World Cup coverage: ABC’s Dave O’Brien and Marcelo Balboa muddle through

Tommy Smyth is THE worst commentator/colorman in the whole wide world. He can put that in his onion bag.

Harks’ team isn’t so bad, but in general the commenting is pretty poor. Wynalda is great in the post game talks though, and rather humorous.
I think the problem is they think they have to talk during the whole game, which they don’t. The spanish announcers are the same, not great but they seem to think you have to talk during the whole game, at least they do more play-by-play, but on the whole not a whole lot better. The guys that do the commenting on FSC aren’t so bad, mostly because they don’t feel the need to constantly talk, which is nice, moments of silence during the game.
On the other hand, my friends and I like to make fun of the announcers when they make mistakes or say things that make no sense, so in that regard they are entertaining.

I know soccer (AKA Football by the rest of the world) is relatively new in the USA – but is that an excuse for such useless commentating? Not only do they not know who most of the players are but, they can they keep saying foul ON instead of BY! Do they know what prepositions are? O’Brien and Balboa get it wrong EVERY time. SAD for highly paid, SUPPOSELY world class, commentators.

I just finished watching and listening to the ESPN coverage of the Brazil Ghana game and I only have one thing to say: Marcello Balboa sucks! The guy rambles constantly about things that he doesn’t understand. One comment, about Ronaldino, was something like, he doesn’t deserve to be the world’s best player – or something like that. The guy talks about so much crap that I have to turn to univision to and follow the Spanish telecast. I love soccer, and I am trying to teach my U-15 club team players to love watching large world matches. However, most of them come back with the same comments: they hate watching ESPN.

ESPN’s soccer commentators are totally clueless and are embarrassing to the USA. Case on point; the commentary of the Brazil/Ghana game included the following:
Marcelo Balboa: “Ghana was the better team today” while Brazil was dominating the match up two to nil.
Marcelo Balboa: “It was a good play” speaking about the Ghanaian player who mistakenly shot on his own goal.
Marcelo Balboa: “You have to give a lot of respect to Ghana” after Brazil scored their third goal by beating the offside trap and then embarrassing the keeper by chipping the ball over him, running past him, and tapping the ball in the goal softly.
Marcelo Balboa: “You’ve got to give all the respect in the World to Ghana” and “I am not impressed at all with Brazil” after the game ended with Brazil winning three to nil.
Neither Balboa nor O’Brien mentioned in the second half that Ronaldo earned his place as the World Cup’s greatest ever goal scorer, breaking Gerd Mueller’s record 14 goals. I felt that Balboa’s commentary was absolutely absurd. I also feel that, while not as disturbing as Marcelo Balboa, most American ESPN commentators are generally inept. And as to the USA/Czech game, the commentating horrified me then as well.

I agree Balboa’s comments are egotistical and he appears at time to be completely clueless. Anyway to mute his mic?

According to Balboa, “you’ll notice he’s touching his shoe before taking the corner. This is what tells you it’s a ‘set piece'”.
“Germany used to play long balls up the field, but now they have Crespo.”
Balboa is a complete idiot. From listening to him you would think he never played the sport. Come to think if it, I’ve seen him on the pitch.. he HASN’T ever played the sport.
What a moron.

BALBOA HAS TO GO! What is with Marcelo Balboa’s obesession with David Beckham. He has failed to recognize that three of England’s four wins are directly attributable to Becks – against Paraguay it was his strike that lead to the own goal, against Trinidad he struck a brilliant cross for Crouchie to score, and his stunning free kick gave them the Ecuador win. Is he the greatest player in the world – no (and no one said he is). He is probably the greatest player of a dead ball, though. Where did Balboa play? Oh, yeah the MLS when there was no competition and 2 years in Mexico. He is qualified – yeah, right! COME ON ENGLAND!

We’ve been watching the Mexican channel, even though none of us understand more than 3 words of Spanish (gol, penalty, falta). However, I gave the good Marcelo another chance this morning. Clearly, he is the next Joe Theismann. (Joe is best known for “Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is someone like Norman Einstein.”) I’ve been enjoying listening to him talk about how much tougher he was as a player than Beckham is, but what inspired me to write is his assertion that the heat is going to be much worse in South Africa than it is here, so England will be even more challenged by the heat. Now, as this game is being played, the temp in Cape Town is 72 degrees. The forecast high temps are from 55 to 72 degrees for the week. HELLO MARCELO!!!!! IT’S THE MIDDLE OF WINTER DOWN THERE!!! Furthermore, unless something extraordinary happens in the next 4 years, it will be winter in June there in 2010, too.

Marcello Balboa is the biggest moron in sports. He is an utter embarassment. I hope he never does another game again so I can go back to watching games called in English instead of Korean or Spanish.
Is there anyway to contact ESPN or Balboa himself?

