As a USA fan, I'm condemned to watch the mediocre (but much better than I expected) Fox Sports coverage of the WC (yeah, yeah, VPN/torrent/whatever - these possible workarounds are way too much trouble):
There's nothing wrong with having some fun on the set. But when the joke is on FOX Sports, should we be surprised? For more than a decade, FOX Sports have been the butt of jokes among soccer fans in the United States. So with in mind, we look at the top six funniest mistakes of […]
worldsoccertalk.com
Still, the broadcast team selected by Fox has been far better than I expected it would be. Derek Rae and Ally Wagner have been a pleasure to watch; John Strong and Stu Holden have been good (unexpectedly), and Ian Darke and Landon Donovan has also been good (but Donovan seems like a prick, always taking digs at Ian). And best of all, JP Dellacamera - that nasal, pretentious, "Captain Obvious," broadcaster - seems to maybe have been dropped for future broadcasts (fingers crossed).
There's nothing worse for me than tuning into an exciting match only to find that it's being covered by a terrible (or annoying) broadcast team. Kudos to Fox for providing a decent (watchable) broadcast team for the WC and for seemingly having the insight that their weakest team includes Delacamera.
Still - Fox hasn't quite learned that "soccer" isn't the same, at all, as "American football." In particular, Fox still insists on including a third - "on field" announcer" - as part of its broadcast team.
In American football, the on-field announcer is used to provide insight into personal player stories or manager insights. In American football, this works well. But for coverage of the WC - it's always been shit. For example, Darek Rae's excellent broadcast is interrupted by some sort of nearly incomprehensible on-field commentary once or twice a game - providing zero insight - and in fact - as coverage is live - frequently on-field commentary occurs at the expense of coverage of exciting action occurring on the pitch.
Another fault of Fox, is that they rely on Dr. Joe Machnik for commentary/insight about rules. Machnik has been dead wrong on at least two occasions. He's brought on and states that "according to the rules, such and such will occur" - and then later when this doesn't occur - he's back on to announce that "FIFA rules now allow this and that which means that such and such is legal." For fucks sake!
First of all, why the pretentious use of "Dr."? - there's no PhD/Doctorate awarded for football rule competency. The use of "Dr." - simply attempts to build up Machnik's credibility.
Next - why is Fox employing someone in the capacity of "rules expert" who clearly isn't up-to-speed on the rules? Machnik has - on at least two occasions - been dead wrong on rules.
Fox has also employed Mark Clattenburg as an on-stream rules analyst. Clattenburg has been far better than Machnik - but really? - why is it necessary to have someone outside of the two-person broadcast team to be available live to comment on rules? This, is another American "footballism" cut-and-pasted by the Fox executives into international football broadcasts. Look - if the announcers don't know the rules of the game - they shouldn't be announcing. There's zero reason to have another broadcast member on standby to comment on rules (especially if that person - e.g., Machnik - doesn't actually know the rules).
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TL/DR - I've enjoyed the USA announcing for the most part aside from JP. Still, there's plenty room for improvement.
