Fox Coverage

[Flynnie]

Derek Rae has been good for years. He was a mainstay of ESPN's Champions League coverage in the 2000s and was so good he'd make Tommy Smyth bearable. Has a great voice for those big European nights.

ESPN bought him back to the UK when they got SPL rights, and apparently he stuck around on BT doing SPL, Bundesliga and more until last year.

He's got an American wife and family, which I think has possibly hurt his career as I believe he commutes to the UK to do commentary.

[danielmak]

I was out of the country for the bulk of the group stage so what I saw at that point was a mix of Spanish TV (shown in tapas bars), ITV (Irish bar in Madrid), or RTE (shown in an Irish bar in Barcelona). When I got home I went with TSN through IPTV since they are using a single commentator FIFA feed. I have been trying to catch up on games I missed and have gone with TSN when available or RTE. I can't stomach the US guys; Fox started unveiling them during the Champions League and it was painful. Derreck Rae is incredible. He spends a lot of time researching the sides before the games, but the US guys just seem to either treat the experience like calling the NFL or NHL (announcers) or share nothing that I couldn't figure out on my own (analysts). The ex-players act as if they know the game better than anyone else and yet I don't get any sense that they actually knew what they were doing when they played; they were good at what they did but not really thoughtful about it. Anyway, I'm glad I have alternatives via IPTV because I think the commentary options are much worse than ESPN other than that horrible 2006 experiment with Dave O'Brien.

[Satchmo Distel]

Totally agree. A duplicate of ESPN was the height of Fox's ambitions here, apart from insisting of having an American commentator or summarizer at every game instead of Darke/Macca (which at least meant the the England games were covered with less bias). I had to mute any game with Meola because he was just telling me what I could already see in a very dull way. Wagner OTOH was outstanding: often anticipated tactical issues, knew all the key players' strengths and weaknesses, could tell you where the coach was going wrong. Rae wisely just did the basics very well and let her do the depth analysis.

The biggest crime of the whole coverage was the waste of Hiddink, which I may have mentioned above. Use him properly or just give soft questions to a moron like Warren Barton.

[Limey]

I thought Rae and Wagner were the standout commentary partnership. Apparently, Fox flew them out to Russia for the knockout stages, so I'm surprised they were not given one of the semifinals.

I said up thread that I didn't think Fox would be any worse than ESPN, and they were not. In fact, their coverage was indistinguishable from ESPN's - even down to the presence of Stone and Lalas, both of whom were ESPN mainstays for years. So, yeah, Fox were awful, but not ground-breakingly so.

[San Bernardhinault]

Every time I've seen any of the half-time, pre-match or post-match stuff it's been sufficiently bad that I've switched it off. The half-time stuff was terrible in the early part of the tournament: if I'd missed a match, I'd like a rundown of what happened, but it would be nice to do it in a way that maintains suspense for the two minutes of highlights, rather than opening by telling me the result. The "analysis" of games and tactics was so weak that even I'd have been better. As - noted by the Guardian - was the fetishization of the shallowest possible angles (Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Brazil ... er... that's all we assume our audience knows about football, so let's focus on that and nothing else).

But I didn't really mind the commentary. Sometimes it was prosaic to the level of being redundant "Pass by France. And that's a shot." But it wasn't offensive, unlike the in-studio crap.

The mute button might be worn out, though.

[Flynnie]

Dellacamera's decline into a sad joke of a commentator is quite surprising, since I thought he was practically the only good American commentator in the 90s*.

Like, homeboy probably called the Senegal-France game in 2002, I don't get why he's so bad.

* oh yeah, Bob Ley.

[Incandenza]

I haven't watched much of the halftime/post-game stuff. What I did see I didn't like, I don't like Lalas, so I didn't feel like I needed to subject myself to that. They just don't do tactics, they just show very short highlights and then try to argue for a little bit in between commercials.

Derek Rae/Aly Wagner was by far my favorite announcing duo. John Strong/Stuart Holden has pleasantly surprised me, I've really liked Holden. My least favorite was Dellacamera/Meola. I'm still annoyed by how patronizing and ignorant they were about Senegal when they beat Poland. They were acting like it was one of the great upsets in World Cup history, while at the same time knowing almost nothing about Senegal.

[adams house cat]

Dire and in the main clueless.

[Satchmo Distel]

The subheading screws up by attacking Fellaini, who has had a decent tournament.

[Wouter D]

The Guardian stick the knife in.

[Satchmo Distel]

Aly Wagner has easily been the best summarizer: excellent again in the England game.

[jason voorhees]

Fernando Fiore was the Univision host from around 98 or '02 till 2014.

I'm sure he's not happy with the sausage party he's on now, when he spent almost 2 decades with these co-hostesses on República Deportiva.

He led hilarious pro-Mexico pep rallies, with this one at the Gold Cup Final getting the most infame and getting a lot of heat from Tim Howard.

I'll never forget the funeral procession that he treated like 9/11 when the US beat Mexico in 2002.

He really sucks in English. I wish Alexi Lalas would go on Republica Deportiva.

[PM]

At the end of the Argentina vs Iceland game the commentator managed to pull out, “Iceland beat Argentina 1-1.”

[Gerontophile]

Shit. Fox have a shouty Hispanic (Peru, innit) for this game. But he tries far too hard to add excitement when not required.

[Gerontophile]

"Comic" relief I think.

[Satchmo Distel]

Who the fuck is this Fiore clown?

[Gerontophile]

Hernan Crespo is looking good these days.

[Sean of the Shed]

So this isn't the Springwatch thread then?

[Satchmo Distel]

Why have Hiddink on if you're going to talk over him?

[jason voorhees]

That bit with the "Iranian Messi" in the pre-show, and Alexi Lalas getting asked if that was an accurate comparison, and him replying "they're both human and they both play soccer, so yes" had me howling.

[jason voorhees]

I was wondering who the hubba bubba backwoods hillbilly cowpoke was announcing the game with Dellacamera. His hee-haw gee-whiz commentary was about the worst I've ever heard, and made me misty for Tommy Smyth.

Come to find out he was from the wide open plains of Kearny, New Jersey.

I mean Brad Freidel ended up with a British accent, so Tony Meola must have spent the last 20 years in Oklahoma?

[Satchmo Distel]

Wright says Cruyff is not in the GOAT conversation. Keep that bollocks off my telly ffs.

[Incandenza]

Any reason why the Fox team is live from Red Square? And why Ian Wright turned up from nowhere, and said nothing?

They want to give the impression that they are all there, while most of their announcers are calling the games from West LA.

[Gerontophile]

Any reason why the Fox team is live from Red Square? And why Ian Wright turned up from nowhere, and said nothing?

[San Bernardhinault]

Other US football commentary always seems desperate to make whatever connections they can, no matter how tenuous, to English football. I've not heard any of that yet, which is also a nice change. Perhaps nobody can find any link at all in this game, so I'll reserve judgement on that aspect until tomorrow's Uruguay vs Egypt which would be swamped under references to Liverpool if it was on NBC(SN).