It has been a brilliant cup so far with some phenom games that definitely make it into the archive, as long as they are IN SPANISH or completely MUTED!. Balboa has to be completely disregarded, and between him and the arrogant and strictly opinionated Wynalda, I don’t know who’s more embarassing to the sport. No wonder we can’t get a team amongst millions of players to represent us with a win. When you have Balboa blaming the ref’s for the downfall of the sport, and Wynalda blaming the coach. They are only finding excuses for their own disappointments within the cup. It couldn’t be more obvious. And between the two of them I can’t figure out who is more full of b.s. countless talking just to hear themselves talk. Just remember no one is listening anymore! One note to ESPN, PLEASE DON’T PUT EITHER OF THEM ON THE COMMENTATING OF THE FINAL! That is sacred and shouldn’t be tampered with. One other thing! Thanks to Addidas for their sponsorship to have all of these games played real time. I will buy Addidas here on out til 2010. At least you (Addidas) turned out to represent, along with all the great fans who were there in person!

The games would be so much more enjoyable if Babbleboa would shut the heck up.

going to leave the country for future world cups to avoid the american commentary, I can’t handle it anymore. Dave O’Brien is a moron. Balboa needs to stop looking like a homeless man. What is espn thinking.

My favorite comment was when he started talking about how the weather was in London at the time. I hate how they bring up useless facts – because they don’t know what else to say. Every time they talk about Zidane, for instance, they always have to put really meaningless stats by him – # of international appearances, 3rd all time… NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID STATS AMERICA… leave the commentating to the English and all the other football playing nations, and go back to commentating on the dominoes tournament and food eating contests.

You know what? As sad as I am to have to wait another four years for the next disapointing US world cup performance, I am thrilled that I don’t have to hear Marcelo Balboa say “and you know what” again. Because you know what, this is a beautiful game, and you know what, American commetators are not very good at calling it. And, you know what…I’ve got a headache after listening to these yahoos for a month.

I am appalled at the way ESPN/ABC covered the World Cup.
With all interfering graphics on the screen; misadvertising the (semifinal) Italy game with Germany (had to watch it at 2 in the morning on ESPN Classic) by announcing it was on ESPN but actually on ESPN HD; the announcers going on and on with stupid triva (e.g. This is the first time the ball was touch by 3 players in the 52nd minute wearing pink dresses, ugh!); never having enough pre-game discussions…everytime they had a pregame show it was filled with commercials and no discussions; they rarely showed the opening ceremonies of the games and only did 2 second recaps at the end of the games.
The irresponsibility of the announcers by insinuating that the Italians players were being investigated in Italy instead of correctly stating that the squads were being investigated not the players.
Soccer can’t pick up viewers in this country because we keep having to go to UNIVision to watch the games (and I don’t speak Spanish!!!!!).
But the absolute worse was when Italy won the cup, the only thing those ridiculous announcers could talk about was France losing and Zidane’s stupidity. What about saying something about the WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS????????
You guys really did a piss poor job at broadcasting a series of games that over ONE BILLION people watch.
Too bad they aren’t watching it on your channel.
I think I’ll learn Spanish over the next four years to watch the games on a channel that can actually broadcast the sport the correct way.

I was unimpressed with the announcing as well. I like Tommy Smith and John Harkes as color commentators. They both are colorful and provide good insight into what’s going on. JP Dellacamera is a good announcer as well. Dave O’Brien was clearly not that knowledgeable, but his job really is just to report what is happening. To me, Marcelo Balboa was just horrendous. First of all, his voice is so monotone. His attempts at inflection are laughable. After a while, just hearing his voice was irritating. Regarding the content of his comments, he occassionally displayed some insight into what was going on. But, most of the time he was way off the mark and was clearly out of his league. I was tired of hearing him praise players for dives and convincing play-acting that earned them free kicks. His descriptions of what was going on often were more play-by-play (and poor play by play) than color. And when he did try to add color, it seemed off the mark. How could ESPN have O’Brien and Balboa do the final?! The world cup final??!! The biggest sporting event in the world??!! It was really a joke. It really trivialized the event somewhat for me. This pair should be commentating college soccer, at best. They are not even fit for MLS.

Balboa is a disgrace. In my thirty-seven years of watching the beautiful game, I have never heard such pathetic commentary. He spends 90% of his time telling the viewer how the players SHOULD play – like he’s some kind of footballing God. Don’t let this moron back on air!

Marcelo is the lousiest commentator in the history of sports. I liked John Harkes and JP DeLaCamera. Even O’Brien is acceptable compared to Balboa. The guy contradicts himself and talks as if the viewers are a bunch of three year olds. No Marcelo Beckham is not a terrible player. No Marcelo nobody cares about your hatred for penalty shoot-outs. No Marcelo, nobody wants to hear you speak.