I didn't see as much of the last 10 days of the World Cup as I had the first few weeks. I missed one semi-final and most of the final (although I saw it later on tape).
It was sort of interesting watching the coverage on ABC/ESPN.
I know people from this side of the ocean get annoyed at the commentary and in a lot of ways I don't blame them. Using terms like PK's for penalty kicks, rather than 'penalties' as used more often here, is not a big issue for me. (PK's is better than the increasingly common 'penos', which I really hate. You know, "Becks scored a peno".) It sounds odd if you're used to the BBC or RTE or whatever, but that's all. No, what really annoys me is that the commentators never SHUT UP. They just keep talking. Their voices never stop.
On the plus side, the US commentary team had no problem talking about the bizarre decisions by the European producers to show slow motion replays of players drinking water or coaches waving their arms, which seem to be part and parcel of any soccer broadcast.
The Zidane thing has been done to death, but still, what was he thinking? I was talking about this with friends last week and we couldn't come up with one instance of a top-of-the-line player being dismissed from any major championship game in any major US sport. The closest I could come was Roger Clemens in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series when he should have been ejected for throwing a broken bat at Mike Piazza.
