the one we hear about the most, you have no option in terms of removing individual persistence. Right? Your IDP is fully compromised itself, active directory in this case. There's no way to solve it other than rebuilding, which is really where the the the option we see played out time and time, in the field. You have to rebuild to the precompromised point. And, really, the the the thought process behind that is you're not going to you're not gonna identify all the persistence that's left in your environment. Right? It's a monumental task that nobody you know, I don't care what security company you're talking with. Nobody's gonna be able to guarantee I found every single pocket of risk within the ecosystem. Once you've lost trust in your IDP space, it's very, very difficult to get back up and running. So a couple of public examples we can look at when it comes to these workflows, State of Nevada and Stryker being some of the big ones that have these good public case studies. I like Stryker in the sense that during their instant response, they put out a a letter of adaptation really focused around like, hey. You know, strike your this is coming from Palo Alto. Strike your customers. Your your data's fine. Nothing was compromised, etcetera, etcetera. But one thing that they specifically highlight as a bullet point is that they had a rebuild to the precompromised point. They found patient zero, and in order to solve that challenge, you rebuild to this, point in time before the threat actor entered your environment. Exact same thing at the state of Nevada. But being, you know, a state agency, we had some numbers around this. In this case, it was almost 30% of their entire incident response was just rebuilding active directory itself. So not only is it a difficult problem to solve from a technical perspective, but if you think about how we play out, we roll. There's a very expensive proposition that goes around with this. The other really important piece here is that if I'm rebuilding your environment, by its nature, I'm kind of reversing the timeline here. Right? I'm going from the compromised discovered to the patient zero. So I'm going back in time here, removing all the change within your ecosystem and basically assuming everything is blown away and compromised, and you have to rebuild that that point in time around this. What I hear time and time from my customers is that this is where the the problems really start picking up them because they haven't even thought about this. Once I go back to, in this case, December time frame, what do I do around that? How do I find all the changes that I've now lost in the ecosystem? And going back to this December, January, February example, when I was talking with the sporting goods company, they were thinking about this in the context of the holiday season, so Christmas time, where they bring on 20,000 temporary workers. And if they had to rebuild to that time period, that's 20,000 workers that are now back within their identity system that shouldn't be there. First and foremost, how do I identify those twenty thousand years? Let alone, how do I bring those back out of the ecosystem? And you also could think about that from an operational challenge perspective. Right? Your your organization changes. Maybe, you know, James here, as he jumps on stage, has his phone number changed. How do I find all those and bring it back as part of the process? So, overall, the challenges we run into is, first and foremost, you have to rebuild in today's attacks. There's no other way to, guarantee the removal of persistence within your environment. But at that point, you're kind of between a rock and a hard place. Right? I've removed the persistence, but your IDP is so far out of date. All of the operational challenges you're gonna have there is gonna be a herculean task. And for me, that's the bigger problem that we have to solve is part of those workflows. So that being said, I believe the the important guests here are behind the coverage ready to jump on center stage here. So I appreciate everybody taking a few minutes as I walk you through some of these challenges that we we see day in, day out. The one ask I have for everybody is think through this from a tabletop perspective. Think about how you would respond to this as an organization and walk your teams through each of these underlying steps. There's quite a few things we can do to help on the Rubik side. We have an entire tabletop exercise we can run through with you. We have an instant response readiness scorecard that breaks this down into more granular steps and gives you the ability to say, am I ready or not? And, obviously, a lot of the features and functionalities we had built into the product are designed to solve these exact challenges. So that being said, let me stop sharing. I will jump off stage and and leave it to the rest of the team here. Amazing. Thank you, Drew. Appreciate it. And, mister Donovan, we are ready to rock. He's backstage right now, and I believe we're waiting for him to get entered in here. There we go. Can you hear. me? I can hear you loud and clear. Thanks, Landon, it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you today. You know, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. pleasure. My pleasure. Love