You would think they suck, and then you heard Stone the moron say "say hello to a yellow card" instead of "say hello to my little friend" in a faux-tony montana accent. That guy should be impaled, and then boiled in hot water, because he is a disgrace to MLS. Eric? No comment.
I like Stoner. JP did the red bulls game tonight on MSG network. He is probably the best american announcer in my book. Glen Davis is up there too. But O'brien is just clueless!
bob costas would do his homework everyone in the fricking world knows that... bob's got the ability to go off on something for 25 hours straight and have you wondering wtf... where the hell did he found out how to use "kahdjghsldhgalgha" in context?
by the way... celo is horrid it would be doing everyone a favor to strip him of his voice i'm still fine with dob... celo is bad, has been bad and will always be bad... he's an idiot
you can't say celo is horrible and in the same breath say obrien is fine, I agree celo is bad but obrien is clueless about the game he is calling . Obrien is the worst i have ever heard. and celo CUT YOUR HAIR!!!! Stoner and waldo were pretty good tonight though.
celo has done over 100 *soccer* games o'brien has done 5 or 6 (under ten) and waldo is always great... he's the best we have... dir is ok, the dude that tag teams with jp for msg is decent but everyone else sucks... and that's got a large bit to do with the fact that soccer is not a money sport tv wise in this country... dob is the closest to top of the line in some time for us i've got no problem giving him time, because he does have talent... does he need to learn a bit more about this game, league and the world cup??? sure... but he's actually good at calling sports on tv and if you want to get into it... jp had some horrendous calls today... so did dob... but dob sounds good
Ok point taken, but if O brien has only done 5 or 6 soccer games , why in the hell is he our lead play by play guy at the WORLD CUP?? I am sure he is great at other sports but he needs to be confident and know what he is talking about, especially when he is at the world cup.
Seriuosly, everyone.Do y'all even know who Glenn Davis is? Most of y'all may not or this would be an open shut case. Glenn Davis is the best SOCCER ANNOUNCER this country has unless you count the Hispanic broadcasters here doing the spanish broadcast. So my dream team goes more like Andres Cantor and Glenn Davis! He is the voice of what soccer has become in this country. If he is not doing the World Cup's top games we have been cheated. Since he has been doing every game on ESPN leading to the cup.
I think that you're criticism should be aimed at the Crew, not Dave O'Brien in that particular case, since, you know, the Crew looked as if they were pretty content with a point. It's good to see that some things haven't changed in Columbus.
During the '96 Olympics, Costas introduced highlights of the Nigerian men's soccer team's final match vs. Brazil by stating that until that point, Nigeria's most famous soccer player was... Hakeem Olajuwon. I don't get all hot and bothered about stupid things that announcers say, but that was pretty retarded. (No offense to actual retards out there.)
Exactly - that what's my biggest beef is. We need more good soccer announcers, and like I said earlier, if DOB needs time that is fine - do lots of MLS games. But don't push to negoitate to do the World Cup, then do nothing to learn about the game, the player pool, and how to call a game so that it comes across in the broadcast. For all I know he is studying his arse off but it sure does not show in the broadcasts. If he is swamped from his baseball schedule to not allow this, then again - shame on everyone involved. I'm sure whatever suit agreed to this deal, also agreed to Celo's 10 year contract or whatever it is that states he can be horrible, but there is nothing anyone can do until this contract runs out. This is what Ty Keough seemed to have as well.
why does it have to be an American? anyone with personality and enthusiasm would be an improvement -- maybe Gordon Strachan (with subtitles, of course) on the bright side: with the Cup hosted in Deutschland we probably won't miss goals while the ABC crew interviews Desperate Housewives in the stands . . . I hope
if you're referring to Shep Messing, he knows a bit about footy http://freeweb.supereva.com/nycosmos/messing.htm?p
I'm more than happy to give DOB some time to work out the kinks, but he seems to be regressing more and more into story telling than PBP. If the majority of his on-air time was spent doing PBP with the occasional questinon to 'Celo and some insight, even if he was messing up here and there with talking about the game, I'd be fine. But man, yesterday he just wouldn't shut up talking about stuff we didn't care about. It would be, "story, story, story, fact, fact, fact, Busch throws the ball to Hejduk who takes it up the side, story, story, story, fact, fact, fact..." ad naseum. He has a great voice to do announcing work and he sounds professional which is better than his partner. I wouldn't be opposed to bringing someone in with nothing be radio experience just because they're forced so much more to do PBP and talk about what's happening on the field. One of the things that makes soccer great is that it's none stop and you have to pick and choose your moments when to talk about something other than PBP. I think a radio guy would get that.
One of the biggest differences between O'Brien and Rob Stone is that O'Brien has no sense of the flow of a soccer game. A player could be running toward the goal for a 1 v 1 with the keeper and O'Brien would be mentioning for the hundredth time that the Fire are on the longest road trip in MLS history. At least Stone gets excited (if a little too much) at the right times. And Wynalda is Martin Freakin' Tyler compared to Celo.
I thought Marcelo was ok on saturday but O'brien was awful. I think Wynalda is getting better as well, but Stone is still pretty bad. They all just talk too much and give too much irrelevant info. These are the guys who should do all MLS games: JPD (the best American soccer announcer and I rarely hear people complain about him) Ray Hudson Tommy Smyth
so who do we email? what will it take? i only understand like 30% of spanish but for the games on espn2, it will probably be univision for me because after obrien said "john marshall" last nite i just shook my head
yeah, but we've had that: it was called the Phil Schoen era. in retrospect, it was probably better than the DOB era, but that ain't saying much. Schoen i found particularly grating in that he never figured out that he WASN'T doing radio. "Sawatzky takes it, dribbles down the right side ... runs out of room in the corner ... passes five yards back to Naveda ... Naveda holds his space, dumps it to Moore on his left" ----> WAY too much description for a TV broadcast. Schoen was (or is?) a decent radio announcer, but he never altered his style for the ESPN soccer broadcasts, and I was glad that they canned him. soccer is a lot like basketball in that the two are both called completely different on radio and TV. you don't need to give me all the locations/descriptions ... I can see it all on my freakin screen. (Phil Schoen rant completed ) bottom line is ... we're just gonna have to wait about 1/2 a generation, until we start getting some folks who grew up watching the game on TV. the 94 WC started a new fanbase in this country (myself in included), at this point I think we'll have to wait until those young fans grow up and become broadcasters. i know that's kind of a doomsday scenario, but IMHO we aren't gonna have a big pool of soccer-educated broadcasters for another 10-15 years. sorry.
1. Ray Hudson - He's awful. Did you watch any of the Earthquakes games he did last season? He was absolutely atrocious. 2. Tommy Smyth - Watching the Champions League games this last year has convinced me that Tommy's eyesight is gone. Maybe if someone told him what was going on, but he'll go on and on about how a player with a broken ankle wasn't fouled, or conversely that a penalty should've been called on a blatant dive. - While we're watching frame by frame replays that show how wrong his commentary is.
YES! AND IT COUNTS! that guy probably could have been a FANTASTIC commentator for the beautiful game ... but again ... no knowledge, no experience, no history with soccer. same goes for Al Michaels. face it, there isn't anyone out there right now.