Like most other soccer fans in this country, there’s really only one thing on my mind today—the match at the Azteca this afternoon. I decided to watch ESPN last night just to see if there was anything and, as I figured it would be ignored, I could get my mind off the match and probably be put to sleep by endless Baseball and NFL training camp news. (I didn’t expect Rick Pitino to be the main event)

The end result, while I didn’t expect much, there actually was some reports…well, a report. Bob Ley and Alexi Lalas (and some other guy) are in the Azteca’s parking lot!

Big deal, right? Well, actually it is kinda. The ESPN “Game Day” thing is common for college sports but soccer? Granted, they’ll probably be doing it next summer in South Africa as well but, this is a match which they don’t hold the rights to in the US. They had a graphic on the screen at one point about it being on at 4PM Eastern so all I can assume is they’ll have it for ESPN International.

It wasn’t that long ago that most WCQ matches outside the US were called by commentators in the ESPN studios in Bristol. Heck, the Confederations Cup a couple months ago were done that way.

Now, ESPN have set up a temporary outdoor studio in Mexico City for a match which we’ll (well, those of us in the US who don’t speak Spanish) be tuning to a channel we’ve never heard of and will probably never bother to watch again. Could this mean the English Language rights for the match might be worth something?

I’ve no doubt that in four years the US-Mexico game will be available on a channel which more English speaking fans are familiar with. The question is, who will that be?

We only have to go back 10 years for me to remember having to buy PPV satellite feeds of matches played outside the US. Either that or we could see the US play on a Spanish Language channel—often on tape delay. Then there was the one match (may have been Guatemala or El Salvador) in, I’m guessing, ’97 (must have been qualifying for the ’98 Finals) which I had to watch on PPV at a bar in a Latino part of Pasadena….no one else in my area had it.

What I’m saying is that in—well, let’s go back—20 years the sport and following the National Team has gone from pretty zero (watching the 1990 World Cup it appeared the only US fans there were parents and girlfriends*) to where there will be at least a few hundred who made the trip to support the boys.

I’ve said it plenty of times on here but the sport is slowing gaining a foothold in the sporting landscape.

So, we are getting something we haven’t really had before. Granted, it’s muted when you compare it to what our neighbors will have leading up to the match and compared to the over hype of big games here, maybe it’s not bad it’s still not the lead story. But still, we are getting the next step to the sport being relevant in the US.
So, what are these experts saying? Who cares? Really the only thing to take out of all the predictions is that the Gold Cup Final was a fluke, Mexico City is an awful place to play (altitude, smog, heat) and maybe it’ll rain and be reasonably cool for the match so it won’t be at it’s worst—though you have to think that’s what was hoped for when the scheduled the match.

If this were England, the country would shut down as the match is taking place during the work day. For me, I’m leaving the office early and heading to an Irish Pub near my office. They have DirecTV so I should be ok to see it there. You never know, there may be some baseball game on that someone there before me requested. Hopefully, I won’t be alone. Failing that, I’ve got my DVR set so I can rush home and enjoy the match.

Yeah, here I am in a decent sized city in the Midwest and still don’t have a place where I know I can slip out and be sure I can see the match. Guess for all the progress we’ve made, there’s still plenty of room for improvement—but I’m not complaining about what we’ve got so far.

*Most of the team was still college students in 1990 so without doing any research I assume most weren’t married.

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