it. So, Landon, it's it's obviously World Cup season right now. Just for anyone who doesn't know your story, take us back a little bit. What did it feel like the first time you stepped onto those World Cup of, in representing us here in The United States? Well, I grew up let me turn off my TV. I'm watching golf. I grew up in Southern California during a time, James, when nobody played soccer. And so my older brother, thankfully, for whatever reason, loved soccer. And from the time I could start walking, I was kicking a soccer ball. And that meant that when it came time to be on a recreational team, I was miles ahead of every other kid because I had actually had a soccer ball on my feet before, and that was sort of the standard by which you could be a good player at that time. Also during that time, Major League Soccer didn't exist in our country, and not many people candidly just knew about the sport. In 1994, when the World Cup came to our shores for the first time, everything changed for me. All of a sudden, I realized that there was a game bigger than me just playing outside with my friends. And I remember going inside after I came home from my first ever World Cup game and and last until I actually played in one. I went to see Romania, Argentina play in the Rose Bowl in Southern California. I went inside to my mom after I got home with my friend, and I said, mom, I wanna do that. I want that. And so when you fast forward ahead to 2002, in South Korea, I had the opportunity for the first time to play in my first ever World Cup match. And it's really hard to describe because when you dream about something your whole life and then you achieve it and it's on that level, on that scale, there's nothing that can ever really compare to that. I I was fortunate to play in three World Cups, but playing in my first one ever, was a dream a literal dream come true for a kid from Southern California who just wanted to do that one time in his life. Yeah. I love that. And so you got three total World Cups, 2002, 2006, 2010. What does that number mean to you personally? And, you know, how did the player that you described in 2002 differ from the one when you played in your last World Cup in 2010? Both in our profession and personally. But I have always appreciated in sports and in life people who are able to do things for long periods of time. In sports, there are many, many, many people I came across in my career, James, who were better players, better athletes, better technically with the ball, better at things than me. But in order to play for a long stretch of time, you have to be able to adapt and adjust because the game is always changing. And in sports, you are constantly fending off the next person. So in in business, you know, at Rubrik, you're constantly, of course, trying to fend off competitors and fight off competitors, and it's similar in sports. The only difference in sports is every weekend, you are judged. Right? So every Saturday night, you're judged by your coaches and your players and your teammates, but you're also judged by millions of people who are watching on TV and around the world. And the World Cup that you're watching this summer is amplified by, you know, 50, a hundred, two hundred times. And so it becomes ruthless in that way, but the people who are able to do it over and over and over for long stretches of time are the ones who have always, had my most admiration, and that's something I'm very proud of that I was able to play in three of them. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, you're talking about that longevity. I mean, if you take back to 2002, that World Cup, you were just 20 years old, but you won FIFA's best young player of the tournament. You helped The US reach the quarterfinals. You know, what was going through your mind carrying that kind of expectation early on in your career, you know, at a very young age. Well, end of the tournament, nothing was going on in my mind except just just playing soccer, which is why I was able, I think, to achieve, success at a young age. After that is where it became difficult because now things change because the expectation is that you're supposed to be good. And it was really interesting because in 2006 I'm now 24 years old, and we're playing in our next World Cup in Germany. And the expectation from our small soccer audience at that time and from everybody in the soccer universe was that we were gonna be good, and I was gonna be good, and that sports are linear, and, you know, we'll just continue to have success. And, actually, the opposite happened. I had a really poor World Cup. We had a really poor World Cup, and it it was a really important moment in my life Mhmm. Because it made me realize that it doesn't just automatically happen. You have to make it happen. No matter how much success you've had, especially in sports that are the ultimate, ultimate meritocracy, there are very, very little politics, very, very few favors. You either can do it or you can't. And so you realize quickly that you better perform or else you're not gonna be on the field. And long term, that was a really important thing for me to learn. In the short term, of course, it was very difficult to deal with. But long term, it really helped me in my career and in my life. