Fox’s US World Cup summer: wild mispronunciations, Corden’s sad beers and Lowe’s excellence

Jameis Winston, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thierry Henry, James Corden and Rebecca Lowe have all played their part in this summer’s World Cup. Composite: Getty Images, Guardian design Goodbye, then, to Fox, to its band of upbeat Brits and grown men dressed in suits and sneakers. Goodbye to constant cutaways to Gianni Infantino in the stands , his eyebrows a mournful tipi, his nude head sprinkling under the summer sun. Goodbye to Landon Donovan and his special gift for announcing every celebrity sighting (“And there’s Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz”) as if delivering the results of a colonoscopy. Goodbye to Rebecca Lowe saying “OK, OK” whenever she’s needed one of her on-set personalities to zip it so she can throw to a break. Goodbye to the momentum graph, which only flashed on screen when a match’s momentum needed no explanation; goodbye to “no golden goal” on the scorebug during extra time, referencing a rule that has not been in force at a World Cup for 24 years; goodbye to the connected ball, which never seemed connected when we needed connection most. Goodbye to Geoff Shreeves, Fox’s middle-aged Oliver Twist chirruping on the sideline for the approval of his American masters. Goodbye to Tom Rinaldi, to his pocket squares and his “lyrical” meditations on balls and planets and stars or whatever. Goodbye to Chef Nick, now forced to rein in the extravagance of his early contributions ( kangaroo corndogs , fufu chicken tikka masala ) in the face of the tournament’s gastronomically subdued final four. And goodbye to Jameis Winston, the Fox fan correspondent, whose distressingly antic and sweaty stadium dispatches gave him the unvarying appearance of a man being electrocuted in the middle of a baptism. Goodbye to it all: Fox has been the English-language home of the World Cup on US TV since 2018, but with the media rights to 2030 and beyond still up for grabs, the future remains uncertain and potentially Fox-less. “Fox Sports, World Cup broadcaster” was an eight-year sociological experiment conducted by Harvard University. The study is now complete; thank you for your time. Was this World Cup on Fox as bad as we thought it would be? It was not. But was it good? It was not. Or rather: it was good only in parts. For me, the abiding TV image of this summer of soccer will be the glasses of beer plonked before each guest on James Corden’s murderously unfunny late night show. Throughout the tournament these beers have remained three-quarters full, headless, and flat – and have become, in time, their own potent metaphor. Even at America’s own World Cup, Fox has steadfastly refused to give us the full pour. Related: The French aristocrat and the all-American idiot: Henry v Lalas is the World Cup’s most compelling battle To be clear, 2026 is a distinct improvement on what came before. And yes, it’s always possible to watch on Telemundo or mute, but this is a review for the masochists who like their punishment delivered in English with the sound on. For those who didn’t witness it, it’s impossible to overstate how abominable the coverage of the 2022 World Cup truly was. Fox, learning the lessons of that disaster, wisely rebalanced its on-air talent pool for this tournament to include fewer hapless Americans and more elite foreigners. Lowe has been predictably terrific in the main anchor’s chair, holding an unruly panel of talent together with the stern mercy of a beloved schoolteacher. Jules Breach and Pien Meulensteen have brought much of the same vim to Fox’s coverage of the lower-profile games, while never quite dispelling the impression that they’re about to announce the next housemate to be kicked off the set of Big Brother. Speaking of which: with some of the world’s most historic skylines at its disposal, Fox bafflingly decided to park its expensively assembled team indoors, in a bland LA studio designed with curved graphic panels to resemble the airless rec room of some tech unicorn on the brink of insolvency. Between the makeshift stadium desks and this glitching green screen, the whole production has felt small and decarbonated. Manhattan? The Hollywood Hills? The skyway futurism of downtown Atlanta? Forget all that: here’s a corporate basement instead. The studio pundits have likewise offered a mix of fizzy and flat. John Obi Mikel has the gravitas to pull off a line like “The game needs a goal” and not sound like a complete dope, while Peter Schmeichel has huffed and interjected his way through the tournament like a perpetually disappointed dad, his contribution defined by the constant, pedantic insistence that Argentina won the last World Cup “three and a half years ago”. Thierry Henry has been uniformly superb, able to switch from tactical analysis to lip-quivering bombast with the assurance of a striker in total command of his own change of pace. Zlatan Ibrahimović mumbled through the first few weeks but grew into the tournament, eventually achieving a pleasant equilibrium between expertise, empathy, and disdain (for Ronald Koeman above all). Once he ditches the tedious “I am Zlatan” routine and allows himself to display his full emotional and conversational range, Ibrahimović is a fine pundit. Without Clarence Seedorf’s thoughtfulness and genial rumble of a laugh, Fox’s coverage of the World Cup