- Monday games: Japan v Croatia, Brazil v South Korea
- Get in touch! Email Martin with your thoughts
Aaron Timms has written for the Guardian on how Fox Sports’ US World Cup coverage is an unmissable abomination, with the broadcaster offering up “a feast of gaffes, stupidity, and unconquerable on-air awkwardness” which, frankly, sounds unmissable:
Insults to our collective intelligence have come from all angles: the constant, tedious analogies to American sports (stepovers and feints described as “dekes” and “hesis”, corners constantly compared to “pick and rolls”); the neverending quest to “contextualize” the world game by comparing whole countries to American states (“Qatar is the size of Connecticut,” we were told repeatedly on the opening day); the network’s embrace and promotion of the interminable “it’s called soccer” cause (who cares?); the strange extended segment in the run-up to USA v England about how much Harry Kane likes American football (ditto); the employment of Piers Morgan as a special guest pundit (no thanks).
I’ve said it all along. I don’t think we get the credit we deserve in our performances. I think if you look at other teams, like the Netherlands and Argentina, they win their games comfortably and they get called masterclasses. With us, it always gets picked off. The negative things always come that way.
If you look at the last couple of games, it’s been faultless. I think countries, like I said the other day, should be starting to fear us now because we’re a great team.
We’re silencing the critics. Going into the tournament, there was a lot of talk that we don’t score enough goals. That’s another one we’ve kept people quiet on. There was a lot of scrutiny around the defence and conceding goals, but it’s been solid. We’re going to keep building and pushing.
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