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, it's very different than 2010, that World Cup. I mean, your goal against Algeria in stoppage time, this sent The US, through to the knockout round and became one of the most iconic moments ever in US soccer history. So I want you to walk us through what you were feeling in that particular moment. Well, I see Ray Edelman very kindly put the video there, which brings me a lot of joy. Thanks, Ray. The the important part of this story, James, is the context. So we tied our first game against England. We tied our second game against Slovenia, and we had to win the third game. If we lost or we tied the game, we were out. If we won the game, we were advancing. And so it actually made it quite simple because in a World Cup oftentimes and if you watch the tournament this summer, you'll see a lot of teams, both sides of the field who say, you know what? A tie is okay for us today because we don't wanna lose the game because not only are you losing the points, you're giving points to your competitor in your group. So there's this whole really interesting dynamic going on. But in that game, we had to win. Algeria were already out of the tournament, but they're very proud, and they wanted to beat The US. So the game became this very back and forth sort of, ping pong back and forth type of match where everyone was trying to score, and it ended up staying zero zero until the ninety second minute. And in the ninety second minute, they have a really big chance to score. And they had a ball, and Tim Howard, our goalkeeper, catches it. And I'm sort of cheating up the field because I know we need to score. There's no point in me defending at this point. He throws it to me, and we go on a break. I roll it up past wide to Josie Altidore. He rolls it in front of the goal to Clint Dempsey who's running in front of the goalkeeper. He shoots it, and it hits the goalie in the chest. And there's this moment in time that I'll never forget the rest of my life where the ball is slowly rolling revolution over revolution into my path, and the net looked like the ocean. Like, I literally could not miss. And I was able to roll it in two minutes late. I scored the goal. We scored the goal. Two minutes later, the ref blew the final whistle, and it meant we were going through to the knockout stage in the World Cup. Amazing. What a feeling. I love that analogy on the it's as big as the ocean. You know, we're talking a lot about pressure here too. There was a lot of pressure in that moment. Elite athletes, you know, they talk about, you know, dealing with the pressure, and some talk about how it's a skill that you can, can train. You know, how do you personally prepare, like, mentally for the biggest matches? And was there ever a moment where the preparation actually failed you? Sure. I mean, you very many times, athletes I don't know if overprepare is the word, but overthink for sure. Right? And I don't know if anybody watched the England Argentina game last night. No. But the England coach last night, after England score a goal in about the fifty fifth or sixtieth minute, his response in that moment was, okay. We're just gonna defend for the next thirty five, forty minutes. And that meant they stopped attacking. They stopped putting any pressure on Argentina's defense, and Argentina was able to methodically get into the England defensive half of the field and just pepper them with shots and crosses and chances over and over and over. And so that was a moment where the coach really failed his team because I always say in in sports, it it comes out often. Fear is the most powerful human emotion. Yeah. It it rules people. Right? We make so many decisions every day based on fear. You know, I just brush my teeth. If If you don't brush your teeth, your teeth aren't your mouth's not gonna smell good and your peep you're gonna bother people and, you know, whatever. So we can we can rule people through fear, and fear actually then rules us sometimes. And so the coach was overwhelmed with, oh my gosh. We have this lead. Let's not lose. As opposed to, let's go keep playing. Whether we get the second or not, we'll see, but let's keep going. Now back to your question, I I'm a little unique in this way. So I grew up in a really poor part of Southern California, and I grew up with a single mom who was a special ed teacher. Made very little money, was raising myself and my twin sister and my older half brother who I referenced earlier. I always I wasn't conscious, but, subconsciously, my mom was quite literally changing lives every day. She was changing our lives, our small family, but she was going to work every day and changing 20 to 30 to 40 kids who needed really intensive help and helping them learn how to read, learn how to be in society, learn how to become educated. She was doing things that were very real in the world. And so it wasn't like I walked into a game and said, I have no pressure because what my mom was doing was real pressure. But there was always this subconscious feeling of, at the end of the day, when you break it all down, I'm just kicking a soccer ball around the field. It's really not that important. So I never felt that, but I was around many, many players who who that was very real for. And