Well, good. Let's stamp that out together. See, I'm a multitasker. I can work on reversing British English AND fake-British English all at the same time!
this guy was in the booth for the crew/chivas game, and it was like he was trying to pronounce every name with a spanish accent. and i'm not talking about the chivas players. every time he said danny Za-TAY-la I wanted to scream, "dude! he's Polish, not Spanish!"
He did the Washington/Stanford womens game this week on Fox College Sports-- a huge improvement over having local Fox Sports Net people with limited soccer experience do the matches.
So how DO you pronounce it? IMHO, he does no worse than the MLB broadcasters that fark up EVERY Hispanic name EVERY time on EVERY televised baseball game. At least CM tries. Sorry if this offends, but a lot of you are like the rich kid that was put in a room full of toys. All he did was complain about how they weren't good enough, or how easily they broke. Then the poor kid was put in a room full of horse manure, & he had a blast. When the adults asked how he could have so much fun with manure, the kid replied, "With all this horse crap around there has to be a pony in here somewhere!" Start looking for ponies for a change.
I think US channels should just hire English-speaking Europeans for a while and put some American commentators beside them like apprentice. After 3-4 years, the apprentice will gain mastery and will take over, and raise new masters.
Best suggestion I've heard in a while. They are all rubbish. From ESPN right the way down to FSC and local commentators for the Comcast broadcasts.
Anyone catch the Chivas Mexican wrestling mask night promotion broadcast on FSW? That bozo CM and Thomas Rodgen actually wore the wrestling masks on TV for the whole match! What a ridiculous crossover promotion that looked really stupid on TV and of course didn't draw fly's to the game, but CM and TR totally bought into it and looked like complete idiots!
I think most sports announcers are morons whether they be here in the states or overseas. I am not only refering to just the soccer announcers example Chris Collinsworthless, John Drumstick Madden, Joe I am a St. Louis fan Buck.
No mention of Rob Stone? Love C.M. or hate him, he makes Stoner look like a genius. And if you think Miles's pronunciation is annoying (yes, he thinks every name is French), at least he has some notion that certain names shouldn't be pronounced in American phonetics. Oh, and I hate Tommy Smyth, too.
This is the one announcer I mute. The low for me was during the FCD shellacking of Chivas during the first (or one of the first) game Martin Zuniga played. Even as Zuniga made gaffe after gaffe, Miles kept going on about how great Zuniga was and how the goalkeeping situation was all better for Chivas. The whole game. Befuddling commentary. He did something similar when Sergio Garcia began to play - nothing about Guzan's level of play or why he might still be the choice to play.
If either he or Max Bretos calls the Lazio vs Inter match, I'm gonna be pissed. Why does he have to pronounce player names so annoyingly? Does he know how bad he sounds? Just say them as a native English speaker would you attention-craving dork. One Bretos was bad enough. Another one is growing on Bretos' ass, and he's known as Christian Miles. Enough is enough!
The best moment for me Saturday was when Chris Sullivan corrected him on air, again. How horrible it must be for anyone in the booth with the guy. Sitting at home, I could identify players far easier than this knuckle head, and the ridiculous pronunciations are beyond over the top. Fox, give us all a break and sh!tcan this guy ASAP.
Speaking of pronounciations, most of these guys -- both American and English -- like to say "Jew-ventus." My buddy from Turin says it should be "You-ventus."
There was some strange program on FSC last night about head injuries and safety in soccer, hosted by Miles himself. It was very ironic, considering he's someone whose skull I would most like to see cracked.
He's a joke announcer, to judge by the few times I've heard him call a game: 1. "The Azzurri lining up with only 3 defenders for the first time in their history tonight"--vs. Belarus in WCQ. In fact, Italy used a 3-5-2 in Euro 2000, not to mention that they obviously had four defenders on the field. 2. Called Gennaro Gattuso "El Cane." That's not his nickname, not nearly. 3. Called Fabio Cannavaro "El Capitan." 4. Called Fabio Grosso "Fabian Gross." Etc. I agree with the poster who mentions that these announcers are nowhere near the game and don't have the line-ups. They can still do better though.
I'm so glad to see this thread finally appear. When I first started watching Fox Sports World in high school the difference between the English and American commentators was palpable. Clearly the English crews were head and shoulders above their American counterparts. This drove me to consider tv production/broadcasting for soccer. Eventually these people will be replaced by commentators who are competent and know the game through and through. When that time comes, I hope I'm at the forefront of the revolution. Christian Miles might be terrible at his job but at least his mediocrity has inspired myself and probably hundreds of others to dream of taking his job and relegating him to a footnote.
If Jack Edwards changed his name, adopted an English accent, dropped his cornball phrases, and became a BBC announcer, I have no doubt that I'd hear how much better he is than any American announcer.
Hurry up and submit that job application, I don't know how much more of Miles I can take! He gets worse every match. If you suck at something, the goal is to improve right? Well, Miles is going backwards every time his mouth opens: 12 games into the Italian season and he's calling Inter Milan "The Rossoneri." This bozo should be gone.
I've got some good news and bad news about the US-Scotland match this weekend. Bad News: Miles is doing play-by-play. Good News: None of the players involved have Italian, Spanish, or French names (except perhaps a few on the US side). We'll be spared of his exaggerated pronunciation habits. Hooray.
We need Eddie Kenny on the commentary. The "Eagle" can be heard as the voice of the NAIA National Championships. You can hear a sample here http://nsuathletics.nova.edu/statistics/liveaudio.cfm Just go down to men's soccer and click on any archived broadcast. This guy should be working for ESPN
Correction, Miles will NOT be calling the match. Tonight on FSWR, I saw Max Bretos and John Harkes at the venue so it looks like those two are the commentators. Bretos is just as bad, if not worse, but I like Harkes.