Call it the summer of soccer to end all summers of soccer.
Fox, thankfully, isn’t calling it that, so there’s one box checked off. As for the second, slightly more important, box: delivering a successful, well-received month-plus of coverage of the biggest sporting event ever to hit the United States? Check back July 20, the day after the World Cup final.
For now, consider the task at hand.
This World Cup, expanded to 48 teams, features a record 104 matches. It’s being played across three countries, four time zones and 16 cities. It is political as much as it is sporting; it is multilingual; it must cater to fans who set alarm clocks every weekend to watch the Premier League as well as those who know the names Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and nothing else. It has been given the mandate to elevate an entire sport across this great big country.
“How do you get your arms around that?” Zac Kenworthy, Fox’s vice president of production, said Thursday during an event in the city to promote the network’s coverage of the World Cup.
Getting people to watch the games is, of course, the easy part. Like it or not, soccer fans are going to watch a lot of Fox this summer. The hard part for the network is to do it justice.
The network is bringing in a laundry list of names to work in the studio, including Thierry Henry, Clarence Seedorf, Javier Hernández, John Obi Mikel, Thiago Alcântara, Juan Pablo Ángel and Peter Schmiechel alongside its crew of former U.S. internationals that includes Alexi Lalas, Carli Lloyd, Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan.
The biggest name on the list, though, is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish legend who played two years with the LA Galaxy.
“People have been judging me all my career, so now it’s time for me to judge other ones,” Ibrahimovic said Thursday, joining the panel via video call. “I’m gonna be myself. I’m gonna be giving them my thoughts, the way I see the game and for sure no filters, because I’m not famous to hold myself [back] when it comes to my judgment.”
Kenworthy also said that Fox has built a new “Stage B” for its coverage, along with a graphics package tailored to each nation.
Seventy games will be aired on Fox’s broadcast network, with the other 34 going on FS1, and the studio team will be on site at marquee games throughout, including all of the USMNT’s games.
“My preparation probably started a month ago,” Lloyd, whose scathing criticism of the women’s side in 2023 made headlines, told The Post. “As we get closer and rosters are announced, you start to hone in on different things, who those key players are gonna be. I’ve got two big binders and just kind of adding, got all the teams separated. It’s gonna be quite a filled binder at the end of this tournament.”
Kenworthy told The Post that Fox’s research shows that “the majority of the people, a lot of time that we’ll be talking to, probably haven’t consumed a soccer match in four years.”
Bringing those fans along, without offending those who tune in for a high-level discussion, is one of the hardest lines to walk.
“That’s why you go out and get people like Thierry Henry and Rebecca Lowe [on loan from NBC as a studio host], Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who are authentic, they’re iconic,” Kenworthy said. “When they speak, both the novice and the purist will stop and listen. So it’s getting that balance right and allowing them to shine.
“I think that ‘Stage B’ is gonna give us some visuals that we’ve never had before and allow us to really expand on the game from that side of things. Whether it be statistics or patterns that we’re seeing in phases of play and things of that nature.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