it was challenging. It's challenging to manage as a coach. It's challenging to manage as their captain or one of the leaders. Ultimately, I can say something to someone, but they need to feel it. Right? And I can maybe walk them back from pressure for a few moments. But when you get in the fire, sports are emotional and things are happening fast. It's really difficult. So what's helped me throughout my life was my childhood and how I was brought up and my mom. Also, over the years, learning how to breathe and intentionally breathe so that in really crazy moments, penalty kicks are a great example. Being able to really calm your body down, take away all the noise, all the exterior, all the perceived pressure, and just focus on what you're doing. It didn't work every time, but it worked a lot of times. That's awesome. Good story. And it sounds like your mom's an amazing, human being. You're the, same. in soccer, one mistake, it could be a missed clearance, a wrong step. You mentioned it could be in the way that they coached last night, having too much of a preventive defense. It can cost everything. Right? So how did you personally learn to shake off errors quickly and then stay focused when the stakes were at at their highest? Well, the beauty of soccer and sports is there's always a next play until the end of the game. So in soccer, you don't have time to really stop and think about what happened because the game is still happening. So in the NFL and football, if a quarterback misses his receiver on the route, he's now gotta sit in the huddle for the next forty seconds and go, oh my god. I can't and then when he goes over to the sideline and the defense is on the field, he's thinking, I can't believe I missed him. He was so wide open. In soccer, it's the game's going on, so you have to keep playing. So that is the beauty of it. The other beauty of of sports in general until your last game is you always get another opportunity. Right? Now challenges, one big mistake means you might be on the bench, or you might get cut, or. you might get traded. Right? And that is a pressure that athletes have to deal with. And it's one of the reasons why there is absolutely a an incredible confidence that always borders on arrogance with athletes because you have to convince yourself, James, that you are the best player in the world. Otherwise, sports will tear you apart because well, especially with social media social media, everybody's tearing you apart when you make a mistake, and you have to believe I'm gonna go score the next goal. I know I will. Because if you don't, you he'll crumble. And so it it's an interesting dynamic that is very real in sports. And for those who watch the final on Sunday, you'll see it. There's gonna be a moment or two moments or three moments where something happens. Someone should've scored. Someone should've made a tackle. Someone should've. And you have to condition yourself to just move on to the next play. Yeah. I totally. And, you know, it's kinda alluding to the next phase of this conversation around, you know, resilience. We talked a lot about it earlier before you came on stage here. You know, for you, you you've been open about stepping away from the game. You've battled depression. You've searched for a purpose beyond soccer. So, you know, how do you define resilience, and what did recovery actually look like for you personally? Good question, and thanks for asking. Yeah. I think in any walk of life, we deal with real problems. Right? And in in my career, the times I was at my very, very best, I was at peace off the field. Everything in my life was at peace off the field. Some of the worst times in my career were were because I wasn't at peace off the field or there were things going on off the field. And and you'd be surprised I mean, look. We're all human beings. A breakup with a girlfriend or boyfriend, a break or a your dog passes away, or your parent is sick. All of these things can really impact just like they would impact you or anybody at Rubik who's working day to day. The the hard part about sports is there's always someone waiting to take your job. And so for me, when I was going through, I had three pretty severe bouts of depression in my life. And when I was going through that, I had to, and I'm not saying this is healthy, but I had to find a way to keep showing up at practice and at least getting through training in a real way, getting through the games in a real way while I was sleeping for an hour at a night on my couch and not eating. And that's really hard when your physical performance is part of what you do. It was very challenging. But I was always aware that I had to keep doing that. At that time, I couldn't go to my coach and say, hey. This is what's going on. I mean, I could've. It just wasn't accepted. It wasn't the norm, and I don't think my coaches would have understood. And so I had to have a level of resilience that was very difficult. What really, really, really helped me was going to therapy. Because through therapy, I was working towards getting better even when I wasn't in a good place. And I was able to continually feel like I was making progress. I had one one game I'll share, James. There was a game in the middle of Sunrise playing with the galaxy, and we were