After seeing and reading this article on the front page it got me thinking. http://scn.matchnight.com/scn-entry....&article=18687 This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be said by players, commentators, and fans. Players at that level shouldn't be doing such things. Justin Mapp is one of the most gifted young players in the league. He is going to school any defender playing sloppily. I have griped for years about the lack of critical commentary in Nats games and during MLS games. Usually the color guy or announcer doesn't know enough about the game to comment at a critical enough level. But take Celo on the Nats Broadcasts. I mean the kid has played in 2 World Cups yet doesn't say a single bad thing when Hejduk flies his 1000th cross over the head of everyone or when Olsen leans back as he hits a ball first time and skys it into the stands. Everyone knows what is coming before they take that cross/shot, but no one says anything saying how bad that is. Sure 5% of the time it may go to the right place and .5% of the time some good may come of it. But do I want to give either of them 200 chances to have something good happen. I would much rather have lewis or ralston or donovan or convey or whoever doing either of those things. There is no excuse for these players to not practice these situations, perfect there technique and realize if i run up and kick the ball its going to go higher and further than it would if i do it just walking up to it. I mean this is fundamentals of the game. Think of an NBA player not being able to use their left hand. If everyone knew that kobe couldn't go left he would be shot down now matter how good he could go right. Think of an NFL Broadcast when a reciever drops a ball he should have caught, or a lineman that is called for holding, or a running back fumbling the ball. Announcers are instantly saying "You have to catch that", or "You have to protect the ball in those situations". We need to be pissed off at Ihemelu(and I'm Hoops fan) for fouling someone outside the box especially trying to slide tackle on Mapp in that position. Of course he is going to draw a foul so don't do it. Think of a baseball player commiting errors time and time again. This is crucial in maturing as a soccer team, fan, and nation. In the article I think donovan isn't trying to personally attack the players for doing these things. I think he is just being brutally honest so these players start to realize to play at the international level or in the european level you have to one be as good as mapp at controlling the ball AND be smart enough to recognize said talent in controlling the ball AND knowing what to do and what not to do when confronted with that situation. This applies everywhere on the field. Every pass, shot, save, cross, tackle, foul needs to be groaned at by the fans if it is an obvious bad move. Each us world cup teams players have been better and better at all of these pieces. Soon we are going to have a team full of players that don't have these bad habits, or at least they don't arise as frequently. Thus raising the bar for our expectations of how they perform. Having said all that I still am really excited about the world cup and am cautiously optomistic of our chances of advancing. I think we can do it we just have to go out there and excecute. I don't feel like I did in 94 98 and 02 where I felt others would have to stumble for us to advance. And we are in a much tougher group now than either of those years.
Another great thread built around internet wonders berating the best US professionals about supposedly lacking basic skills.
I'm not implying that I am any good, in fact I suck at playing. That doesn't mean I don't know what I should be doing. If I watch an EPL game you rarely see such errors and if you do they are criticized immediatly.
Sure whatever, it's strange that our guys who play in the EPL and rarely make such errors, all of the sudden start making them when they are in a US uniform -- e.g. Carlos Bocanegra against Poland. I learned my lesson and lwill eave you guys to your "critical" analysis.
Maybe I'm off base, but that is something that I have always felt was missing. I have been away from the boards for a while so I haven't seen much discussion over the last two years.
The thread starter has a point. 'Celo should do better. OTOH he probably knows everybody too well. It's hard to criticize your friends/acquaintances.
That is a great point. It seems to be such a tight group. I don't know if I could criticize my friends the way I'm saying to. In fact I know I can't. This is just for purposes of discussion though.
The point of covering a game whether PBP or color is to enhance the enjoyment of watching the game. Methinks the US brings in too many former players, men and women, to the booth. You get some dolt like Chinigilia explaining that he could have made every play better himself. Better to be a better announcer with a broadcaster's seasoned ability to get us all amped up about the game and key us into the little bits that really matter.
i agree with the original poster that our announcers are rarely critical of the team. i don't mean that they should be "negative" but some healthy criticism, some analysis, some explanation of things that might not be apparent to the armchair soccer watcher might make for an interesting broadcast...
