ESPN/ABC's MLS announcer Dave O'Brien

[mrpopulistfutebol]

Is it just me, or do I think that Dave O'Brien should just stick to calling baseball games and not call soccer games for ESPN and ABC?

He mixes waaaaay too much baseball anthology into soccer games (calls a shot taken by a Houston Dynamo player in the MLS Cup "Swings and he misses").

What about J.P. Dellacamera? He is at least decent at calling MLS games and called them last year. This past season he was doing games for the New York Red Bulls.

I would wish for the return of Derek Rae to MLS games for ESPN and ABC, but that will not happen, because he had a spat with the Metrostars and doesnt like MLS, according to an entry in Wikipedia.

Their has to be better soccer announcers for ABC and ESPN down their?

any one got names??

[Cheeta]

Was that O'Brien doing the Cup final? Haven't seen sweet-eff-all of MLS this year so I couldn't tell you who was doing the match commentary. But if you say it was O'Brien then I'll take your word at it.

Yeah, thought "this is kind of weird". Forget kind of, definately weird. Didn't know quite what to make of it at first, but he soured on myself as well pretty quickly too once the original shock had worn off.

Luckily, I was watching the match with a couple of non-football friends so we chit-chatted amongst ourselves for the most part and were able to ignore the commentary.

Full marks for not playing it safe and just going with what I refer to as "an accent" for the commentary. Some of the hacks that have been dredged up over the years just for the sake of having "an accent", hoe boy. Even the thickest cockney accent can't disguise a footie idiot for very long.

Maybe not quite what you ment, but I wonder how these other sport play-by-play men prepare for a soccer assignment? It's got to be tough. I mean that as a play-by-play announcer you've realy got to focus on your one, or maybe two sports to be any damn good now don't you? Develop you style and rythem to that sport. It's just the way it is. And then you get thrown into a product which you may (or may not) be somewhat familiar with, but it's definately not your usual haunt. It's got to be hard.

[mrpopulistfutebol]

Yes, that was Dave o' Brien calling the MLS Cup.

[Crazy_Yank]

O'Brien is a complete and utter moron with absolutely no soccer background. He was idiotic enough to insult the US fan base saying "these aren't the people we should try to court" due to the overwhelming number of emails sent to espn and himself personally asking that he be taken off the broadcasts.