playing a team on the weekend. And I said to my therapist, I hadn't slept in about a week. This was in one of the real dark moments. And I said, I'm not sleeping. I'm not eating. There's no way I can go out and play a ninety minute soccer game right now. And she said, do me a favor. So what's that? She said it was a Friday afternoon, and we were set to play on a Saturday. She said, when you go on the field tomorrow, I want you to look into the crowd, and I want you to find a little boy that you feel like you can connect with, that reminds you of yourself as a little boy. And all I want you to do is play for him and forget about everything else. And it was a really powerful moment, and I'll never forget it. I walked out, and this kid will never know. He's probably an adult now. Never know that he got me through a game that day that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. But I share that story because without someone I could trust and could help me through that, I don't know how I would have gotten through that game. I really don't. And so I'm very grateful for that. That's amazing. Amazing story. Hopefully, one day you get to meet that person, but I don't know how they would that would happen, but, that's incredible. You know, it's so you shared a lot, like, on an individual standpoint and resilience, recovering, you know, maybe from a team aspect. You know, every team, they have a plan going in, you know, to the the season, the game. But what happens when that plan breaks down, you know, maybe at halftime? You're down. Maybe you could share, like, how the best coaches that you played for really reset that room in the locker room and help you all get Mhmm. Yeah. Great question. Again, the the difference is in sports, this is happening in real time every weekend. So. most weekends, you go into a game, and the plan doesn't turn out to be maybe what you were expecting or hoping or or thinking it was gonna be. In business, it's now AI comes along. Now you don't have to figure out at Rubik, you don't have to figure out AI in the next forty five minutes, but maybe in the next forty five days or in the next four to five years or the next decade. Right? But in sports, you fig if you don't figure it out in the next forty five minutes, you lose the game. Right? And that's the result. So there is a now it's not as complicated as AI right there. There are many, easier solutions in a in a sporting event and in soccer. But their experience, of course, helps. Having gone through different scenarios with your team, very, very helpful. I always say in sports, continuity is crucial. Because if you or I are on a team and we have nine other people on our team that we've been together for four years, we've pretty much seen every iteration of what could go right and what could go wrong in a game. So after fifteen minutes, I might look at you and say, oh, yeah. This was like that game in January. Remember when we played that team and, like, they were doing this? This is how we can adjust. If you don't have that context and that continuity and that trust with people, it becomes very difficult. And it's why it it was interesting, and I I keep alluding to this game yesterday. England, after they scored their goal to go up yesterday, they put in a bunch of defensive players. and a few of whom went into positions that they are not used to playing in. And so and certainly not used to playing together in. So maybe at their club team, they're used to it, but they have not done that together in this tournament. And that becomes very difficult because, again, there are so many things going on in the moment, and you have to make split second decisions. And one wrong decision, and there were a couple of them yesterday, and bang bang the balls in the back of your net, and now they're on British Airways flight home, right, this weekend after their third, fourth place game. So it happens really fast. And the more continuity, context you have together, trust you have in the person next to you and the few people around you and your core group, the better decisions you can make. And and I don't think that's any different than the business world. It just doesn't happen as quickly. It happens over a longer course of time, but continuity is really crucial. That's a great point. Yeah. I mean, you you know, you look at organizations today, you know, as we kinda tie it back to business here, for what we talk about, they face these relentless attacks. For us, it's identity breaches, threats that come from every direction. You know, as someone who's spent a career defending against the best in the world, playing against the best in the world, you know, what's your instinct on what separates teams that hold, and and keep form against, you know, when things are starting to collapse? Like, maybe even alluding to the game last night. Like, what would you have done, you know, mentally and as a team to overcome that? Yeah. This is gonna sound crazy, but there is a there there there's something that happens in sports that I think casual fans don't know about. And it doesn't happen often, but it was clear to me. Again, I'm using this reference point as the the game last night because. it's fresh in my brain, and maybe some people watched the game yesterday. There