{"id":545644,"date":"2026-07-17T07:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/545644\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T07:09:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:09:29","slug":"foxs-us-world-cup-summer-wild-mispronunciations-cordens-sad-beers-and-lowes-excellence-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/545644\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox\u2019s US World Cup summer: wild mispronunciations, Corden\u2019s sad beers and Lowe\u2019s excellence | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, 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 (\u201cAnd there\u2019s Javier Bardem and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz\u201d) as if delivering the results of a colonoscopy. Goodbye to Rebecca Lowe saying \u201cOK, OK\u201d whenever she\u2019s 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\u2019s momentum needed no explanation; goodbye to \u201cno golden goal\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Goodbye to Geoff Shreeves, Fox\u2019s 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 \u201clyrical\u201d 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<\/a>, fufu chicken tikka masala<\/a>) in the face of the tournament\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Goodbye to it all: Fox has been the English-language home of the World Cup<\/a> 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. \u201cFox Sports, World Cup broadcaster\u201d was an eight-year sociological experiment conducted by Harvard University. The study is now complete; thank you for your time.<\/p>\n

Was this World Cup on Fox<\/a> 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\u2019s murderously unfunny late night show. Throughout the tournament these beers have remained three-quarters full, headless, and flat \u2013 and have become, in time, their own potent metaphor. Even at America\u2019s own World Cup, Fox has steadfastly refused to give us the full pour.<\/p>\n

To be clear, 2026 is a distinct improvement on what came before. And yes, it\u2019s 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\u2019t witness it, it\u2019s impossible to overstate how abominable the coverage of the 2022 World Cup<\/a> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s coverage of the lower-profile games, while never quite dispelling the impression that they\u2019re about to announce the next housemate to be kicked off the set of Big Brother. Speaking of which: with some of the world\u2019s 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\u2019s a corporate basement instead.<\/p>\n

The studio pundits have likewise offered a mix of fizzy and flat. John Obi Mikel has the gravitas to pull off a line like \u201cThe game needs a goal\u201d 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 \u201cthree and a half years ago\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

Zlatan Ibrahimovi\u0107 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 \u201cI am Zlatan\u201d routine and allows himself to display his full emotional and conversational range, Ibrahimovi\u0107 is a fine pundit. Without Clarence Seedorf\u2019s thoughtfulness and genial rumble of a laugh, Fox\u2019s coverage of the World Cup would have been 10% inferior. Alexi Lalas? You might say I\u2019m not a fan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cLex has been the cornerstone of our soccer coverage for as long as I can remember,\u201d Shanks said<\/a> in an interview. \u201cHe\u2019s the straw that stirs the drink.\u201d Putting aside the vile image this conjures of viewers needing to suck Alexi Lalas to ingest the \u201cdrink\u201d of the World Cup (I know hydration breaks have been a big talking point this tournament, but Gianni, if you\u2019re reading, do NOT use this as a basis for further \u201creform\u201d in 2030), let\u2019s 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\u2019s halfway to gaseousness already.<\/p>\n

Fox\u2019s allegiance to its resident tap dancer<\/a> is emblematic of a broader rot that has held the network back this summer, even as it\u2019s tried to meet the grandeur of a World Cup on home soil. Take the Iranian team\u2019s 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 \u201cnoise\u201d. Fifa\u2019s extraordinary capitulation to Donald Trump to suspend Folarin Balogun\u2019s 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\u2019s discriminatory system of visa bonds for visitors from certain World Cup-participating countries? Who is the host broadcaster to disagree with \u2013 or even raise \u2013 any of this? Fox has been a perfectly pliant and apolitical vessel for the most consumingly political World Cup of our lives.<\/p>\n

Even the choice of Winston as Fox\u2019s man in the stands carried a powerful whiff. The NFL quarterback began the tournament jumping about half-naked and has ended it barking<\/a> 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 \u201cfun\u201d fan correspondent for this World Cup a man whose Wikipedia page<\/a> includes a hefty \u201cControversies\u201d tab. Are you a professional athlete with an entry on the internet\u2019s encyclopedia that includes the sub-headings \u201cSexual assault allegation\u201d, \u201cShoplifting incidents\u201d, and \u201c2017 groping allegation\u201d? Good news: you may have a bright career on Fox ahead of you.<\/p>\n

Amid all the chattering excellence of the Lowe-led New Fox, it\u2019s 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 \u2013 Rob Stone, Clint Dempsey, Donovan and Lalas \u2013 at a live set in sweltering Philadelphia, where they were assisted in their coverage of the day\u2019s 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<\/a> 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

Stone, demoted into a secondary anchor role amid his employer\u2019s Anglo ascendancy, has been perhaps the biggest loser of this World Cup, but he\u2019s nobly attempted to maintain a brave face. \u201cStoney\u201d is the type of steady pro who can deliver the words \u201cYour Fox starting lineups, brought to you by American Express\u201d without drama, or gather every one of his 29 years of major broadcast experience into a line like \u201cDeep-fried Mars bar \u2013 that\u2019s a real thing in a lot of country fairs here in the United States as well\u201d, which he dropped at the end of Chef Nick\u2019s 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\u2019s No 2 man introduced a feature on joga bonito with the words, \u201cWe paid a visit to Brazil to learn more about the roots of Joe Go Bonito\u201d, 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\u2019s this type of material that has kept us glued to the screen this summer, even as Fox\u2019s coverage has threatened to become boringly professional.<\/p>\n

