First EPISODE

Tommy Slopetkoski introduces his new podcast, Worldly, and talks about his own background and journey from Macedonia to the United States. He discusses the challenges he faced in adapting to a new country and expresses gratitude for the opportunities he now has. Tommy shares his interests in psychology and sports, particularly soccer and basketball. He then goes on to make predictions for the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer competition, discussing each group and his expectations for the teams. Tommy concludes by thanking his listeners and inviting them to the next episode. Hey, welcome to Worldly. This is the first episode of a new podcast created by myself, Tommy Slopetkoski, and my best friend, Philip. Unfortunately, for this first episode, Philip will not be present, and it will just be the host, myself, Tommy, talking about various topics. I will first start talking a little bit about my life, because I think it is important that if you're listening to someone, you want to know what knowledge they have, and where do they get their knowledge, and why you should listen to them. So I'm going to start off talking about my nationality, my home. So I was born in Skopje, the capital of a little country in Eastern Europe called Macedonia. I was born in 2005. I'm 18 years old, and I love sports, politics, and I'm interested in a lot of other topics as well. I came to the United States around five and a half years ago. The journey was not easy, coming to America. It was not easy, but at the end of the day, it's life, and things happen, some for the good, some for the bad. Fortunately, this was one that personally didn't start out the best, but as years passed, I've been fortunate enough to turn my life around. As I first came in the United States, it was not the most enjoyable experience. I was struggling with the language, adapting to the new atmosphere, adapting to the new morals, and making friends, being good in school, doing the things that I liked, were just very hard for me. America is a lot different from where I come from, even though I had a lot of help emotionally and from my parents, from the schools that I attended, but it was still a very, very hard experience for me. I came right before the coronavirus, and as you can imagine, that's probably the worst time to come to a new place to live. But as years have passed by, I've adapted, I would say very good, and now I'm very happy with where I am. I love to be in America now, after growing up a little bit. When you're a kid, the priorities you have are a little different than when you're an adult. When I was a kid, when I came to the United States, my priorities were friends, and quite honestly, girls, and things that a normal teenager would think about, but I would never understand why my family decided to come to the United States, and after a couple of years, I figured out that the hard truth is that America is a wonderful country compared to other countries, which one happens to be Macedonia. Macedonia is currently in a pretty bad state, controlled by a pretty communistic government, and it has been like that for the past 10 years, economically, and on all other levels, the country is in a very bad state. The unemployment rate is very high, and even those who are employed earn very, very, very low wages compared to the expenses, the everyday expenses, and other things like the schools and the hospitals are also at a very bad level compared to the other countries surrounding Macedonia, quite honestly, compared to what they should be. So, therefore, I just want to say that I'm extremely grateful for my parents and the sacrifices that I had to make to come to the United States, and even though the journey was pretty muddy, I think that the destination is the most important part. Journey just shows how important and how big the destination is, and in my case, the destination is perfect, adapting and living here and knowing that I have a lot better life than my classmates and some of my friends that I had in Macedonia. Currently, I'm a college student in the College of DuPage. I'm looking to study psychology. I'm very interested in how the brain operates and the fact that psychology is such a broad topic and there is just so much to learn about that really attracts me, and the fact that every single day we're learning something new about our brain just motivates me to honestly get into that field and to help out, quite honestly. So, psychology is something that I'm very interested in. I also love, love, love playing sports, but not only playing them, but watching them as well, reading about them, being around them. I mean, everything that has to do with sports, I love. So, since a young age, I have played soccer and basketball on a very high level. I played competitive for around 12 years. Currently, I'm a member of the national team of soccer for Macedonia, the under-19 team. That is one of my biggest achievements in my life so far, and I'm looking to go up the ranks and hopefully someday to play for the A team, the national team. My favorite team is Barcelona in Spain, and my favorite player of all time is Lionel Messi. As much as I love soccer, I'm also very interested in basketball, baseball, football, handball, and quite honestly, any sport that exists, I watch it, I know about it. Even though baseball and football are very unknown and strange to the people of my country, and to be honest, I had no idea what baseball and football were five years ago, but it just shows the love that I have for sports because I managed to pick up both of the games and fall in love with both. Honestly, I love to watch them now. I love the Cubs, I love the Bears, and that's just my personality. I'm just very eager to learn. I love to learn, I love to read about different things, I love to talk to people. I feel like talking to people is the best thing you can do. I mean, I think every person has a different story and something they have gone through and something that you can learn from them. Every person carries something with them that they can teach and spread to others. So the biggest message I have for other people listening to this podcast is just to try to understand others and to really try to listen to others even if sometimes it feels like people are not making sense. They are, you just need to maybe switch up the perspective and look at it in a different way. Now that I talked a little bit about myself, I'm going to get into the first episode and actually talk about what the podcast is supposed to be about. So this first episode I'm going to talk about some of my predictions that I have for the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer competition a very important one that takes place every four years. It happens to be this summer in Germany and I'm just going to go over my predictions and who I think will win the whole tournament. I will go over every single group. So there are six groups and I will go after each one and talk about my comments about the teams and who will go through. I will talk about who wins it, I will talk about the best player and I will talk about some other things like what team will surprise and what team will not meet their expectations. So I will start off with group A. We have Germany, Scotland, Hungary and Switzerland. This is a competitive group which I think can go a lot of ways. For me I think Germany as being host, I think anything under a first place finish will be a disappointment for them. Not qualifying for the last Euro, I think that the fans have a lot of expectations in the world for how they will do. So I think Germany will take this first place and then it's going to be a very close battle between Switzerland, Hungary and Scotland. But I think ultimately Switzerland will take the second place as they are in very good form and they have a lot of young talents and they can spark at this next Euro 2024. For the next group, group B, we have Spain, Croatia, Italy and Albania. By a lot of fans this is considered a group of death as we have three top ten countries in one group being Spain, Croatia and Italy. Yet we have a little outsider country of Albania which happened to get in this group. You never know with soccer, so anything can happen. But what I think the group will look like after four games is Spain in first place and then it will be a very close battle between Croatia and Italy. But I think ultimately the golden generation of Croatia has gotten a little bit older and some of the players that had an excellent 2018 World Cup and 2020 Euro have gotten older and some have retired. So I think ultimately Italy will take the second place. Group C, we have Slovenia, Denmark, Serbia and England. This is an interesting group but I think other than the first place being clearly England, I will say that Serbia will be a dark horse and I think they will surprise and finish with second place. The reason behind that answer is I think that Serbia has always been a football powerhouse providing a lot of talent and I think they can show it this year. Group D, we have Poland, Netherlands, Australia and France. I think this is a clear first place from France and a second place finish from the Netherlands. I think this group is a little bit less competitive other than the first place France. I think that Poland are not in the best form and Austria really does not have the talent to keep up with France. I think Netherlands will finish in second place. We have Group B, we have Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia and Belgium. This is one of the less competitive groups that could honestly go either way from one to four. My predictions go with Belgium taking the first place and a very competitive hard battle for the second place which I think will go to Ukraine. Last but not least, we have Group F, Turkey, Georgia, Portugal and the Czech Republic. This will be a very interesting group. I think that Portugal with the talent they have finished first place. I think the second will be taken by Turkey. I think they have a good generation coming up, good talent. I think they will take the second place. Ultimately I think the champion will be England. Second place I think will be France and the dark horse of the tournament I believe to be Serbia. Thank you guys so much for listening. This was World League and I hope to see you at the next episode. Bye bye.