my innermost sanctum

I will hear no more complaint about the BBC. The commentary may border on inanity and the jokes may be lame, but this morning, watching England on American TV, I cried for the BBC. You do not know what bad commentary is; you know nothing of former USA international Marcelo Balboa, who today informed me that, "England have a lot of great players, but they may underperform. It's like Real Madrid--they have a lot of great players, but they underperform."

The commentary team deployed for England--apparently the network's flagship duo--demonstrated an utter lack of awareness of European football beyond Madrid and Man U, and even seemed shaky on those subjects. "Everyone around the world knows the name of Michael Beckham," Balboa said, "I mean, David Beckham." They gave us meaningless statistics and worse jokes.

Add that to the fact that the audio feed lagged 7 seconds behind the high def video feed. That their utterly inane comments came 7 seconds late threw their incompetence into sharper relief. I could easily have done a better job, and I'm an 18 year-old from Tennessee who doesn't play football.

For all America's bragging about how we're becoming a world football superpower, we are giving no respect to the competition. That these twits are being broadcast across the country shows how far we are from legitimacy. It's a worse than saying, "soccer." This problem runs much deeper.

Disgruntled American,
name deleted to prevent virtual amoebae from comin ere