Soccer in America: Are Announcers to Blame for Second-Tier Status?

Soccer would be more popular in America if not for TV.

Hold on. Let me rephrase.

The future popularity of soccer in America has everything to do with television, and doing more with it: More American TV viewers would become more interested in soccer if American commentators and producers did more to teach casual fans about the game.

Got it? That’s the gist of what Christopher Medley, a 30-year-old marketing professional who says he’s endured bad broadcasting in three languages, argues in “Soccer and the Mechanics of Sport on T.V.,” an Internet video that has the American soccer community buzzing.

Now, if you’re an American soccer fan, those last few sentences should have just raised your eyebrows—first of all because one of the painful realities of being a soccer fan in America is all the awful announcing.  

As far as I know, there’s no hard data on the unpopularity of America’s cadre of play-by-play and color commentators. But suffice it to say that only Congress has gotten away with such poor approval ratings for quite so long.

The second reason is that Medley is right.

“Mechanics of Sport”

Here’s what Medley is saying.

In order to draw in and educate more TV viewers, American commentators and producers should focus on what Medley calls “the mechanics of sport.” If they did, viewers would have a more thorough and interactive experience, and would likely come back to watch soccer more often.

This is important. Fox showed Chelsea’s exciting 3-3 draw with Manchester United live on Super Sunday—and drew only a 0.8 rating from it. That translates to just 1.377 million viewers in a nation of more than 300 million. Clearly the sport could be marketed better.

Medley gives three suggestions in his “mechanics of sport" approach.

1. Technique: Anyone who has played soccer knows that if you want to place an accurate shot on goal, you have to keep your knee over the ball and keep yourself from leaning back too far. Similarly, if you want to play an effective cross into the box, you have to turn your hips before making the pass.

Casual sports fans don’t know that, and that’s doubly true for the general American population. That knowledge would probably make soccer more accessible, yet American announcers never discuss such fundamentals.

Part of the problem is that soccer features almost continuous play for 45 minutes at a time, unlike the analysis-friendly starts and stops of American football.

“As great as it would be to spend 30 seconds to break down the intricacies of an outstanding move during a soccer game, you are rarely going to get the time because the game is still moving on,” former American international and Fox Soccer analyst Eric Wynalda told Yahoo! Sports.

I don’t buy that. We’ve all seen goalies waste 30 seconds or more before taking a goal kick. We’ve all seen how slowly players walk off the field when they’re being substituted. Those mini-breaks could be used more effectively—and they aren’t the only ones.

“While in a given game there may only be 3-4 solid 30-45 second breaks in the action where they can dissect an entire play, there are hundreds of 5-10 second moments where they can illuminate one of the millions of working pieces that make up a soccer game, no matter how small,” Medley told me by email.

“These bits and pieces of understanding build over time in the minds of viewers, which allows them to enjoy future games more, and even take that understanding with them when they coach a team or step on the field themselves.”

2. Team dynamic: Barcelona currently has the world’s best soccer club. Led by Argentine forward Lionel Messi and midfielder Xavi Hernandez, Barcelona plays a style of soccer that places a premium on controlling possession.

Medley says American commentators should give viewers more insight into how Barcelona does it. He shows Barcelona’s players conducting a passing drill before a game. He then explains how the drill helps Barcelona maintain possession during the match.

That kind of analytical ability might have come from Medley’s time living in Costa Rica, where he said he met his wife and quickly discovered everyone knew more about soccer than him.

“So I had to play a lot of catch-up, watching games and learning what I could about the sport,” Medley, who has also lived in Italy, told me. “Undergoing this experience as an adult helped me to look at my learning curve from a fresh perspective, and I realized that learning about the ins and outs of soccer just from watching it on TV is much more difficult than learning about the sports I did grow up watching.”

Back in the States, some are more hesitant to include more detailed analysis in match presentations. Their concerns make some sense.

“The game is different here than overseas, where it is part of the culture and there is a natural understanding of soccer,” former American international and current ESPN analyst Alexi Lalas told Yahoo! Sports.

“You have a split audience here, with people who have a deep knowledge and understanding of the sport and those who are new to it but want to understand. Catering for both is a challenge but it is certainly possible.”

Lalas is right, both in that it’s possible and that it will be a challenge. But that shouldn’t serve as an excuse as to why commentators don’t educate their viewers more.

3. Game control: Medley illustrates how France steadily built an advantage against the United States during a recent friendly and, eventually, used that advantage to score the winning goal.

Medley compares France’s tactics to American football, in which a punter can help a team control field position, and baseball, in which a No. 8 hitter can set up a rally by working the count for a walk.

In American sports, the commentators point out these trends to viewers. In soccer, they don’t.

That kind of analysis would have been valuable to a fan like Howard Megdal, a writer-at-large for Capital New York and The LoHud Mets Blog who covers baseball, basketball and soccer. Megdal said he grew up in a "sports house" with the big three of baseball, basketball and football.

"Soccer wasn't on the radar screen," he told me, "so I had to discover it myself—which I did, thanks to World Cup '94."

And if Megdal had been able to watch soccer telecasts with Medley-like production values?

"The difference would have been monumental," Megdal said. "And I can imagine it being far easier to present the game to my daughter if televised soccer improved in these areas."

Why Not?

So why wouldn’t commentators take Medley’s advice? The previously cited Yahoo! Sports article yields a clue.

The idea is that hardcore fans would be turned off by all the remedial education (and even more if soccer were to become Americanized). What’s more, some newer fans might not like hearing about all of soccer’s nuances.

Again, I don’t buy it. Marketing soccer in the United States is not unlike running a political campaign. Much like campaign managers, TV executives battle for the allegiance of groups of indifferent people. In this case, the swing voters are casual fans, and the allegiance is watching a match.

They can win the battle for casual fans through education. The reason is simple: To borrow a warlike metaphor from my childhood, knowing is half the battle. Most casual fans will gain a new appreciation for soccer by learning its nuances, and the rest are probably soccer haters to begin with.

Soccer is already more popular in the U.S. than most people think, and the national team already has marketable stars in Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan. Now it’s time to bring more casual fans on board through the most effective visual medium on the planet.

In the video, Medley says Americans are good at creating compelling TV, and he’s absolutely right. Just ask the millions of people who tune in every Saturday to watch cars turn left for four-plus hours.

Soccer can do better, and so can we. As Americans, we shouldn’t be afraid to put our spin on the game (though if that spin involves this again, God help us). Even if that doesn’t mean adopting all of Medley’s ideas, his video fits right into the spirit of openness that USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann is preaching these days.

And both are the kind of thinking American soccer needs right now.

“One of my favorite things about Klinsmann is that he came out and said that it is time for America to define its playing style once-and-for-all,” Medley said via e-mail. “He is working to do that, vertically integrating formations and playing styles all the way through the US Soccer system. My feelings are that while we are at it, we should look to define our TV style once-and-for-all as well.”