Celo praised Cannavaro's violent body check on Henry in the first minute "[Henry]'s not even looking -- Cannavaro steps right into his way . . . looks like he got hit in the face . . . "Cannavaro's . . . a smart player -- he's intelligent -- he knows Henry's got him at pace -- he just steps in his path -- no foul" the beautiful game indeed
By far the most insane thing said all cup long DOB-" And Italy are the 2006 FIFA World Cup Champions!!"
I really wanted to give DOB and Celo one more chance to redeem themselves, but I just couldn't do it. So I sat back and took the Univision route. However, there came an odd moment when I wondered what these two guys were saying in English, so... The one time I checked, these two were deep into a discussion about astrology and how Domenech wouldn't choose anyone for the team who was a Scorpio, even dropping a player with this sign (and had some serious doubts about Leos too). Whereupon Balboa said that he was worried because HE was a Leo and at that point DOB tried to reassure him. As I'm waiting for them to actually say which French player was dropped because he was born in the wrong month -- which they never did -- I finally said, "I'd rather put a gun to my head than listen to these two any more."
I sent ABC an email thanking them for the coverage, but directing them to this thread as evidence of why they are losing viewers to Univision. hopefully someone over there will actually look into it. probably not.
brought to mind a great relevant visual: from All in the Family, Edith was rambling on and on and Archie did this pantomime of loading his pistol and putting it to his head, firing and keeling over, which Edith didn't notice as she rambled on . . . just like Celo and Co
I'll give credit where credit is due. Although the production of the game broadcasts were sub par, the montage at the end was excellent. Now to the announcers. I don't mind they make factual errors once in a while, I am sure all the announcers do it, no matter what the language. However the lack of passion, wit and knowledge of the game shown by DOB bothers me to no end. DOB, a baseball announcer by trade, simply lacks the vocabulary to describe what's happening on the field. I am sure he looks at his fact sheets more then he does the field. Maybe we all expected too much from DOB. You can't really bring something new when you aren't even familiar with the usual soccer cliches. If ESPN thought the could bring in some ex-players to provide the expertise, they were completely wrong. Balboa does bring some passion for the game, but I think he took one too many to the head when he was a player, because the symptoms of short-term memory lost and hallucination are clearly showing. The worst of all is the fact Balboa keep praising "good" dives and "smart" fouls. He's reminding us why this beautiful game is turning so ugly.
My biggest pet peeve, of which there were many, was the way Balboa spoke with such reverence (throughout the tournament) about "selling your dives", "committing professional fouls", and "saving your yellows for when you need them." In a tournament where the powers that be (Beckenbauer et al) finally seem to be reaching the realization that the excessive diving needs to be curtailed, our #1 color commentator can't seem to get enough of it! This is an ambassador for the game?
This wasn't said by an announcer, but it's still annoying. The Chicago Tribune's Luis Arroyave wrote, "When France faces Italy in the World Cup final Sunday, it will mark the first time the two sides have met in a Cup since France eliminated Italy in a 1998 shootout." France beat Italy in the European Cup final in 2000. I expect he meant World Cup, but his editor probably doesn't know anything about the Euro Championship, so left it at "Cup." Given the benefit of the doubt, the two sides went all of one World Cup without meeting. Big deal. Is that interesting?
This board is fantastic. They have all been driving me crazy. Of the bunch, I think that JP and Harkes are the least bad. In fact, I've always thought that not giving the "premiere" games to JP Dellacamera is a huge slap in the face considering he's been the voice of American soccer for so long. At least he understands what a transfer fee is and who plays for what countries. Balboa is driving me insane, to the point of my wife actually talking to me about anger management classes after every match he does. Harkes and JP were doing OK until yesterday in the 3rd place match where they crawled way too far up Cristiano Ronaldo's rectum because he can do a few stepovers. Couldn't Denilson do those to a few years back? Where was he this year for Brasil? The most frustrating thing was during one point of the game when C. Ronaldo executed a pass where he drags the ball back with his right, then hits it with the inside heel of his left shoe. Looked great and they showed it no fewer than 5 times on the replay. Harkes and JP both praised him for such "deft technique" (or some crap). In actuality, he made the pass in the midfield as a backpass to his defender but it went straight to a German winger who started a counter attack. The German player lost the ball eventually, but this seemed to be lost on JP and Harksey as they were still thinking about how great the "pretty" Ronaldo is.