This is definetly true. No doubt it was good for the last ten years to not criticize the league at all and I didn't really have a problem with that. I'm just recommending that the level of play now is to the point that it is ok to criticize every now and then during a telecast. I am not talking about every bad cross, pass or whatever. Just the obvious things that new fans may not realize is a bad idea. I know over the last 15 years I have become a much more knowledgeable about the game. I used to complain about the fact that our defense against good teams was: 1) Get ball 2) Kick as far up field as possible 3) Hope we get it 4) if we dont repeat Now as the teams have gotten better it goes down to more tactical awareness, positioning, tracking back on defense, etc. some of the more finer points of the game.
I agree with the original poster that, in general, there needs to be more actual analysis of games rather than just repetitive "color commentary" on the action: Play by play guy: "and Heyduk floats the cross into the stands" "Commentator": "yeah, he got under that one" Play by play guy: "Donovan takes the corner kick, and it goes off the first defender" "Commentator": "Yeah, not quite what he wanted." etc etc etc etc Many viewers in the U.S. wouldn't know a 4-4-2 from a 3-6-1, but even basic descriptions of what teams are trying to do, what strategies are being employed, what players' strengths are, when a play actually goes as designed, etc. are quite rare. To say nothing of more in-depth analysis for more knowledgeable viewers. If Donovan is putting every other corner kick into the first defender, talk about what he's trying to do (why is he trying to hit lower line drives?), who else might take corner kicks, who's been taken them in the past, Jesus, anything but "yeah, not what he wanted" "or, a good opportunity, but no results" or the usual crap.
IIRC, Celo was very critical of Heydude's sliding tackle and pointed out Donovan's sorry corner kicks. Still, I get your message, but Celo is not the right guy for whatever reason.
To take this one step further. How many times have you watched a game and seen a player play a through ball to no one. And someone watching the game with you is like "What was that?" Then you have to explain "Well he thought the forward was going to make a run at that moment to beat the offside trap." I don't know how well this would translate to color commentary, but it would at least show regular Joe Blow the finer points of the game that we all love. I'm really just complaining about the depth of the analysis. And i think it is time to dive deeper.
The link is broken -- it looks like you copied the abbreviated text that the board substitutes for a long link. Can you fix it?
Completely disagree. I think it blows. Now, the guy who wrote that execrable piece of crap article on BitchNight - now HE really sucks.
That's why Eric Wynalda is great, peopel criticize him and what not been then ask for more criticism, that's hypocritical, and it's not for all on this thread. He called Taylor Twellman stupid for hurting his national team chance swith silly red cards in MLS games, he'll constantly say in matches that needs to be much better and all, especially with the forwards, and the guy speaks his mind and to me, says a lot of true things.
That's right, he has been pretty good. We need more guys like this. I guess it is just going to take more players retiring and joining the commentary ranks.
The greatest football game I ever watched was back in the 80s. One of the networks, NBC I think, tried an experiment where there was no announcers. There was sound: fans cheering, tackles, whistles, etc. But no announcers. It was like being at the game. I used to think my preference for this was because of the quality of the announcers was so poor, but I've come to believe that all it really comes down to is that I don't like to be interrupted by constant yammering while I'm watching the game. I suppose that's why Fanzone works: it's not really broadcasting, it's two guys cheering on their teams. Imagine sitting in perfect midfield seats at the World Cup and have the guy next to you, in a normal volume voice, do nothing but talk in your ear for two hours straight. You'd slug him within 15 minutes. Sports broadcasting will take a giant leap forward when they use the SAP command or some other TV button to allow you to listen to the ambient sounds from the game without having to listen to what amounts to little more than chatter designed to fill up dead air.
Horses for courses, I guess. It's possible broadcasters in other countries don't yammer quite as much as here. You'd think these guys get paid by the word or something. You could argue you'd need broadcasters to tell you what the ref's call was or which player has the ball, but in each case our guys often don't tell you anyway or if they do tell you, they often get it horribly wrong. With replays and graphics, there's probably very little in pertinent information you would miss and in the process you'd miss Brandi Chastain talking to some schmoe from Desperate Housewives.