The American Chronicle had an article yesterday about the complete lack of soccer coverage by ESPN, how great Manchester Uniteds beating of Roma was, and how boring golf and baseball are.
I agree with the author about getting more coverage of Major League Soccer, and right now ESPN should be the one doing it. It is hard to completely blame them for that. They probably have to endure angry fans of other sports complaining about soccer coverage. One thing I think needs to be noted is that ESPN and SportsCenter are not the same thing. ESPN2 is going to be showing an MLS game each Thursday night throughout the entrie season. ESPN shows a lot of UEFA Champions League games on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. I imagine that is where the author saw that game, but I guess it could have been somewhere else.
I really wish that another channel (like VS) would pick up some MLS, and really become popular with it. ESPN does show some love to MLS but not a lot. If some channel really did push the MLS, it could really help out the league and the sport in the United States. One thing that I think would help a lot is if there was a regular game time. Some time slot every week that there was a game on the same day, at the same time, on the same channel. I sometimes watch an American football game just cause I know they start at noon on Sundays, or whatever the time is for Monday night football. Look at the times for the Thursday night games, they are all over the place.
Hopefully someone else will pick up on MLS, really push it, and stick with them on the ride up to becoming a popular sport in the US to rival any other, leaving ESPN with their golf and baseball, and a feeling of a missed opportunity. Even thought I think that, I still can’t blame ESPN too much, who else has attempted at all to show you an MLS game? Fox Soccer Channel or something in spanish. I watched Houston vs. LA on the spanish channel on Sunday. Those announcers sound more exciting than what we English speaking folks get, but I might as well have been listening to music during the game.
Oh, and that Manchester United/Roma game was not real exciting. I love to see Manchester United win and also love to see Roma lose, but one team scoring endless goals doesn’t make for an exciting game in my opinion. A close game where you don’t know what could happen at the end is exciting. Manchester United v Bayern Munich 1999 was an exciting game!
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