You all (and me) watch a variety of soccer on different channels. Who do you think the best and worst announcers are? PbP, color and studio hosts are all eligible. Jack Edwards and Ty Keough. Gus Johnson and Dave O'Brien had no business anywhere near a microphone. The best? One that comes to mind is Derek Rae. Andy Grey and John Motson did a few FIFA games. Martin Tyler as well. What channel/competition did he do for US TV? World Cup? Arlo White and Ian Darke are also quite good. Tommy Smyth was annoying to many, but as a kid, I enjoyed hearing him on ESPN2's UEFA CL coverage. On the Spanish-language side, Andres Cantor gets lots of praise, or maybe that's just for his goal calls. In terms of good American voices, Bob Ley was awesome. The other one that comes to mind is Rob Stone. He seems to be a bit "basic" but he does the job with consistency. Plus, he's a legit fan of the game and not just there for the paycheck, like so many other Americans. A lot of people seem to like JP Dellacamera, but I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of him on the mic. For the women, Julie Foudy was all around terrible. I'm trying to think of other female soccer announcers. Rebecca Lowe seems to be the best. Kate Abdo is also good. Cat Whitehill and Heather Mitts also are decent. Then there's Ray Hudson. I suppose he's good if you want to drink. Who am I missing?
The earliest I remember was when ESPN had one Tuesday game and ESPN2 had a game on Wednesday. The first CL game I really remember was the 1999 UEFA CL Final.
Taylor Twellman is excellent at what he does. He is controversial, many people hate him, everyone talks about him and he generally has more insight into the league than any other media personality. Univision has the WORST English SAP people on earth....they are disgraceful.
Ray Hudson is so great that I watch and record all the La Liga matches in Spanish. Haha I record even the low level La Liga matches that way even if he only does the bigger clubs. Can’t take any risks.
Short version: I found myself at a bar. I'm sure we were drinking. It was absolutely wonderful. If I had one wish, I'd love to get a beer with Tommy Smyth.
2010 World Cup on ESPN. Don't know how many people remember any of this but before ESPN gained the rights for the Champions League beginning with the 1994-95 edition, both the 1993 and 1994 CL finals were shown on pay-per-view. I still have both broadcasts on video. The '93 final had Derek Rae going solo. I'm hesitant to say this was his first stint on U.S. tv because at the time I remember thinking that his voice sounded familiar but couldn't remember his name (he did not introduce himself throughout the broadcast) The 1994 final had Mike Hill going solo but the transmission clearly used the BBC feed as you could hear Barry Davies in the background, which was quite frustrating hearing two people commentating in unison. After about 15 minutes the ppv production team gave Hill the rest of the day off and used the BBC/Davies feed the rest of the way. I had heard Hill earlier that season doing a half-hour highlight show throughout the season, I believe on the old SportsChannel. Before 1993, the European Cup final was always only broadcast in Spanish on S.I.N. / Univision, live from 1981 to 1986, same-day delay in 1987 and a-few-days-delayed from 1988-1992...... unless you want to count the weeks-delayed one-hour edits shown in English on Soccer Made In Germany from 1979-1982. Adrian Healey isn't too shabby.
Yeah, he's a bit too opinionated for me or something. I don't want color commentators to distract me too much from the game unless they're making pretty sharp observations. Even boring ones like Phil Neville at least stay out of the way for the most part. My favorite right now is Peter Drury. Others in the top tier for me are Arlo White, Ian Darke, Jon Champion and Derek Rae. Most of the guys IMG get for their games to do PBP are top notch. Martin Tyler I think has unfortunately entered the Marv Albert zone of being too old or has seen too much because he has too high of a bar to get his enthusiasm going. The worst are basically anyone beIN roll out and most of Fox's World Cup coverage.
For me all time best English language on American TV was Toby Charles In Spanish heard sparingly on American TV Argentinian Marcelo Araujo (disclaimer: I'm not Argentinian but I do understand Spanish)
Speaking of Spanish announcers, I got a few Pablo Ramirez, Jorge Ramos, JPN, LOT, Perro Bermudez, Paco Villa, Jorge Pietrasanta, Raul Orvananos. Sebastian Vignolo, Pablo Bari, Pablo Giralt, Gustavo Cima, Bambino Pons, Bruno Vain, Samuel Jacobo, John Laguna, Javier Fernandez and the young Andres Vaca
I just had a flashback to watching Marcelo Balboa on HDNet. I'm not sure all that hair grease is washed out yet.
Anybody remember Sid Lowe and Paul Giblin doing the La Liga announcing on the old 'World Sport' channel? I really enjoyed their work. Always at the stadium for the calls. Back in the day, I had a satellite dish I would move to Hispasat to catch the live feed of La Liga. The guys would come on 15-20 minutes before kickoff and just banter about the game. They swore like sailors on leave before going live. For some reason, either Sid or Paul (can't remember) hated Roberto Carlos who then played for Real Madrid. Oh, the adjectives they found for that man. There were times that I enjoyed the "pregame" more than the matches!! SA www.soccertvblog.com
I would categorize Pablo Ramirez and John Laguna as two of the worst, Raul Orvananos as one of the best, also in the very good category Jose Ramon Fernandez.
I can run off with the Azteca guys as well. Plenty of solid announcers throughout their history. Tito Manriquez, Paco Gonzalez, Jesus Humberto Lopez, Emilio Fernando Alonso, Adan Vega Barajas, Christian Martinoli, Carlos Guerrero, Antonio Rosique, Ciro Procuna, Omar Francisco Cano...
The good old days of watching a lot of soccer games from the main leagues in Europe on TV Azteca and Televisa on C-Band the big dishes.
Were those the ones with the raw feeds? They'd go to commercial and you'd see/hear the people in the truck talking to the people in the booth? Back in the early years of MLS, some of the online broadcasts had those. I think it was through the old Yahoo Platinum service. $5/mo and it was easily canceled and had a lot of other stuff. I'd sign up, cancel on the last day, wait until the next time there were games, pay another $5, repeat. As a bonus, some times they wouldn't cut the feed and you got whatever came up next. Now, they won't even give you the last little bit after the break. "We'll be back to wrap it up after this" and they're done.
The saddest thing I've saw on the raw feeds I was watching coverage of the 96 Atlanta Olympics from a Mexican station in the middle of the night, they did that back them it was 24 hour coverage and all of the sudden they switch from the studio to this park where a bomb had gone off and people were just running in terror, it was just shocking to watch.
Lee Dixon (NBC). 80% of his comments are negative, the other 20% start positive and have a huge "but" in the middle. I know he's an Arsenal guy so its not totally his fault, but just too negative all the time.
Taylor Twellman is the WORST. I can't listen to that guy. I'd rather have it on mute than listen to his analysis. He just talks about things that don't matter. Lee Dixon is funny and entertaining and says things that seem to matter. Arlo White is great too. Twellman just prattles on about crap that doesn't matter. It's meaningless and I find myself hating every word he utters.