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US Announcers Must Improve

April 18th, 2006 | By: Tom Ernst | 14 Comments »

If we’re ever going to be anything approaching a soccer nation, the announcing has got to improve (and maybe someone in Bristol, CT will actually read this?).

Personally, I love Derek Rae, and like J.P. Dellacamera (can he do more men’s games?). Both of them concentrate on the game, tell us accurately and crisply who is playing the ball at the moment, and make intelligent extra comments that don’t intrude on what’s happening on the field. (And Rae can actually pronounce international players’ names correctly!) A good announcer like Rae lets his partner provide the more detailed soccer analysis. I like Smyth, despite some extraneous comments –- he knows his stuff.

I find Rob Stone adequate (if only that). But he is really boosted by Eric Wynalda’s insightful, honest, and interesting commentary. I think Wynalda is developing into the best color man since Seamus Malin (who was excellent, and I miss him). His long experience on the field, personal knowledge of the MLS players and coaches, and ability to tell us quickly and succinctly why something happened, or even better, what WILL happen, makes games more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, from there it’s a long and awful fall -— can’t Dave O’Brien or Glenn Davis talk about the GAME occasionally instead of players’ hairstyles or Grandmas? The main announcer should be like a good ref: keeping things going unobtrusively, helping out, and keeping order, but otherwise mostly unnoticed. These guys misidentify players more than they should, sometimes contradict themselves, say things that the color man has to correct, repeatedly come back to minor themes like the weather or a player’s torturous path to MLS or where so-and-so used to play -– stuff we might like to hear once, but not 3-4 times, when there are so many things to say about the game (or just shut up and let us watch).

Finally, Marcelo Balboa has some useful comments, but he tends to repeat himself and some of what he says is pretty obvious. And if I hear him say “nice-n-easy” one more time I’m gonna turn the tube off for good and watch curling or roller derby.

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Comments

By Tre | April 18th, 2006 at 6:08 pm

How about Tommy Smyth - that guys has no idea about soccer. ESPN thinks that they stick some dude with a british accent, and presto we have a soccer expert. The guy is also very anti-latin teams. Especially if there are any argentinians.

Posted from United States

By Euler | April 18th, 2006 at 6:19 pm

They should hire me! My english is good and I wouldn’t charge much… he he he

By Rick | April 18th, 2006 at 9:17 pm

On the bright side, for the World Cup there will have to be several announcing teams. So we’ll at least get some variety. Cantor/Lalas anyone? Bob Ley and Seamus Malin are my dream team for the World Cup. Maybe we’ll get lucky….

I hate to dis Marcelo, because he’s an icon…but I dislike his announcing. I don’t really put him too far above Ty Keough. I can stand both, but they grate on me. Typically Ty would make about 3 or 4 comments per game that would leave me shaking my head, and it’s nearly as bad with Marcelo. Sometimes they’re just little things, like, “The MLS”, but in the last couple of games he’s made statements that leave me wondering just how much overall knowledge he has of the game. Not the first time an athlete has done so, I suppose.

Ray Hudson is entertaining and less annoying than Tommy Smyth, but they’re both knowledgable. I agree that Ray Hudson would be good in the studio.

I don’t recall hearing Rae do any games. What does he cover?

By Rick | April 18th, 2006 at 9:19 pm

PS: (I put a :groan: after the Cantor/Lalas comment, but it was in HTML brackets and didn’t show up. Guess you had to be there….)

By Steve | April 18th, 2006 at 9:44 pm

Unfortunately, I always wish I could mute the TV and put on some “home-town” radio… for example, I dont know if any of you watch “American football” but, I typically mute the national announcers and listen to the home radio station… the reason if of course two things, I WANT a biased announcer for our games… when someone sucks really bad and takes terrible touches, they always let it go like oh, ooops, bad bounce… no, it actually is that we have a lack of skill often times and its upsurd to simply dismiss it…

the british announcers, if you watch EPL, if they miss even the slightest of a chance, even if its not even really a shot, they get “that was an awful play” etc… us, we miss an open shot on the 6 and its eww unlucky… not at all

further, i’d like the announcers to, as i said, really promote our team… thats how it is in other countries, especially Europe and latin/south america…

anyway, i will still REALLY enjoy watching the games A LOT!!!

Posted from United States

By Karl | April 19th, 2006 at 2:30 am

I just have to point out that Tommy Smyth has an Irish accent not a “british accent” as someone said earlier.

With so much left to be desired from the state of soccer in this country, it’s hard for me to have a strong opinion about announcers.

The job of an announcer is pretty much to state the obvious. I leave the sound on primarily for the fan noise.

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By Seamus | April 19th, 2006 at 7:18 am

First thing I’d like to point out is that Tommy Smyth is IRISH. That’s not the same as BRITISH.

For play-by-play guys I think Derek Rae is decent (he’s Scottish). JP Della’Camera, Bob Ley and Phil Schoen are all decent enough and more importantly they are soccer fans. So I would like to see those three as the main play-by-play guys. Mike Hill was the best of the bunch doing Champion’s League stuff about 10 years ago–but I think he’s retired.

