Ahhh, the unique experience of watching soccer games accompanied by American commentators and produced by Americans. We don’t want to tie this to recent global geopolitical developments, namely the rising tide of anti-Americanism throughout the world, but theses games probably aren’t helping.

Soccer Friendly Producers?
The producers must have been hired out of the football or baseball world, judging by their love of on-screen graphics and obscure statistics. The camera angles are often awkward, making it difficult for the viewer to gain an accurate perspective. During the recent Galaxy-Chivas game, for example, viewers missed most of the scrum that followed the Beckham-Marsch confrontation, because the camera was on Beckham. Two red cards were issued, yet the viewer saw only half of the first booking, and missed the yellow card handed out to Marsch.

In addition, the replays are ill-timed, often inappropriate. These games often feature interviews in the middle of the action—sometimes there’s no soccer player interviewed at all, but the producers see fit to cut away from a game in progress to a solitary ‘correspondent’ for a pseudo-news ‘update.’

Commentator (In)Competence
Finally, the commentators. We’re thinking especially of the commentators for the U.S. men’s national team, who can do no wrong in their eyes. During the recent Copa America, in which the men’s team were thrashed by superior teams (though some point out that the men took what amounted to a ‘B’ squad composed mostly of younger players—an insult in itself to all of South America and to the storied tournament), their comments often ran to things like ‘an unfortunate result’ and ‘they deserved better’ and ‘the scoreboard did not reflect the game.’ In the recent U.S.-Sweden game, one of the commentators said ‘I liked the way they came out tonight,’ despite the team’s lackluster (to be generous) performance.

Regarding Eric Wynalda, we could write a whole article on why Eric drives us crazy but here is a few lines instead; There is no denying he has been there and done that but must he always manage to pepper each comment he makes with a personal (and boring) anecdote from his playing days, and lets not go into detail about his halftime “red cards” and “orange slices.” One can only hope that as soccer picks up in the US commentators will become more aware of the sport they are watching.