The Soccer Thread (Version 13) — Winter World Cup Edition

The Jim Thome of soccer. Is that fair?

 

Not a terrible parallel.

 

Meanwhile, up north, things are goin' great!

 

Glad to hear that. I think I might have preferred Champion to Drury straight-up. I respect him wanting to try something new in the US but ESPN losing the MLS rights kind of pulled the plug out from under him and he found himself vamping about food with Twellman under a lot of games as it was.

 

From Martin Tyler to Drury and Champion. Jesus Christ, talk about an all-time upgrade.

 

NBC has done an absolute A+ job with their coverage. Except Tim Howard.

 

Too bad Ian Darke is still tied to the Big Bad Wolf and thus out of the footy picture for the moment. I still have a soft spot for him.

 

Darke is fantastic and has the level of humor which works well.

 

Rebecca Lowe is just so damned good at her job. One of the things that really makes the original Ted Lasso spots is that Ted manages to piss off even Rebecca Lowe.

One of the sneaky funny bits in those ads is when he tells the U-12 girls team that to be elite, they need to be sponsored by a Middle Eastern airline, and sure enough, AFC Richmond's sponsor in Season 1 is a fictitious Middle Eastern airline.

If they really wanted to do a deep cut, they should have named Henry's team in the last scene the "Fightin' Owls." And there were a lot of deep cuts in that series.

 

I did cash my USA to score at least 6 and win in a shutout bet.