would have been 10% inferior. Alexi Lalas? You might say I’m not a fan . As the mockery of Lalas online threatened to swallow the World Cup whole a few weeks ago, Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks went on the defensive. “Lex has been the cornerstone of our soccer coverage for as long as I can remember,” Shanks said in an interview. “He’s the straw that stirs the drink.” Putting aside the vile image this conjures of viewers needing to suck Alexi Lalas to ingest the “drink” of the World Cup (I know hydration breaks have been a big talking point this tournament, but Gianni, if you’re reading, do NOT use this as a basis for further “reform” in 2030), let’s think about the metaphors here. Lalas is a cornerstone (solid) and a straw (solid) in contact with a drink (liquid). Why not go all the way, Eric, and make Lalas a gas? After all, vaporizing Alexi is what many of us have spent years calling for, and the man already generates a good amount of wind, so he’s halfway to gaseousness already. Fox’s allegiance to its resident tap dancer is emblematic of a broader rot that has held the network back this summer, even as it’s tried to meet the grandeur of a World Cup on home soil. Take the Iranian team’s arrival in the US under the cloud of an illegal war launched by the US itself: the Fox analysts hardly even mentioned it, waving the war and all its associated inhumanity away as mere “noise”. Fifa’s extraordinary capitulation to Donald Trump to suspend Folarin Balogun’s red card ban and allow the US striker to take the field against Belgium? Well, it was regrettable, but the card never should have been given, so: play on! Unbearably high ticket prices? Ads during the hydration breaks? The US government’s discriminatory system of visa bonds for visitors from certain World Cup-participating countries? Who is the host broadcaster to disagree with – or even raise – any of this? Fox has been a perfectly pliant and apolitical vessel for the most consumingly political World Cup of our lives. Even the choice of Winston as Fox’s man in the stands carried a powerful whiff. The NFL quarterback began the tournament jumping about half-naked and has ended it barking at the screen in frankly terrifying fashion. But the real problem here is one of casting rather than performance. Only Fox would think to make its “fun” fan correspondent for this World Cup a man whose Wikipedia page includes a hefty “Controversies” tab. Are you a professional athlete with an entry on the internet’s encyclopedia that includes the sub-headings “Sexual assault allegation”, “Shoplifting incidents”, and “2017 groping allegation”? Good news: you may have a bright career on Fox ahead of you. Amid all the chattering excellence of the Lowe-led New Fox, it’s been useful to have reminders of how self-parodyingly bad Old Fox can still be. The unpredictability of the draw meant that the US team did not play on the Fourth of July. To compensate, Fox handed the reins to its stalwart Americans – Rob Stone, Clint Dempsey, Donovan and Lalas – at a live set in sweltering Philadelphia, where they were assisted in their coverage of the day’s matches by a marching band left at a loose end after the city canceled its holiday parade on account of extreme heat. In place of another exhibition of Pochball, Fox gave us some decommissioned trombonists powering through a rendition of Anchors Aweigh while Lalas waved a huge American flag outside Independence Hall to what appeared to be a crowd of 30 people on the verge of expiry under the Anthropocene sun. Somewhere, I’m sure, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and the boys were all proudly looking on, safe in the knowledge that Fox Sports has carried on the legacy of elite cable TV programming for which they fought the British 250 years ago. Stone, demoted into a secondary anchor role amid his employer’s Anglo ascendancy, has been perhaps the biggest loser of this World Cup, but he’s nobly attempted to maintain a brave face. “Stoney” is the type of steady pro who can deliver the words “Your Fox starting lineups, brought to you by American Express” without drama, or gather every one of his 29 years of major broadcast experience into a line like “Deep-fried Mars bar – that’s a real thing in a lot of country fairs here in the United States as well”, which he dropped at the end of Chef Nick’s food battle between the Scottish Mars bar and Brazilian picanha . (The meat won in a knockout, for anyone wondering.) Ahead of the last-32 match between Brazil and Japan, Fox’s No 2 man introduced a feature on joga bonito with the words, “We paid a visit to Brazil to learn more about the roots of Joe Go Bonito”, making it sound like someone called Joseph had just gone absolutely mental on the dried tuna flakes at his local okonomiyaki spot. Did the moment get beyond him, or was Stone just hungry? Ultimately it’s this type of material that has kept us glued to the screen this summer, even as Fox’s coverage has threatened to become boringly professional. The World Cup, as I’ve written elsewhere , is always a drama of language, and wrangling foreign names into English can be hard, but this year’s installment has been uncommonly rich in mispronunciation and misunderstanding. Amid the usual roll call of manglings – I’ve counted about 12 different versions of “Quiñones”, “Türkiye” has veered from “Turk-eye-ah” to “Turkey: yay!”, and Lionel Messi’s