Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - You are right on the money. The poor quality of the ABC production was stunning. Like you, I was hoping that the only opportunity taken since the opening match ceremonies to say anything about the World Cup event itself was a flat out embarrassment.

Brent Musburger's efforts at commentary were inane. It would have been nice if he had made some effort to pronounce the player's names correctly, especially after hearing Foudy and Wynalda discussing the exact same players. For example, how bright do you have to be to figure out the Portuguese name Gomes does not rhyme with "homes"? Or that Zidane does not rhyme with "alone". Brent couldn't even get the name of the stadium in Berlin right. It remains truly embarrassing that our broadcasters in sports are so cavalier about this aspect of the subject they are covering. It is a simple lack of respect and competence that they continue to butcher peoples' names. If they can hire people to feed them obscure statistics, surely they can get sound clips of the players names to practice with?. Sorry, but I really get irritated by such unprofessionalism.

Another irritation with Musburger was his unsuccessful attempts to place his commentary in some historical context, as if that would deflect away from his obvious lack of soccer knowledge. In the third place match, for example, in an apparent bid to place West Germany's 1954 World Cup win over then-powerhouse Hungary in some historic context, he referred to the existence of the Berlin Wall. Uh, the Berlin Wall's construction wasn't started until 1961.

While the various ex-player "Analysts" were okay (Marcello really should resist the temptation to make stupid/negative comments about players in the game while regaling us about what he would do in their situation), and ESPN's "Play-by-Play" announcers were okay, but the two ABC guys JP Dellacamera and Dave O'Brien were without doubt simply god-awful. According to ESPN, JP has annoyed fans of the last six World Cups. Since ABC Sports has the rights to broadcast the English language coverage of the World Cup through 2014, I can only hope someone can get through to them to not make the same outrageous mistakes they made this time, which leads me to the single most ridiculous thing ABC pulled.

How do they get off not making scheduling provisions for the World Cup Final that go all the way through to the awards ceremony without getting interrupted with Golf coverage? Not just once, but twice, they cut over to Golf coverage already underway. It absolutely underscores the total idiocy of ABC Sports management, and the lack of respect for the game, and for the fans who have been following the tournament for a whole month, to cut off in the middle of the penalty kicks, then again during the presentation ceremony. Somehow I doubt that the NBA Final, a World Series game, or the Superbowl would get cut off in such a manner.

Were it any other sport championship, there would have been a true pre-show (rather than 30 minutes of commercials interspersed with occasional Musburger babblings), not to mention a post-game wrap-up and and coverage of the Golden Boot award, Best Young Player award, Most Exiting Team award, best strikes of the tournament, overview of the referees impact on the games, background on the next cup, etc., that would have more than covered any air time after the end of the match due to it having gone to extra time and penalty kicks. Soccer is not the only sport with the possibility of overtime, so how do they botch it? The answer is, of course, that you don't, unless someone at ABC Sports acts on their own personal dumb as rocks opinion that soccer isn't American enough to treat its viewers with the respect accorded to the viewers of any other sports final.

2 - Agreed on all counts. Julie Foudy was decent. Toss the rest. We were SO happy when we would periodically find ourselves watching a match with Tommy Smythe doing the commentary. Marcelo Blab-oa was painful to listen to. Some friends - even though they don't speak Spanish - would tune to the Spanish stations to avoid the incredibly lame US announcers. My son was very happy to be in Spain (he speaks Spanish) and able to watch matches in the local pubs; he said it was pure joy. We probably all need to send emails and faxes to ABC and ESPN and implore them to get some real announcers.... and to consider offering REAL coverage. ...But at least we were able to watch the matches without resorting to Pay-Per-View!