are times on the field where coaches make decisions and say, look. We wanna do this and that and that. And in the heat of the moment, you are on the field and you're thinking, this is not working. And so there were many times where I would say to a teammate or a teammate would say to me or we would get together in a little group and we say, look, guys. I know the coach wants us to do that, but, like, we're in the fire right now, and it's not working. So we need to adjust. If he yells at us at halftime, he can yell at us at halftime, but we need to get through this right now. And so we're gonna change this, that, and that, and we're gonna go about it that way. So that's one piece of it. The other piece is, and I think it's it it is definitely a generational thing. In my generation and certainly the generation before me who played, players held each other accountable. Yeah. So it's one thing to have your leader hold you accountable. Right? And if you're a VP or a senior VP or you're a director or a manager, whoever you are, the people that you are managing underneath you, of course, I hope that you're holding them accountable. But sports, and I I don't know for sure in business, but I would guess in business too, it's way more powerful if you're holding each other accountable. Because I feared Tim Howard, my goalkeeper, yelling at me way more than my coach yelling at me. I didn't wanna let him down. I didn't wanna let the coach down either. But if Tim yelled at me on the field because I let him down, I was mortified. And so the ability to hold each other accountable is really important. And and last night, again, it's really in the heat of the moment. There's a lot going on. But I was waiting for one or two or three of the English players, and I watched this stuff very closely to maybe go down on the field for a minute, bring a few people together, and just say, look. I know he wants us to do this. It's not working, and we're gonna do this instead. Whatever that is, they can figure out. They're in the they're in the heat of the moment. I'm not. But I didn't see any real accountability in that moment from the players on the field, and I think that made a difference. Absolutely. Yeah. It is it it incredible, game, but you're right. Like, I didn't see that either, in that game. You know? Well, Landon, look. Last one from me. This has been incredible, by the way. I've learned a lot. You've covered, like, a lot of different pieces here. It since we're talking World Cup here, final is Sunday. Who are you watching? Like, some of the specific players that you're most interested in. Who wins that game? Sure. And is, like, is there a particular moment that you're really looking for? So here's the challenge. Before the tournament, I picked Spain to win the World Cup. Woah. The problem is we get to witness right now, and I hope people appreciate this. Last night, I was in the state. I was literally on right behind the goal, the England sorry. The Argentina goalkeeper's goal looking at Argentina score on the other of the field, right on the field. And I had this moment when Messi crossed the ball in and they scored, and I couldn't help but think how incredible it is that I was on the field watching the best player who's ever played the world's most popular sport live. Mhmm. I mean, it's an incredible thing to realize in that moment. And the problem for Spain is that Argentina somehow, someway, just keep finding a way to win. Sometimes it's Yeah. been, maybe controversial call from a referee. Right? But sometimes those things go your way. Sometimes it's just finding a way to grind back into a game and win it. Sometimes they win comfortably. Sometimes it's easy. They just keep finding a way to win. They did it in Copa America, which is their confederation's tournament. They did it in the last World Cup. It's hard for me to say they won't do it again. What makes you believe they won't? That being said, Spain are by far the best team in the tournament. They are the best team. They they completely annihilated a very good French team in the semi. The French team looks like a college team against professionals. They really did. And so it's hard for me to say that they're not gonna win, but something obviously has to give. I still think, and I know I'm an idiot for saying this, Spain will win the game, but that means I'm betting against the greatest player who's ever walked the planet. Probably a fool's errand, so I guess we'll see. love that. Well, you heard it here. Awesome, Landon. Before I open up to a couple questions from the audience, I did wanna tell them a reminder to all of you that are listening right now. We've shared a meeting request form in the chat. If you book and attend a meeting with us, we have a very limited number of signed scars from yours truly, Landon, plus some rubric, soccer gear to send you. So don't don't forget to fill that out. Let me take a look, see what questions we've got. Alex poster here. Landon, do you think Argentina is treated equally versus other teams? You kinda just touched on, you know, maybe some controversial calls, but, I'm curious what you think here. Mhmm. No. They're not treated equally. And there are go through the go through the course of history. You know, I grew up watching the Chicago Bulls in