I've lived in the States for over 20 years now and the rise of the game over here is incredible. When we first moved out here in 1989 there was no internet … insert prehistoric old git remarks here … so I had to hope that the Sunday edition of the LA Times carried the scores in a tiny box in the sports section reserved for obscure foreign results, or else I had to phone family in the UK to find out how City had gone on. I worked for a lot of UK newspapers and football mags and had them shipped out here each week by a newsagent mate of mine so I could catch up reading about the football. I also used to pay a fortune at an international newsstand each week for a two-day old copy of the Sunday Times. They didn't airlift in The Guardian so it was that or nothing … and at least it was all tax-deductible.
There was absolutely no TV coverage of the games, so for the 1990 World Cup, I had the choice of watching bits and bobs on the Spanish language channels or taking my young family back to Wythenshawe for a month and parking them at the mother-in-law's while I watched the games in the pub with my mates. Wythenshawe won. I even bought a small British TV and VCR while I was over and shipped it back to California so that family could send me videos of the big games in future. Desperate times required desperate measures …
When the Premier League started in 1992, they started showing games on closed circuit at the odd pub or club. I'd get up around 5.30 or so, pick up a couple of other English blokes I knew and drive the dozen miles or so to the nearest place that showed the football - the British & Dominion Club in Garden Grove - pay the cover fee and watch the featured game. Even if it wasn't City!
But gradually, it started to get better. The advent of the internet meant I could get all the news and match reports immediately … and then in the mid-1990s, Fox debuted its Fox Soccer Channel on cable!
Each year since then, the coverage has expanded. Fox added a second channel, ESPN started showing games, GOL began broadcasting in English, BeIn became widely available on cable … for the last couple of years, I was able to watch every City game either live on TV or through a hooky internet feed. This season, for the first time I can recall, I was able to watch every single City game live on TV, in all competitions, with the exception of the final Premier League game which was streamed live on the web by Fox. Plus we get all the Sky Sports news shows. And on deadline day, they leave the live feed open all day. I work out of the house and the telly is on all day, usually tuned to football.
Next season, the coverage will be non-stop, as NBC have acquired the Prem rights. All 380 EPL games live, plus a raft of review and news shows. The other channels will cover all the other competitions, including the Championship, La Liga, etc. Then you have all the Mexican football … and of course, the MLS.
But it's not all utopia. I have three pet peeves:
1) If you watch a game on the Spanish language channel, the commentary is incessant … they just don't shut the fuck up at all, even to draw breath … and every time the ball hits the net, every single one of them does that hackneyed "GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL" scream. It is annoying at the best of times, but if you are watching City and the goal is against us, it really … I mean really … gets on your tits.
2) The Graphics are annoying, particularly on ESPN. I suspect that the designers are used to providing graphics for baseball games, where the action is confined to a small area, or NFL, where there are lots of stoppages. But you'll be watching a soccer game and a large box will pop up and obliterate a third of the action to inform you of the possession stats, or the colours of the team shirts, completely obscuring whatever is going on down the left wing at the bottom of the picture.
3) American commentators really are piss-poor but it may just be a cultural approach for the most part. The biggest difference between, for example, a Martin Tyler and a Gus Johnson … other than Martin knows the game inside out and Johnson approaches it like a dog that has just discovered its tail … is that we are used to commentators who can provide a little insight, colour and nuance. American commentators, without exception, confine themselves to stats … which is the hallmark of all US sports coverage. So rather than any tactical insight or informed commentary, what you get is a meaningless litany of "Tottenham Hotspur is the fourth-winningest EPL team at Goodison park in the last seven years" and that they have "gained the highest percentage of cornerkicks of any EPL team in the last 15 minutes of normal time" … and other such distracting drivel. Plus all that "good D," "on frame" and "top of the 18" lingo that well, quite frankly, just isn't British:)
Cheers!
PS. Just remembered a fourth peeve. There's a bloke called Tommy Smyth who contributes to ESPN .... "professional Irishman" with a thick "Lucky Charms" accent that you suspect might be exaggerated for effect seeing as he's lived here since 1963 apparently! ... and his comments are beyond inane. His worst crime is that he has adopted a catchphrase that I hadn't heard since Neil Young commented on his goal in the 1969 cup final and I assumed had been consigned to history after that - Smyth insists on describing each and every goal as "putting a bulge in the back of the old onion bag," even if the fucking thing has merely rolled across the line and has quite clearly not even rippled the net, let alone bulged the bastard.