For color commentators I haven’t heard any decent Americans since Seamus Malin. Ty Keough was a laughing stock. The new crop of Balboa, et al are just awful. But I do love Ray Hudson for the flair and personality, but his accent is too heavy for the xenophobic network executives (they think ordinary Americans will tune out when they hear a foreigner.)

I’d rather see ESPN contract some English announcers just for the World Cup. Don’t you think it would be easier for a seasoned Brit like Martin Tyler to brush up on the American team in enough time to do a better job than Dave O’Brien, who has to learn the actual game first? That way we’d get a soccer-knowledgable guy. ESPN could use studio time for all the “human interest” pieces and keep the personal anecdotes out of the actual game broadcast.

Stick Wynalda and Balboa in the studio for halftime, etc and let them banter away about their WC experiences past. And for the love of god leave Giorgio Chinaglia at home.

SUMMARY: I’d rather see someone like Martin Tyler with Seamus Malin, but I could live with JP, Phil, or Derek Rae with Ray Hudson

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By Tom | April 19th, 2006 at 8:00 am

(First of all, Scottish *is* British; it’s just not ENGLISH.) I agree that ESPN should bring Bob Ley back. As for Phil Schoen, I haven’t heard him in 6-7 years, and maybe he’s improved, but back then I thought he was awful(once, after he talked completely through a goal on some irrelevant subject, I actually wrote ESPN a complaint letter). As for color guys, I do want to stick up for Wynalda: I think he’s pretty good — though Seamus Malin is still the best choice.

By Seamus | April 19th, 2006 at 9:09 am

I didn’t say that British was *only* English. But I can see that when I specified that Derek Rae was Scottish you could infer that I was delineating Irish/British/Scottish.

However, I know the differences quite well, as I am Irish/Welsh and my wife is English

Seriously though, as the debate about the nationality of England’s next manager shows, the entity, British, is a dubious distinction. Martin O’Neill is “British” enough to be the England manager…but what about Sir Alex?

Posted from United States

By Tom | April 19th, 2006 at 10:47 am

(My apologies to Seamus; I simply misread his comment. Good thing I’m not an announcer, hunh?)

By Paul | April 19th, 2006 at 11:44 am

You should check out this petition going around to try and get ESPN to get some decent announcers.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/World_Cup_Announcers

Lets hope we don’t have to endure a summer of Glen Davis or Dave O’Brien. My ears will start bleeding.

Posted from United States

By Seamus | April 19th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

Sorry to say but that petition is next to useless. The business of televising soccer ignores the hardcore fans. Networks believe that the core fans will tune in no matter what. Their job is to grab the casual viewer and keep them watching. That’s why all you hear is that Keller lives in a castle and Freddy Adu came here from Ghana as a child. It’s fluff for “soccer moms”

Now I don’t agree with this approach. I think soccer will remain a niche TV sport in this country until the US Men can consistently compete at or near the very top, and no amount of heartwarming anecdotes are gonna make a ratings difference until then. So until we reach that level, marketing suits and network execs will continue to pry extra revenue by forsakeing “real fans.” I don’t watch many MLS matches because I don’t have a home market to root for since the Fusion folded and I think the general coverage stinks. I’d rather watch higher quality matches on other networks.

I’m of the opinion that ESPN doesn’t care a wink what we think about their announcers. So are there enough core fans that’ll watch the WC on Univision instead?

The catch-22 is that if the core fans defect from ESPN the likely scenario is that they’ll drop the coverage entirely next time around instead of improving things for the ones who consistently tune in.

Posted from United States

By Rick | April 19th, 2006 at 2:59 pm

Seamus, I don’t disagree with your comments, but I still think it’s good to let the network know what we think, if for no other reason than to make sure we’re heard. I don’t think it will hurt, and could help in the long run.

In fact, I would submit that being the longsuffering “core” fan who simply puts up with crap announcing will do more harm than good. I guess I’m just a little surprised that the premier sports channel in the U.S. can take such a half-assed approach to a sport like soccer. I’d like to be patient and say, “Eventually they’ll get it right”, but the improvements have been marginal over the past several years. If you’re going to do it, do it right for crying out loud.

Despite the shortcomings, I’m not going to turn down the sound. Now, I speak Spanish fluently, but for national team games broadcast on both ESPN and Telemundo, I’ll take ESPN unless the air times differ. However, it’s definitely not because of the announcer quality. I have three reasons: 1) I just more enjoy listening in my native language, 2) I want to support the network so that coverage and quality will continue (hopefully) to improve, and 3) morbid curiosity.

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By Evan | April 19th, 2006 at 6:06 pm

Of the GolTV crew, I think Lindsay Dean is the best. I don’t like Phil Schoen at all, and I think Ray Hudson tries too hard to be funny most of the time…and he needs to learn a new adjective besides “superlative”.

But they all put Dave O’Brien to shame. He doesn’t use proper English–he repeatedly used “defense” as a verb during the Poland game, instead of “defend”–as in, “well defensed by the US!”. How about “poor use of English by O’Brien there–that’ll be a yellow!”

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