April 20 – US broadcaster Fox Sports keeps stacking its World Cup studio with European legends. Clarence Seedorf is the latest, announced as a studio analyst for the summer. He joins Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernández, and NBC’s Rebecca Lowe on a line-up built to impress any football fan on the planet.
It is an impressive list. It is also missing something.
This is a home World Cup. The United States is co-hosting the biggest sporting event on earth for the first time since 1994. And the network with the rights to it has built a marquee studio where the American voice is, at best, an afterthought.
Where is the US talent? Where are the voices that can speak directly to a country watching the game at this scale for the first time? Alexi Lalas and Stu Holden are already on Fox but when the network announces its premium signings one by one, it was European legend after European legend with a Mexican voice thrown in.
Seedorf is one of the great players of his generation and earned his stripes in the 2018 Fox studio.
“Clarence has garnered a ton of praise for his work over the years as a respected analyst worldwide,” Fox Sports president Brad Zager said. “He’s going to instantly elevate our coverage.”
Fox is telling American viewers in the build-up to their own World Cup that the best voices to explain the game all live or played in Europe, despite the US producing players, coaches, and broadcasters who have sat at World Cups, played in them, and know the American audience.
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