first name has consistently been rendered like Lionel Richie’s – Fox has never stopped innovating, transforming football’s traditional halves into quarters and difficult last names into completely new characters. Raúl Jiménez has emerged as “Jim Ennez”, Marc Cucurella has become “Cuckoo Rella”, like he’s the crazy relative no one in the family talks about, and Japan left-back Takehiro Tomiyasu is now “Tommy Yiasou”, the wisecracking veteran waiter at a Greek restaurant that’s been feeding families since 1978. “We’ve spent a lot of time practicing the names of all the players in this World Cup, but there’s not much to worry about when you have a player called Ben Old coming on for Joe Bell”, observed Jacqui Oatley in the group match between Belgium and New Zealand, exhibiting the kind of dry wit that has made her one of the standout performers of the summer. I used to find her on-air partner Warren Barton’s insistence on crossing as the highest footballing art boorish, but as I’ve listened to him more over the years and tactical fashion has swung the way of set pieces, I’ve come to appreciate the back-to-the-land simplicity of his on-field philosophy (“Get it wide, get it in”). Stu Holden will forever look and sound like he’s just shown up for the first day of his summer job at a small town gas station, and there were many moments in the early stages of this tournament when Fox’s chief color guy was hyping up every routine trap and forward jog from Christian Pulisic as if “Captain America” was the second coming of Garrincha, and not a legspreading menswear model gearing up for a big summer of rest . But once the US games ended Holden was able to show the degree to which he’s matured as an analyst; his ability to convey in-game tactical fluctuations and capture the World Cup’s defining dramas have made this comfortably his best professional outing yet in the commentary box. Other announcers have fared rather worse. Darren Fletcher won points for noting during England’s first knockout match that “if it’s coming home, it’s taking a while to get there”, but lost them all for his execrable “siuuu” to mark Cristiano Ronaldo’s first goal against Uzbekistan, which sounded like someone dying mid-orgasm. In a World Cup that has seen much important and difficult work done to fit America’s artificial turf NFL stadiums with soccer-friendly grass, the reforestation of Donovan’s head still stands out as this tournament’s most impressive single feat of terraforming. But the proceeding hairline’s contributions this tournament have also proved an important modern truth: you can replant a bald head, but if you have a voice like a leaf blower, you’re stuck with it for life. John Strong, the play-by-play anchor of Fox’s top announcer team, has used this World Cup to launch a new style of ejaculatory emphasis in his commentary, by which he goes low then SUDDENLY GOES HIGH to make up for his chronic inability to match the excitement and personality of proceedings on the pitch. Whether describing plays (“Djed SPENCE, cuts it BACK, knocked DOWN, Declan RICE”) or throwing to a break (“Forty-five minutes down, FORTY-FIVE TO GO here in Seattle”), Strong has never met a sentence that could not be improved by division into this basic low-high dichotomy. To which the only reasonable response is: Shut UP, John STRONG, we’ve had ENOUGH, of this STYLE, of COMMENTARY, which is ANNOYING, and SUCKS, and never ENDS, even WHEN, there’s nothing HAPPENING, on the FIELD. Lowe, Breach, Oatley, Barton: Fox’s strongest performers have been mostly English, while the weak links are all homegrown. The level of mainstream media punditry about soccer in the US may be painfully low (“Could this be the year that France finally gets it done and they win the World Cup?” ESPN’s Stephen A Smith recently mused of the two-time champions), but is Fox’s collection of zesty Englishwomen, nonchalant Euros and all-American idiots the best we can hope for? There’s no question that British commentators, anchors and voices bring a certain romance, a plummy authority, to coverage of the sport. But I’ve long argued that American soccer needs more Americans on air, especially since the sport as it’s actually lived and discussed throughout the US bears little resemblance to the witless, bloviating face it’s given on screen. This country’s fans deserve better than Fox: why can’t American networks, pundits and analysts be the ones to deliver it? The incumbent will face stiff competition for the rights to the 2030 World Cup, and all these questions – plus the more elemental consideration of cost – will no doubt weigh heavily on the bidding. Fox has run constant plugs this past month for an enticing menu of shows, including Kitchen Nightmares, Nation’s Dumbest and The Quiz with Balls. But for those uninterested in sticking around to witness Ice-T’s struggle to spell the word “guarantee” or Gordon Ramsay’s likening of a set of poorly executed meatballs to “turds”, the road stops now. After eight years of Fox stinking up our screens every big tournament summer, we reach the end: the end of “players to watch, sponsored by Adidas”, of “keys to the match, sponsored by Jeep”, of “your moment of the half, sponsored by Visa”, of “your moment of the match, sponsored by Kinder Bueno”. Which brings us, at last, to your World Cup conclusion, sponsored by Aaron Timms: thank you for everything, Fox – and please don’t come back!