Soccer: A real man's sport.
Posted on 07/06/2006 8:55:05 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
The World Cup is generating record television audiences for soccer in the U.S. But some diehard fans think the coverage deserves a red card.
Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and ABC have been hit with complaints from soccer devotees that their telecasts are unsophisticated and mistake-ridden. The popular Web site Big Soccer has a thread titled "Pick your favorite insane thing said by the announcers so far."
A major gripe: ESPN selected an announcer, Dave O'Brien, who had never called a soccer game before this year to serve as the tournament's lead play-by-play man. Some English-speaking viewers have switched to Spanish-language Univision, which has out-rated ESPN and its sister cable network ESPN2 on average for the tournament in Germany.
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"They're trying to give us all this information to show us how much they know," says Steven Cohen, who has bashed ESPN on his "World Soccer Daily" show on Sirius Satellite Radio. "All they're showing us is how much they don't know."
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The soccer executives opposed the appointment of Mr. O'Brien. Their argument: using an announcer unfamiliar with the sport might not help ratings but certainly could hurt them. "Would you ever put a guy who had never called a sport before ... in the World Series, the Super Bowl or the Olympics?" a senior U.S. soccer executive says. "Never."
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
ping
"Soccer", what's that?
I thought ESPN was pretty good.
Is there an ESPN announcer who knows anything about anything?
"Soccer", what's that?
Kickball for girly-men?
And I don't speak a word of Spanish.
I've replayed the Univision feed (and announcer's call) of the 2 Italy goals in the semi-final about 4 times already.
Almost gives me goose-bumps, and I was actually rooting for Germany (a little).
It's like bringing in a rookie broadcaster to call the World Series. O'Brien was over his head, had little to no history on the teams and players, and emphasised the wrong things. In our house, we turned off the sound and my teenaged soccer playing daughter made the calls.
ESPN's coverage has been pretty good, considering that they are almost novices at doing so.
Please, enlighten us all with your athletic exploits....
Germany played a great game except in the last two minutes. That is the nature of soccer, and you have to be on it every minute - mistakes are punished, and mistakes in the World Cup especially so. Ask the US mens team. It may be that the US will be able to rightfully say that they played the world champion team to a draw. Yes it was an own goal that equalized, but own goals don't just happen. They are generally the result of overwhelming pressure by the opposing team.
Football where people actually use their feet??
Eastcoast Sports Propoganda Network
Saying the Spanish stations are getting a lot of viewers because of the poor ESPN announcing overlooks that fact that the Spanish audience is more into soccer than the anglo crowd is and also overlooks all the people who watch the games on the Spanish stations simply because they don't have cable.
If the non-Spanish-speaking viewers were wanting to avoid the ESPN announcers I would think they would be more likely just to turn down the volume rather than switch to a station where they can't understand the language at all.
That's just it. They are NOT NOVICES. ESPN has been broadcasting WC games since the '86 tournament. That means this is the 6th tourney they've done, with some of the same people calling the game, and they've gotten NO BETTER! They've even regressed in some ways.
Here in Canada all the games are televised, split between CTV and TSN. One network runs a game live and the other does the repeat later in the day. It's actually a warm up for how they'll team up for the next Olympics. The play by play is the ITN feed from England and the coverage has been excellent.
“During an earlier game, an announcer referred to a team in Scotland as Glasgow United. The correct name is Rangers.”
Heh, he’d better steer clear of any Celtic fans for a while :o)
“During a first-round match, ESPN nearly missed a goal by Mexico because a producer had cut to videotape of the U.S. team practicing.”
Oooh, that is really bad.
I have to say, watching soccer with foreign commentators really doesn’t hurt that much if you know the game. You might miss the odd detail but not having to listen to bad commentary is adequate compensation.
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