So a little slip up between Adnan Virk and Alexi Lalas on the Mike and Mike show has been making the rounds. If you listen until about a minute in, Virk asks what fans should expect from Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo from this tournament. Lalas politely corrects him, and the interview goes swimmingly from there. Twitter wasn’t done, and so played the world’s tiniest violin over the fact ESPN supposedly hates soccer, which ironically is exactly the kind of response which would make anyone hate soccer more.
There is nothing AmeroCanadian soccer fans like more than playing “mainstream media” victim, but the fact is no one should care about this. Mike and Mike is an all purpose sports show. That means they have to be experts on something like ten different realms of professional sports. Hockey, American Football, baseball, basketball, golf, fishing, chess, laser chess, and laser fishing—you name it, they have to know the right names for the right teams.
Compare for example, Beisbol: there’s the International Baseball Federation, and one elite league based in the USA: Major League Baseball, under which you get triple A, double A, and lonely bullshit A.
Then we have soccer. Six global confederations—CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, CAF, OFC, AFC, and UEFA. Within those, you have your domestic club first divisions, of which in Europe arguably six count as “elite,” and which feature on average twenty teams. Then there are the second divisions, third divisions, and so on. This is England’s for example:
You might think a sports broadcaster wouldn’t have to know about anything below the first division in each country, except promotion/relegation and frequent player trades up and down means you do. And we haven’t even left Europe yet.
Then there’s the confusion in “international football” and the fact “the Euros” (aka the European championships, which take place every four years, unlike the Africa Cup of nations, which is held every two years) sounds awfully similar to the European Cup, which I haven’t even spoken about yet (that’s a club competition featuring the “champions” of each European nation, plus two or three other teams depending on each European country’s UEFA coefficient, and not to be confused with either the UEFA Cup, for not-champions-that-do-sorta-okay, and the CONCACAF Champions League, which features North American clubs, although the Mexican clubs are allowed to compete in the Copa Libertadores in CONMEBOL, so…).
And of course, the hundreds of countries from which these players emerge isn’t doing anyone any favours either. So the fact Messi plays for Barcelona, a team he trained with as a child, and that features in La Liga, in the Copa Del Rey, in the Club World Cup, in the Champions League, in some pre-season weirdo tournaments in Dubai, and then plays for Argentina in the Copa America, in the World Cup, and in some weirdo Brazil-only tournament, might be confusing to a sports broadcaster who is expected to be thoroughly knowledgeable on laser fishing. Yes, I know Messi is the best athlete on planet earth, but that doesn’t mean the entire world should know the difference between the Euros and the European Cup and the World Cup.
You spelled ALEXI Lalas’ first name wrong. You clearly know NOTHING about soccer and are proof positive that The Score HATES soccer.
:)
Corrected, and I’ve just submitted my letter of resignation.
It was a mental lapse. but since he’s a former Score alum he should know better?
So you’re just gonna look at it in isolation I suppose. Because naysayers have absolutely no fucking perspective do they.
Richard Wittall
If a person believe that
A) Messi is from Spain
B) Argentina is from Europe
C) Euro 2012 is the World Cup
D) All of the above
Shouldn’t be talking about soccer in ESPN
that’s ridiculous
My thoughts exactly.
Soccer fans are at the top of the list for biggest crybabies on social media.
No need to have a chip on your shoulder
we all know that he knows about none of the things listed in the article, and he doesn’t have to. All he needs to do is read up on the topic laid out for him the night prior and have enough knowledge to speak on it. to even assume that an american broadcaster who speaks about american sports on a daily basis and when a big soccer tournament comes around has to be relatively knowledgeable, should know about all of the different levels, federations and tournaments is ridiculous, and we shouldn’t expect that. This was just a slip up, he reached into his mental rolodex of soccer segues and pulled out number 1 which is “how about that messi and ronaldo they’re pretty good”. and nothing more, in my opinion this article misses the point and somehow stretched a mental slip up into an article about how hard it is to keep track of all the soccer federations and cups, etc. also baseball is a little more complicated than A AA and AAA…
Guys…are you serious?
We’re talking about sports…How f*******g hard is it to learn about the different levels of soccer anyways. Maybe 15 min. tops? As for not knowing who the f***k Messi is, that’s simply not acceptable. How can you defend a guy for thinking Messi is gonna play in Euro 2012?
Well this is why sports people don’t end up becoming neurosurgeons, while neurosurgeons can still love and talk about sports. “Learning about sports is complicated”…bullsh********t.
Learning physics is complicated.
However, if this was just a ‘mental slip up’ then so be it and I, Didier Drogba, take everything back. People make mistakes.
It’s still nice and cute to see you defend this guy, Whittall. But there’s no legitimacy. “That means they have to be experts on something like ten different realms of professional sports.”
Ummm, are you being sarcastic? Oh no! they have to be experts on…sports? Jeezus, how hard could that be? I bet they wanted to be physicists, or scholars in an academic field which is muuuuuuch easier than being an expert in ’10 or so sports’.
The entire footy set up can be explained to any intelligent human being. It’s not difficult. At. All. When you have a job as a sports guy…make sure you know what material you need to know with regards to the show you are apart of. How hard could that be?!?!
Personally tho, I think Argentina are fav’s to win Euro. But heck, what do I know. I’m only an expert in 5 or so sports.
his defense was ridiculous but it was definitely just a slip of the tongue.
First off, agreed. The Can-Am soccer persecution complex is amusing, but stupid. Seems most soccer fans here only check the “mainstream” media to find omissions in the coverage, and race to be the first to bitch about them on the Internet (where, incidentally, they get absolutely insane amounts of independent coverage). The one place where the lack of coverage does surprise me is the Canadian men’s team, but considering the CSA can’t even be bothered covering it I shouldn’t be, as evidenced here: http://canadasoccer.com/teams-in-recovery–p149193
Secondly, as complicated as the world of football CAN be, the difference between club teams and international teams is not. It exists for almost every sport in the world. This error is, and should be, pretty embarrassing. Still just an error, though. Move on.
“Soccer” is only confusing if you are a US citizen. I am watching ESPN and the announcer just talked about how Tyton is the first sub keeper to save a pk in the WORLD CUP. Really? Is it that hard to understand? This simple ignorance is but another example of how poorly US citizens understand the world they live in…very sad.
Why is it so hard for you guys…..damn it……This is how I explain it to Americans…you watch the NBA right….well those players also play in the olympics for their national team…it’s the same damn concept….how hard is that?
In addition to domestic league play there are tournaments that happen throughout the regular season. I expect much more from ESPN….stop claiming you are the worldwide leader in sports when you don’t even cover the most popular sport in the world….the world is not the USA. Wake up
Hello. Sorry about chnaging the topic, and I don’t know if sounding off here will help, but hopefully it will. What has irked me over the years is the total ignorance of all commentators to properly pronounce Portuguese (and Brasilian) names that end with ão ! They ALWAYS say it as OW, is in COW or BOW WOW. Fortunately for my ears, it looks like only one of Portugal’s team (this year) has such a surname, Fabio Coentrão. Does anybody know how to pass this on to the announcers ?