the nineties. You didn't treat Michael Jordan as a referee the same way you treated some random player on another team. Is that fair? Probably not. But what people forget is that referees are human beings. Do I believe referees are going into the game saying, I really want to make sure Argentina wins today? Absolutely not. There's no scenario where that is happening. Okay? So I just want people to, you know, stop that. However, I was at the game last night. There were it was seventy seventy thousand people in Atlanta. There were 45,000 Argentinian fans and maybe 20,000 English fans. As a human being, if you put yourself in the referee's shoes and the ref last night was American, by the way, did a phenomenal job in the game. Was excellent, flawless. Put yourself in the ref's shoes. Subconsciously, I'm not saying this has happened consciously. Do you want to appease and make happy 40,000 people, or do you want them whistling at you and booing you? So I'm not saying they're deliberately doing. I'm just saying if you put yourself in that situation, you are a human being. You feel the energy. You feel the excitement. You don't want to piss them off. And if it's a fifty fifty call and it's Lionel Messi, the greatest player who's ever played the game, you're probably gonna give him the benefit of the doubt. And that's just the reality. And it again, is it fair? Is it right? Probably not. But it is just part of it. And, oh, by the way, he's earned it. I mean, he has. And so has Argentina. They've they've won the World Cup. They're back in the final again. They've earned that. Does it really decide the match? No. But on the margins, it can tilt things a little bit more in their favor. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, in this Ben Hinton had a question that kinda ties into this, maybe treated fairly, unfairly. In our last game, The US, you know, there was a red card given prior. You weren't supposed to play in the next, match. What do you. think on on that scenario? Were we of thoughts. treated on you know, is the other team treated unfairly there or, Belgium? Yeah. So we played against Bosnia. And at the near the end of the game, Flo Baligen, our striker, gets a red card. If you pull, James, if you pulled 900 or if you pulled a thousand former soccer players at any level, 999 would say there's never a scenario where that's a red card. It's. unfortunate. It's a coming together. It sucks for the Bosnian player. It's not a red card. Okay? The problem is we now have video review that, in my opinion, is just way overthinking things. And when you put it in a still shot and you see what happened, you can go, oh, well, that's a really reckless, dangerous challenge. Maybe have a look. I think it's a red card. In the end, they make the wrong decision to give him a red card. Yeah. And if we if US soccer were allowed to just go through the normal protocols to try to get the red card either rescind rescinded or suspended, and FIFA decided to. rescind it or suspend it, it would have been fine. The problem is is it became political. Yeah. It got to the presidential level, and then it became this really murky, messy situation. And the person I feel bad for is Flo Balligan because he's a really amazing young man. He handled everything perfectly the the entire way. So now all of a sudden, he becomes a bit of a villain. Of course, The US becomes a villain because they're seen to have received favorable favorable treatment, and they probably did. And in the end, it actually hurt us because I. don't know that it impacted our performance, but it certainly motivated the Belgians. And the Belgians played their best game of the tournament by a million miles. And so it was just a really unfortunate situation that could have been avoided on so many levels. In the end, it was right that he was allowed to play the match. Just the process by which it happened really made it murky. Yeah. For sure. And you don't wanna give the competition an edge in any moment. No. No. James, like, at this level, you cannot overestimate or overstate, sorry, professional pride in athletes. I mean, these are athletes with massive ego. And all of a sudden, they felt slighted and aggrieved and, like, the world was against them and The US was against them and FIFA was against them. And they're like, okay. Let's let's we'll we'll do this on the field and see how this goes. It was the worst case scenario for us. No doubt. Shifting gears a little bit, early on, you said, you know, you've cleared, the you know, any speculation on who you believe is the greatest ever. Obviously, Muncie is your choice amongst many others. But just in terms of who you played with, who's the best ever? This was a question from Vinny. Who's the best player that you've ever shared the field with? Well, played with or, I mean, played against was. messy. Let's let's do both. Played with Sure. and against. So played with was a guy named Robbie Keane who was an Irish international who I got had the pleasure of playing with at the LA Galaxy, and he was by a long way the best player I ever played with. He. wasn't the most, spectacular or sexy or aesthetically appeasing on the field, but he sometimes you just have players that you connect with on the field. And from the first training session, we