World Coverage of MLS Cup '04

Its on the front page of www.yahoo.com

 

La Nacion in Argentina mentions that DC united wins MLS cup and that Christian Gomez is the 3rd Argentine to win a title in the states.

Here I'll just write the article.

DC campeon en el futbol de EE UU.

DC United, the MLS most winninest team, won it's 4th title on Sunday 3-2 over The Kansas City Wizards, of American legend Tony Meola. Christian Gomez played for DC United and became the 3rd Argentine to win a title in the MLS. Mario Gori and Diego Sonora we're the others, ironcally for DC United. 15 year old American phanomanom Freddy Adu played about 15 min for DC.

 

As I mentioned in another thread, Russia's "Sport" channel showed highlights of all goals but the penalty and shots of the trophy presentation on their 10-15 minute periodic sports round-up.

 

I had planned to watch the game on ESPN Atlantic here in Johannesburg, South Africa as it was on the schedule until about 4 days before. Then it was replaced by a Beach Soccer championship. The didn't even bother to show a replay later in the week, although they showed a replay of the Beach thing. I suspect it is due to the fact that they are showing lots of Champions League games, a weekly Dutch league game (almost always Ajax!), and a few games from South America. It seeme that we got the weekly ESPN game about a fourth of the weeks through the year. (Mostly that was while I was in Kazakhstan, but it was the same ESPN Atlantic.) CNN International did show the bare highlights, including giving the Play of the Day to the first strike by the loser from KC (Barreja? or something like it.)

Justin O, I thought I was the only BigSoccer/MLS fan in Central Asia. Now that I've moved to Jo'burg, I find another! I know of a weekly pick-up game in Dushanbe, if you're there.

 

Anybody got the TV ratings for the game? I had guys at work coming out to me and telling me they watch Soccer for the first time

 

There's an article on kicker.de but I'm too lazy to look it up.

 

And I'm sure they mentioend the horror of the playoff system in the US while doing this?

 

The game came on ESPN 2 Live for Latin America

 

the front page of the Montana Standard and every local Montana newspaper from each town had a cover story on the MLS CUP.

I was surprised to see this since the article outshadowed the local Orediggers playoff births article and the Philly vs Cowboys game article

Slowly but surely we are taking american sports by the heels

 

It would seem that foreign coverage of the MLS Cup Final was something less than overwhelming. Why does this not surprise me?

 

not surprise to me the MLS is already a top 10 league in the World, I see it by 2015 to be a top 5 League in the World both in attendance and quality

 

Here's an article from goal.com, which normally focuses on Italian soccer and European soccer in general.

EDIT: I see they've got a section devoted to the U.S./MLS now. That must be something fairly new.

 

Fox Sports Noticias which is based in Argentina had a story on it with the all the goals. They even showed some pre game interviews and yesterday has a story on Landon Donovan becoming US player of the year. This is good, I don't recall them ever showing MLS highlights before. The more accepted and respected MLS becomes in South America, the greater the chance of MLS participation in Copa Libertadores.

 

I think that if MLS were to follow American tradition and call our league winner the "World Champion", it would create a bigger stir around the world. Of course we could explain that it is just an American custom.