Yeah I nearly lost my mind when I heard that. Babbling, incoherent, and incorrect, that's Marcello in a nutshell
Mind-numbingly bad. Does he think that his viewers can't see....I liked watching the matches on Univision - I couldn't understand what they said but that made it so much less annoying.
I loved how Julie Foudy was just tickled that the referees got medals. She couldn't believe it, like it genuinely amazed her. "Have you ever seen that!?" I was just waiting for Wynalda to go all Saturday Night Live on her and say, "Julie, you ignorant......." Alas, he says, "I don't think I've seen that." Sigh.
Dave O'Brien was driving me nut with his mispronunciations of Zinadine Zidan (Zin-ah-din) and the site of the final match (Olympiastadi-own). How can one be in a country for perhaps a little over a month and not pick up on the pronunciations (Olympiastadi-un) I made me wonder if he refered to the former Montreal Expos home stadium as "Stayed Olyimpic-cue" (Stade Olympique)?
Glenn Davis durng a MLS game this saturday- "i bet marcelo lipi and Raymond Domonech are watching this and saying this is how we should play tomorow"
Or even better -- why not simply say "We are here in Olympic Stadium in Berlin" As long as he did not say Torino.
1) "Zidane, with the universal symbol for substitution" He grabbed his shoulder and motioned for an icepack. 2) "Zidane, becomes only the fourth players to score in two World Cup finals. He's in some pretty elite company." But we won't tell you the names of the other three.
Oh... where has this thread been all my life. I can't remember laughing so hard in recent history when alcohol wasn't involved. I quoted this one because it is so dead on. Italy and France played a final yesterday, but if I had only listened to DOB and Celo, I'd think that Zidane (Zidan, Zeedan, or however many ways they pronouced it) was the only player on the pitch. Total lack of imagination to not be able to think of ANYTHING to say about the other 21 players on the pitch and just praise Zidane the whole time. Surely on some satellite signal Martin Tyler was announcing the game. Can someone please figure out how to capture that signal by June 2010?
What about Brent Musberger lamenting the actions of Zin-uh-doon? I can't think of any language or foreign pronunciation where Musberger could come up with that....I mean "dine" could be pronounced "din", "dine", or "deen" depending on the origin, but "doon"? Of course, he was in the studio with Julie Foudy and Eric Wy-land-a. I guess if ESPN can't pronounce the names of their own people, "Zin-uh-doon" makes complete sense.
Martin Tyler announces these games in Australia. He is THE BEST. I'd be totally in favor of giving him a big contract to do all soccer on ESPN forever. O'Brien can go back to baseball, and Balboa. I don't care where Balboa goes. Just go away.
I wonder if that was part of the corporate directive, because for the past couple of decades, turning team games into individual match-ups has been the American way. Part of what got me tired of basketball has been the "watch as Larry Bird take on Magic Johnson..." which morphed into "Micheal Jordan takes on ..." which has become Kobe Bryant or Alan Iverson, etc. It seems like the only way they'll try to sell a team sport is by putting an individual human face on it. That's fine for marketing, but when you start superimposing that promotional gimmick onto the actual coverage (during and after especially), you seriously distort the game. But I guess they've done test-marketing that tells them American audiences respond better to this sort of thing. Assuming that is, that "this sort of thing" is what was going on, and not simply a lack of imagination in the booth.
Not sure which country the announcers in this video are from, but during the penalties they mistook Grosso for Toni, and they did not realize their mistake until about 30 seconds into the Italian postgame celebration. GOOOOL, LUCA TONI!!!!! Cripes.