just we understood each other. And we were both sort of very clever in how we moved and how we manipulated defenses and how we put them under pressure. And so it was such an immense joy to play with him. So he was the best ever. The best I ever played against, I had the misfortune of playing against both Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi in their prime, and both in different ways were a nightmare to play against. Messi because in his prime, especially, and I saw it again last night, he's almost impossible to get the ball off of. It's almost impossible. And in soccer, almost any professional, 99.9% of professionals I played against. If I wanted to really try to get the ball off and or just foul them, I could do so Yeah. as a professional. With Messi, you can't. You can try to foul him, and he just bounces off you. You can try to get the ball, and he just goes by you. And it's it's virtually impossible to get the ball off of him. With Cristiano Ronaldo, I never played against a physical specimen like that. It's probably akin to, like, LeBron in his prime. I was thinking that. just these are the best athletes in the world, and LeBron runs by him runs by them at will. And Christiana would do that. If he decided he was gonna run by you, there was nothing you could do. You just try to get back in position and slow him down. But if he if that was his mindset, there's nothing you could do. And so those two in different ways, I don't know that there will ever be another like them in the way that they both played. They were just so special. Absolutely. Well, there's only one of them left, that we'll see again Sunday here. Yep. Another question here from Adam. I like this. I'm curious your thoughts here. What's the most important quality you would want from a player if you were the coach of the US men's national team? It's a great question. This will this would have changed over generations. And for this generation, trying to think of the right word, I would say probably competitive spirit. Yeah. For what whatever reason, I mean, I have my theories, we do not have enough players playing at the highest level in this country who have a crazy competitive nature. We don't. And we saw it. It it it sort of came to light in the Belgium game. Right? There were lots of things and lots of reasons and lots of scenarios, and and and and we talked about the red card and the psychological piece, whatever. But when I watched the game, I didn't see enough guys who were just crazy competitive and didn't wanna lose the game, and were willing to literally do anything to not lose the game. So I think that becomes, in this generation, the most important quality. In generations past, 95% of the players had that, so you didn't have to think about it. That was a starting point. Then there are other things that we were lacking. But that would've that would be now. If if I'm scouting or looking at players, I wanna see that first because that can get you I mean, Argentina last night just refused to lose the game. Yep. They did. It was just your will. Yes. They're talented, and they make plays, and they have Messi and all that, but they just refused to lose the game. There's someone not gonna lose the game, and they will themselves to victory. And and that is a very vital quality. No doubt. In in my organization, we talk a lot about skill will, and you have to have both. But if you only have skill and not the will like you're talking about, you you just you you're gonna fall short. That's right. So, Landon, you're amazing. Thank you so much for the time today. Just a wonderful conversation. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. Any final words for everyone who's listening? Thank you for having me, and it's been my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity, and I I'm just really grateful that someone who's since I was nine months old, I had a soccer ball on my feet. And so I really love this game. I'm I'm really enjoying the country seeing this game in a new way, in a new light for the first time ever. It's been really enjoyable for me because I've been an ambassador and trying to grow this sport forever. So I'm really grateful for people being open minded and letting it happen. And then, also, I'm really proud of our country because I travel a lot, and I've traveled the world many times over. And a lot of places you go have a negative, thought about how what America is. And I just think our our country showcased how amazing this country is, and it was really inspiring for all of us because we live in obviously difficult times right. now, the last, you know, years, decade, whatever. And it's been really cool to see the world see us in a new light and really enjoy America and appreciate America and very proud of it. I am, despite what, you know, what we said about the Belgium game, very proud of our team and what they did because they really did inspire our country for three weeks. And we were all united and excited and proud of what they were doing. So it was an incredible month in that way, and we got one more amazing game. We have a third, fourth game on Saturday, but one more amazing game on Sunday, and it's gonna be a lot of fun. No doubt about that. Landon, thank you. Take care. My pleasure. Thank you. See you.