In the US, are Balboa and O'Brien good soccer commentators or idiots & why were they chosen as the A team?

Question

Neither of them seemed to watch what was going on in the field of play. Even with instant replay, Balboa as the analyst would incorrectly comment on fouls. He also could not hide his bias toward teams. ie he was rooting for Italy on Sunday.

MY VOTE GOES TO ENGLISH GUY ADRIANE HEALY AND TOMMY SMITH

Answer 1

I think JP DellaCamera is a better play-by-play guy than O'Brien. Bob Ley did the play-by-play for ESPN during France98 and he may be the best English-speaking football commentator in the USA, even if he was a bit stiff.

But for me, the best football commentary in the USA comes from the Spanish-language stations. Even if you only understand Spanish a little, Pablo Ramirez and Jorge Perez-Navarro do a great play-by-play and convey a sense of emotion and excitement that is completely lacking in any other broadcast from this country.

Answer 2

They were chosen as the A team because there are no good American soccer commentators.

As bad as they were, they were the best that ABC/ESPN had. Balboa's insight to the players was half decent, but you would think someone who has played the game as long as he has would have read the Laws of the Game at least once - it's a short book. And you got the feeling that both were in some booth with no windows, relying on a different video feed than the one being broadcast. It was Balboa that thought the replay of Zidane's head butt had been shown on the big screen at the stadium, so I'm pretty sure he wasn't sitting in the press box if he was at the stadium at all.

Harkes shouldn't be allowed to touch a microphone ever again - not even on Karaoke Night. DellaCamera seemed to maliciously put Harkes on spot, even knowing there wasn't a chance of Harkes saying anything comprehensible, let alone intelligent.

Answer 3

Because there names contained the letter B and we all know from
early childhood that B is for " BALL. "

Answer 4

Why???