ESPN and the World Cup

An interesting piece from the WSJ about ESPN's extensive (and expensive) coverage of the World Cup.

Getting people who actually know about soccer / football to cover the matches is a good idea; I think I would have been inclined to have some more familiar faces and voices as well to make the enterprise seem a bit less foreign to US viewers.

I liked this bit:

If NBC managed to get a prime-time audience for curling at the winter Olympics, the cable network can surely generate buzz for the world's most popular sport.

My sense from the selected sample around me is that US interest in soccer is growing steadily over time. Now if only I could get my slingbox to work ...

And then the Germans win ...

England is sent home by Germany and the US is sent home by Ghana.

It is nice in a way to see an African team last into the round of eight but now my two favorite teams are both out of the action and I am left to cheer for the Dutch.

The title of the post, of course, is from the famous quote:

"Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end, the Germans win." -- Gary Lineker

Vuvuzela

I was wondering about the background noise in the US vs. England World Cup match yesterday and so I did what you would naturally do, which is to ask some of our clever gradual students, in this case in particular a student from South Africa.

The noise, which sounds like a large number of kazoos droning on and on and on is in fact a large number of vuvuzelas droning on and on and on.

I commend the wikipedia article on vuvuzelas to those who want to know more. It includes some discussion of a possible ban on vuvuzelas at the World Cup, something that obviously did not materialize.

World Cup: USA 1 England 1

Not bad!

The USA goalkeeper is impressive.

Not sure why ABC hired outsiders to do the game, though it was entertaining to hear phrases like "on the margin of what is permissible" which one is not likely to hear from American announcers.

Addendum: on Facebook my colleague Sue Dynarski wonders if the gift goal was an apology for BP. Of course, BP is British Petroleum, not English Petroleum, so perhaps their goalie is just a klutz.

Euro 2008

I watched the final of the Euro 2008 soccer championship yesterday. I got interested as a result of watching the semi-final between Germany and Turkey last Wednesday in Barcelona. The final featured Germany and Spain. Germany is a long-time powerhouse of European football while Spain is a chronic underperformer, having not won a championship in 44 years despite a very strong domestic league and two internationally known teams, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

It was a good game. The flip side of what seems to an American as a game designed to have too little scoring is that most games are "close" most of the time. This game was 1-0 in favor of Spain from 33 minutes in until the end. Germany played really well for about 10-15 minutes after halftime, and had a couple of close shots on goal, but otherwise was outplayed by Spain throughout. One had the sense that Spain wanted the win more than Germany did.

The game was on ABC in the US, which surprised me a bit. I was expecting ESPN-2 or maybe even having to watch it in Spanish. I guess soccer really is getting more popular in the US.

I found myself wanting more commercial breaks - soccer in Europe is played continuously through each half with no stopping, something I think is not true of the US professional soccer league due to the demands of its television contract - so that I could get up and get something to drink or go to the bathroom. Of course, when I watch American football I find that I could do with fewer, though not zero, commerical breaks.

Towards the end of the match, the announcers, two Europeans hired by ESPN, started going on about how a Spanish win would be shared by everyone in Spain. Based on my experience in Barcelona on Thursday night during Spain's semi-final win over Russia 3-0, this is complete rubbish. A few stores closed for the game but basically traffic stayed the same and there was not very much celebration afterwards. The Catalans I talked to were mostly happy for their friends "in Spain" but not deeply moved by the win. I was told that newspaper coverage was entirely about the Catalan players on the Spanish team and not about the team as a whole.

I realized this morning that I actually quite enjoy watching soccer now - not as much as American football or basketball, but surely more than baseball (the great insomnia reliever) and hockey.