Speaking of production, does anyone happen to know where a HQ download of the match might be at? I found a "ok"ish download (better than nothing) but it would be great to see it a little crisper. I had the most crisp view around at the match itself (when snow wasn't blinding me!) but I want to watch it all again from the different angles. Thanks in advance!
Unfortunately no. Well, it's still early. Maybe one will pop up if I look a bit harder! Thanks for the heads up on ESPN3
Why is everybody focusing on the ball! I'm much more concerned about them wearing a white jersey in a blizzard with no contingency option. At least the ball is a problem for both teams, but not being able to distinguish your team-mates from the blizzard in that fraction of a second you have to get your pass off before getting DeJonged is much more one-sided problem. Nike, you are on notice! Back-up non-white jersey for blizzards!!
One major improvement...Pre-game countdown graphic displayed "Countdown To Kickoff --:--" rather than the decades old "Countdown To Kick --:--" Now if we could get more coverage on sportscenter. 2mins15secs of game highlights(no commentary/analysis or post-game interviews) saturday morning. About 10secs during 'weekend encore' (they did flash the earthquakes goal too btw), and about 10(text only slide) secs of Costa Rica’s protest sunday night. You’d think this would be a featured story especially with Azteca coming up.
https://twitter.com/GrantWahl/status/316024100676042753 Looks like there will be another person for Twellman to talkover on Tuesday.
Say what you want about Twellman, but it could be a LOT worse. Considering that we once had John"Shimmy Shimmy Coco Puffs" Harkes Dave "Michael Beckham" O'Brien Marcelo Balboa etc., Twellman is an improvement
Having grown up listening to John Paul "JP" Dellecamara (NASL & ABC) and Tobey Charles (Soccer Made In Germany) cover the only TV soccer available to most folks in the US, the current batch of talking heads are tolerable. Waldo's a posing, preening idiot. He actually complained during one show on Fox about the ref missing a player being offside on a throw-in (!) while Warren Barton's head was swiveling from Rob Stone to Wynalda to figure out if Waldo was kidding or not.
I thought Twellman was horrible in his complaining about the ref possibly calling the game off, even if players from both teams wanted to continue (which may or may not be true). The ref is the person who has to see the lines to make potentially critical calls. If he thought he could not see it, it would have been perfectly correct for him to call the game off.
Why would you think that? Are you not aware of what all else is going on in sports? The US won a game it was supposed to, and if you go to espnfc.com there's an overload of coverage on it and the upcoming match.
Why? I cannot stand threads like this. Such vague complaints with absolutely no talk of how to make it better. Just really stupid, passive-aggressive comments where you all try to prove to the rest of the internet how witty you are when in reality you sound like a bunch of brats.
. I gotta agree with this. It's been going on for awhile. Some of the venom being spewed around is almost laughable. Besides last I checked the announcers that were once players have more pedigree and experience than 99 percent of the complainers. Also, never underestimate the ability on anyone with a British accent to instantly become the messiah when it comes to credibility. The fact that so many people continue to buy into that is silly.
Well I think part of the frustration is that if it isn't a meaningfull game, we get reminded of it as the reason espn didn't bother with any news, etc. then when it is an important game, they still don't really cover it. But I guess women's NCAA coverage of Baylor is serious stuff...
Unfortunately (as far as I'm concerned) it is. But don't even act like that's all that's going on. Tiger Woods is back at #1, there's the men's tournament which is huge, and the NBA season is winding to a close with the Heat on a 26 game win streak.
Sticking to SC on tv, maybe not a featured story 15 plus minutes long because we know soccer doesn’t warrant that much air time, but that was an unusual and memorable match that I think deserved a little more analysis/interviews. That’s just how espn is, allocating the same amount of time but comprehensive coverage for news like a Texans signing, Yankees exhibition, or NBA win streak. To be fair, for 3 mins, the crew previewed the rivalry overlooking the inside of Azteca on SC today at 5pm.
And that's just how it is. That's all I'm saying. I don't care about spring training baseball when put next to a US soccer game (I mean, here I am on a soccer message board still talking about the game), but I don't like when posters have no perspective and complain that soccer isn't getting enough coverage. I can guarantee you for everyone of you saying there should've been a 5 minute piece on it, somewhere someone else is complaining that they had to watch Sportscenter that night open up talking about soccer at all. Cuz this is Merica and we ain't play no soccer roun here!
Completely stolen from another thread, poster jond I think - "Never seen a non-WC game hyped so much in America. I've seen promotion on ESPN commercials. I've seen USA/CR talked about not only on Sports Center, but various ESPN shows, and not a quick blurb either. I'm watching the Heat game, they just promoted the game coming back from a timeout and Jeff Van Gundy talked about us going to Azteca to get a road win..."
Yes, ESPN is promoting out of its ass compared to what we normally see. I'm constantly seeing references to this game. Now, I don't like Twellman, but aside from that I have no problem with ESPN. They didn't schedule the CR game in Den in March, they didn't decide to play with a yellow ball, they couldn't control the weather. Take out complaints about Twellman and I have little issue with ESPN. I also think tomorrow people will be happy with ESPN, with a full one hour preview. At least ESPN has Darke. NBCSN's biggest mistake imo is Arlo, who just doesn't shut his mouth, then pairs him with two guys who offer atrocious analysis in Martino or Dunseth. And Darke generally doesn't sugarcoat what we see, unlike Arlo who sugarcoats and overhypes every other sentence which comes out of his mouth. I know bad soccer when I see it and don't need Arlo acting like DCU/Chi or something like that is the clash of the titans. Still, neither is as bad as Fox with Gus Johnson. They're coverage of UCL is terrible. I have to mute the damn games. If you ask me, ESPN is better than any other coverage we have available. Everyone else can learn a thing or two from them.