Ive seen futebol highlights on Sportscenter, but its during the EspnDesportes update at night, of course their no MLS, but the other night 3 of the top 10 plays were soccer ones.
Personally I think both are important, but I believe we need to start winning over fans here and making our league viable on our own before we can start expecting Europe to become considerably more interested. If we don't have knowledgeable fans filling the soccer specific stadiums here while Europe is watching, what is that going to look like? Even if the product on the field is good, the atmosphere won't be there and that will hurt the image. It's like when you watch a Serie A game after the fans have been prohibited from attending the games for a period of time... the atmosphere is terrible... the game play is still good, but there is no emotion, and it definitely takes away from the experience of watching a game. So, my answer is, we need to attract more fans here in the U.S., both traditional soccer fans that have not began to support MLS yet but do support other foreign leagues, and nontraditional fans that just haven't been exposed to soccer enough.
www.cnnsi.com consistently has a soccer article or 2 on the front page, about 95% of the time dealing with USMNT or MLS ESPN's lame-o Soccernet page almost never has anything about MLS or USA on it ESPN has really got something backwards up in the tower i thought they would jump all over this thing but apparently their letting other people do this
and i think ratings in the USA are infinitely more important if the american people get behind this thing, then intl respect and recognition undoubtedly follows but if we try to cater to europeans, more and more americans will think of us as almost like a minor leagues for european soccer we should build up our american fanbase thats priority #1
Thank you bvolt3000! Someone that finally realizes how this whole thing works. No one used to give NASCAR a sniff. All of a sudden it's the fastest growing sport in America and, voila! SportsCenter is all over it and they get a full time show in NASCAR Tonight. Soccer already has loads more coverage than it did 10 years ago. As long as we continue to develop young stars and the quality of MLS, then soccer will slowly grow into a player on the American scene. Increased access to European soccer via the Internet and FSC has really helped the grassroots movement.
Oye, great point. I remember when they were doing the Gold Cup Final highlights, they had it going on with the FSC announcer, and Cohn was doing everything she could to ridicule the announcer (english-speaking announcer btw). He would cheer "yyyyeeeeaaaaaahhhh" everytime his country USA scored, and she would ask "why is he yelling"? "Oh, when someone scores a goal in soccer, you yell". "Oh, okay. Hmmm." They totally ignored the fact that the announcer's home country was about to win the CONCACAF Championship. What's REALLY ironic about that is what ESPNEWS and SportsCenter do for NFL Announcers. They actually have a segment during the regular season where they broadcast NFL PBP Announcers screaming or cheering when their team makes a great play. I can't remember the name of that segment, but I think it's called "Sounds of the Game". They encourage the announcer excitement. Then those same SportsCenter hosts ridicule soccer announcers for showing pride or cheering when someone scores?
[hyperbole]guys do we even need further proof that espn hates the mls it only bought the rights to it to crush it and make sure it doesnt grow in popularity[/hyperbole]
even the ESPN bloggers are negative toward US soccer. they rarely sound excited, and merely make neutral comments at best.
Honestly, you have to take it from the point of view of sportscenter. It's not the most popular sport in the country by far. (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=622). The fact is that they have more people watching "Who will win the NFC Central" than an MLS recaps. Also, as mentioned before, MLS is only in 11 markets in the US and on top of it the games are spread out all over the week. Saturday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday... Sportscenter has to cover 10 baseball games tonight and those each take a couple of minutes to cover: various plays, pitching problems, HR updates, why the Yankees are falling apart. There is a lot to cover in baseball and lots of film of it... soccer will only have one game played today. If the game ends in 0-0 do you really expect them to cover it? That all being said, it would be nice for someone in ESPN to have some foresight and start to cover it more. As for now, we should count our blessings that we have what we do: 1. Thursday night game 2. Ticker at the bottom with updates 3. ESPY award (I hope every has voted) 4. ESPN Desportes coverage There are plenty of sports in this country that would love to just have ONE of those above.
Why does ESPN shove NHL highlites down our throats when noone watches the league? Even WNBA get highlites.
1. That's a big positive. The announcers have gotten much better, and the fans are really fun to watch at certain locations. The only problem I have is that the MLS Thursday Night commercials they have look extremely childish, and don't seem to help the show or the league any. Look at how flashy the NASCAR, NFL, etc. commercials look before a race or game, then look at MLS's "you're a fan, you just don't know it yet." 2. That's good news, and is a positive 3. The MLS category is good and all, but name one soccer player this year, male or female, nominated for any other category, like say, best male athlete? 4. That's cool too, but it will only be cooler when you don't have to specially order it, and it becomes as available as ESPN, ESPNEWS, and ESPN2
Yeah, Linda Cohn sucks. A year ago, I was watching Sports Center and she was doing highlights for some soccer game. The player hit a BEAUTIFUL bicycle from 20 yards out; all Linda could think of was "nice J." I could understand her calling a slide volley a jumpshot, but a bike?! Sport Center sucks for soccer and I don't watch it much anymore either.
That's it. ESPN has no understanding of the game. I suspect the power structure there and the talent, meaning the sportscasters have never stepped on soccer pitch. They are all over 40 and hate the game they now are to old to learn. It's simple demographics. When American people who have actually played the game come into power at ESPN that will be a big jump in the right direction for soccer. Right now all we get is 10 seconds of coverage per week along with a couple sarcastic snickers and remarks from those dinosaurs.
Prolly not the right thread but I think I just heard Wynalda take a dig at BigSoccer posters on the DCU v Rapids broadcast...
Haha...you beat me to it. So I guess I wasnt the only one who heard it. Eric To Tommy Smyth said something along the lines of "Save that for Big Soccer, those guys are real Geniuses."
I thinkg a possible reason for the ESPN community for not promoting soccer enough is they may fear a negative reaction from a large segment of fans (the ones who refuse to give soccer a chance) Is this true I have no idea but i'm just throwing it out there. It seems to me that the people on the show just cannot get excited about a sport on the station dubbed "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" It also dusgusts me that on PTI they'd rather talk about celebritys for 2 minutes rather than the Thursday night MLS game or say the KC vs NYRB game a while back. I also about threw my weiner dog across the room when ESPN played the movie "3" in the afternoon when i see it feasable for them and the MLS to schedule a game at that time. It's like they want to show soccer but dont want to put in the effort.
This is why I'm more than a little worried about the rumor that ESPN was interested in buying Setanta. Unless they allowed Setanta to operate as a seperate entity within ESPN, that is. But if they simply gutted Setanta that would suck bad. ESPN wants to be the world leader in sports, yet they do indeed have a very provincial, American-sports-only mindset. It's a far cry from he old ESPN that used to show Aussie rules football and rugby league. For that matter ABC Sports/ESPN is a far cry from the old ABC Wide World of Sports, that went out of its way to show the new and unusual and the less popular, but often more interesting, sporting events, rather than just the endless round of baseball-football-basketball-baseball-football-basketball that most US sports coverage consists of.
The game here is survival. All the MLS really needs to do to achieve what it wants is to keep doing what it's doing. Give it 30 years. Seriously. Sounds like a long time because it is. Soccer is still a huge youth sport in this country. When the current "soccer generation" (i'd say people born between 1970-1990) gets older (which it is starting to do) they're going to have kids which will become an even larger soccer generation. The MLS has done an amazing job of creating a stable top tier league that can survive and support itself. Now all we really gotta do is wait around for the breeding.