How not to cover soccer

By Zach Ricchiuti

On the sad state of affairs that is U.S. television's soccer coverage.

Readers, prepare for a rant. I am angry. I am angry and disappointed with a lot of things really, but for right now, I’m especially angry and disappointed at the quality of soccer coverage in America.

Basketball, football and baseball fans, you have no idea how lucky you are. Turn on the radio in the morning and there will be at least 10 stations full of talking heads overanalyzing the latest press conferences and games from the day before. News outlets devote whole sections to NFL, MLB, and NBA reporting online, in print and on television. And frankly, it has made me a very bitter and jealous soccer fan.

Soccer in the U.S. is growing. The double-Windsored douchebags on Sportscenter might still chuckle every time a brilliant Champions League goal sneaks into the week’s top 10, but it is. Soccer is now the number two sport for children aged 12 to 24, and the MLS is the third-best attended sport in the nation.These are tangible signs of traction, and that's without counting the the "I don't like soccer, but I watch the World Cup" crowd that surfaces every four years by the millions.

Yet that growing contingent of soccer fans must find its fix among the table scraps on the Internet and specialty channels like Fox Soccer. Don't get me wrong, the Internet is a fantastic source, and likely the number one contributor to the Premier League’s explosive popularity around the world. How else would people watch a Manchester United game from a tiny 75th-floor apartment somewhere in Singapore? But if the sport is going to continue growing here in the U.S., there needs to be a serious change in the way that the media cover the sport.

Now, I don't consider myself a typical American soccer fan. I am an addict. So I understand that the U.S. media might not be able to cater to my specific needs. That's okay. I can live with that. I have enough sources that cater to sickos like me who actually want to know how an 18-year old Arsenal player is doing during his time on loan in Spain’s second division.

But for the love of the game, what is with the programming shoveled down fan’s throats by the major soccer television channels? Fox Soccer is the main culprit. Despite controlling the most most marketable and widely consumer soccer league in the world, the Premier League, the lack of content and quality analysis that this channel offers is stupendously low.

For example, FSC’s main news channel has a section called “The Banter Zone.” You read that right. For 10 minutes each night, this “flagship news show” (FSC’s words, not mine) puts some soccer-illiterate, faux-hawked tool on air to reel off inane Twitter postings about whether or not David Beckham will start for PSG. It barely attempts to take itself seriously, which is a shame because we only got to this point after the channel rebranded itself and dumped Bobby McMahon, one of the finest soccer analysts on American television.

And while any reputable soccer match program around the world knows that two central production elements are the pre- and post-match interviews with players and managers, Fox Soccer instead blesses us with Eric Wynalda and Warren Barton, who hate each other so much that you’d think Barton slept with Wynalda’s wife (It was actually John Harkes, in 1998). Poor Rob Stone is left to mediate while trying to maintain a shred of the show’s dignity and steer it in the right direction. Meanwhile, Brian McBride stands there, dazed and confused. He’s useless.

The rest of Fox Soccer’s lineup consists of replayed FA cup games from the 1990’s, and the occasional gift from God that is the Premier League Review Show. The review show is far and away the only quality piece, which makes sense because it is taken directly from England’s Sky Sports.

Where is the analysis, Fox Soccer? Where is the comprehensive coverage of the best league in the world? Simply showing three hours of Premier League soccer every Saturday and Sunday morning is not enough to keep this channel alive.

Which brings me to ESPN. The condescending attitude that has permeated ESPN’s culture in the way it reports on soccer is one of the major reasons the sport has failed to find a foothold with the average American sports viewer. The network broadcasts the MLS, the World Cup and parts of the Premier League, and yet ignores the sport on its various highlight and analysis shows. Just because Mike and Mike in the Morning don’t care about soccer doesn’t mean that the rest of the country feels the same way.

And ESPN has the talent to cover the sport with the same obsessive passion it does everything else, if it ever decides that it wants to. Online contributors like Roger Bennett, Michael Cox and Dave Hirshey are among the world’s top soccer writers, but get little television exposure and none of the premier spots on the website.

Thankfully, newcomers NBC Sports and BeIn Sports are trying to pick up the slack. Soccer is a regular part of the highlight rotation during NBC shows, and BeIn’s coverage of La Liga and Serie A are textbook examples of how to cover soccer. Highlight shows? Check. Quality ex-player analysis? Check. Pundits who know what they’re talking about? Check. Non-ex-player talking heads who bring an interesting perspective to the game? Check. Beautiful, knowledgeable women to introduce segments and do interviews? Check, check, check.

The old “nobody in the U.S. cares about soccer” argument doesn’t work anymore. Two or three games a week is not enough anymore to satisfy American soccer fans’ ravenous appetite, and there are signs that the media are slowly getting that picture. But it will be up to the major television outlets to put the final nail in that myth. When that happens, I pray that The Banter Zone is killed along with it.

Zach Ricchiuti is a contributor and resident soccer expert for Began in '96.