not liking this... Cohen cut his own throat on his Heysell comments.. as much as i thought those comments were out of order.. he knew his stuff.. and was good for some banter whether you liked his opinion or not... webster and costigan are complete idiots.. i cant stand their commentating or their opinions.. IF FOX WAS SMART THEY WOULD RELOCATE BOBBY MCMAHON TO LA.. give him FFF and the pre-post Champions league matches.. we may actual watch it! Cantona---
I agree. McMahon would be a much better choice, football-wise atleast. I like Wynalda, I just not sure he's knowledgeable enough to sustain an interesting 3 hour long show. Then again, Cohen wasn't either.
As you may recall, FFF was created by Nick Geber and Steven Cohen as an offshoot of their satellite radio show World Soccer Daily. Geber left FFF to concentrate on poker broadcasting a few years ago after he formed a partnership with Bluff Media LLC and became Bluff's VP of Broadcasting. Bluff produced streaming video coverage of preliminary events at the World Series of Poker in 2007 (pay-per-view), 2008 (mostly on ESPN360.com, though bwin.com picked up European rights midway thorugh the WSOP), and 2009 (12 events on ESPN360.com and pkr.com, 12 events on bluffmagazine.com) However, multiple sources have told me that Geber has "left" Bluff Media LLC after a major reorganization of the company, which also saw the departure of its editor-in-chief. What's next for Geber and Cohen now that they are both gone from FFF and Geber is gone from Bluff Media?
Bobby McMahon actually has a real job in Winnipeg (he was the COO of the Pan Am games when it was held in Winnipeg in 1999) in addition to his side job on FOX Soccer Report. Recall that FOX Soccer Report is produced by Canwest Global, not by FOX Sports Int'l.
The fun part for callers will be to see if you can bait Waldo into popping off about Jim Rome against.
I'm not liking it either. Cohen was the strongest/more knowledgable of the two and I felt Webster was only there to play the Woody Paige/Skip Bayless role. I was not impressed by Wynalda's fill-in appearance last season, but perhaps he can try to pull a Sarah Palin and study up and provide some insight. Not sure he'll be any good providing historical perspective tho. I'll try to keep an open mind, but ... yikes!
The issue for me isn't about who is more knowledgable. It's who is more INTERESTING. Cohen clearly wins that contest over Wynalda. It's not even close. Huge mistake by Fox Soccer Channel. I'd guess a large majority of Fox Football Fone-In's viewers are crossovers from World Soccer Daily.
I don't get it. Why is "left" in "quotation" marks? Since we're already discussing Sarahmerica, is this like that thing she did in her resignation speech where she put quotation marks arounds things she wanted to emphasize?
FSC has now severed the tie between WSD (Cohen and Geber's satellite radio show) and FFF. FFF is probably headed in a different editorial direction with Nick Webster at the helm and Eric Wynalda as the antagonist.
Yeah, I just took this off my dvr's automatic recording list. I only watch the show because of Cohen. I think that Webster is a goofball who only knows a little bit about the EPL and shit about everything else. He was the genius who came up with the line "The Champions League is so booooorrrrring". IDIOT. Wynalda was not very good on the 1 ep he did last season but he doesn't seem extremely knowledgeable. The Bobby McMahon shout is a great one. I would watch religiously if he were a part of the show. Oh well, it was nice knowing you FFF.
I always thought Keith Costigan did well filling in for Cohen in the past, I'd rather it be him than Wynalda. I guess we're lucky, it could've been the worst "commentatorista" on the planet, Christopher Sullivan
This is what I was thinking about the complete severed ties when I said interesting in the first post... I am not going to enjoy Webster as the main host at all......so hopefully Wynalda brings his edge and take control. If not, I see this show dying a slow death.
Not very good? He was terrible. He came in in May IIRC and this was his analysis of the UEFA CL final: "I think it comes down to who scores that first goal. That can be crucial in a game like this." When pressed by Nick Webster a few minutes later for a bit more elaborate prediction/analysis, Wynalda said this: "I still think it's gonna come down to who scores that first goal." Dude ... that is terrible analysis. It's not even analysis. He obviously didn't know anything about either CL team, that's why he kept parroting the same line. Wynalda just doesn't know that much about world football, it's the bottom line. And he doesn't care. He'll just fall back on his "when I played in Germany" bollocks. That is not gonna cut it when you're trying to fill an entire 1-hr show. Say what you want about Cohen, but the man studied up on all the top 4 leagues (mainly top 3). And he had strong opinions about every issue that popped up. You may disagree with his opinions, but for an entertainment show they don't have to be air-tight, they just have to be strong and interesting, even if they're wrong. The only good thing that can come out of this is that with Wynalda and Webster, they'll obviously put a much greater emphasis on MLS and CONCACAF, and going into a WC year, it'll be good to have Wynalda there to keep the focus on the US team. But they will lose 90% of their callers, because all those guys were Europhiles, and none of them will want anything to do with Wynalda. It's up to them to create new callers, who will undoubtedly be of the MLS fan variety. but count me as another who will take FFF of his DVR record list. I'll check it out every once and a while, but it won't be an every week thing. Wynalda is just not interesting enough to carry a 1-hr show. it's just the truth.
When you are on a show for that many years, and the show never produces one-tenth of a national ratings point, you've gotta go. Period - end of story.
That's what I appreciated about Cohen - he knew his stuff, knew the players - where they'd been before, had historical tid bits, and even trivia. Plus he did this for a living on WSD. But as someone said - Cohen made his bed with the whole ticketless fans thing. He did the same thing 2 or 3 years ago when Geber was there and came on and apologized the next week. I can understand feeling a certain way about ticketless fans, but it's rather heartless to do so on the anniversary of the tragedy. Dunno if it was a misguided play for ratings or what. Anyways... Remember back when half the callers were kids? ugh! When they used to give away things. But recently they haven't been taking many calls anyways - and they have had an MLS player in for the last 30-60 minutes of every show so they were giving MLS a lot of coverage. ... much less the 2 hours! I won't remove it from the DVR until they prove my fears and suspicions correct about the level of commentary. What sucks is that I used Football Matters as a good compliment and now that's gone too. All that's left is FFF and Bobby McMahon's hour on FSR. And the radio!
I'm not sure how adding Wynalda will help. If the goal was ratings points, then perhaps the better choice would have been ditch the entire format and come up with something better.
My guess would be Cohen called it quits after having to spend entire shows on MLS and women's soccer last season...you could tell he didn't give a toss (nor did I).