Popular Greek waiter Takehiro Tomiyasu takes on Vin\u00edcius Jr during this summer\u2019s World Cup. Photograph: Lynn Pennington\/ZUMA Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The World Cup, as I\u2019ve written elsewhere<\/a>, is always a drama of language, and wrangling foreign names into English can be hard, but this year\u2019s installment has been uncommonly rich in mispronunciation and misunderstanding. Amid the usual roll call of manglings \u2013 I\u2019ve counted about 12 different versions of \u201cQui\u00f1ones\u201d, \u201cT\u00fcrkiye\u201d has veered from \u201cTurk-eye-ah\u201d to \u201cTurkey: yay!\u201d, and Lionel Messi\u2019s first name has consistently been rendered like Lionel Richie\u2019s \u2013 Fox has never stopped innovating, transforming football\u2019s traditional halves into quarters and difficult last names into completely new characters. Ra\u00fal Jim\u00e9nez has emerged as \u201cJim Ennez\u201d, Marc Cucurella has become \u201cCuckoo Rella\u201d, like he\u2019s the crazy relative no one in the family talks about, and Japan left-back Takehiro Tomiyasu is now \u201cTommy Yiasou\u201d, the wisecracking veteran waiter at a Greek restaurant that\u2019s been feeding families since 1978.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve spent a lot of time practicing the names of all the players in this World Cup, but there\u2019s not much to worry about when you have a player called Ben Old coming on for Joe Bell\u201d, 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\u2019s insistence on crossing as the highest footballing art boorish, but as I\u2019ve listened to him more over the years and tactical fashion has swung the way of set pieces, I\u2019ve come to appreciate the back-to-the-land simplicity of his on-field philosophy (\u201cGet it wide, get it in\u201d). Stu Holden will forever look and sound like he\u2019s 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\u2019s chief color guy was hyping up every routine trap and forward jog from Christian Pulisic as if \u201cCaptain America\u201d was the second coming of Garrincha, and not a legspreading menswear model<\/a> gearing up for a big summer of rest<\/a>. But once the US games ended Holden was able to show the degree to which he\u2019s matured as an analyst; his ability to convey in-game tactical fluctuations and capture the World Cup\u2019s defining dramas have made this comfortably his best professional outing yet in the commentary box.<\/p>\n

Other announcers have fared rather worse. Darren Fletcher won points for noting during England\u2019s first knockout match that \u201cif it\u2019s coming home, it\u2019s taking a while to get there\u201d, but lost them all for his execrable \u201csiuuu\u201d to mark Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s 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\u2019s artificial turf NFL stadiums with soccer-friendly grass, the reforestation of Donovan\u2019s head still stands out as this tournament\u2019s most impressive single feat of terraforming. But the proceeding hairline\u2019s 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\u2019re stuck with it for life.<\/p>\n

John Strong, the play-by-play anchor of Fox\u2019s 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 (\u201cDjed SPENCE, cuts it BACK, knocked DOWN, Declan RICE\u201d) or throwing to a break (\u201cForty-five minutes down, FORTY-FIVE TO GO here in Seattle\u201d), 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\u2019ve had ENOUGH, of this STYLE, of COMMENTARY, which is ANNOYING, and SUCKS, and never ENDS, even WHEN, there\u2019s nothing HAPPENING, on the FIELD.<\/p>\n

Lowe, Breach, Oatley, Barton: Fox\u2019s 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 (\u201cCould this be the year that France finally gets it done and they win the World Cup?\u201d ESPN\u2019s Stephen A Smith recently mused<\/a> of the two-time champions), but is Fox\u2019s collection of zesty Englishwomen, nonchalant Euros and all-American idiots<\/a> the best we can hope for? There\u2019s no question that British commentators, anchors and voices bring a certain romance, a plummy authority, to coverage of the sport. But I\u2019ve long argued<\/a> that American soccer needs more Americans on air, especially since the sport as it\u2019s actually lived and discussed throughout the US bears little resemblance to the witless, bloviating face it\u2019s given on screen. This country\u2019s fans deserve better than Fox: why can\u2019t American networks, pundits and analysts be the ones to deliver it?<\/p>\n

The incumbent will face stiff competition for the rights to the 2030 World Cup, and all these questions \u2013 plus the more elemental consideration of cost \u2013 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\u2019s Dumbest and The Quiz with Balls. But for those uninterested in sticking around to witness Ice-T\u2019s struggle to spell the word \u201cguarantee\u201d or Gordon Ramsay\u2019s likening of a set of poorly executed meatballs to \u201cturds\u201d, the road stops now. After eight years of Fox stinking up our screens every big tournament summer, we reach the end: the end of \u201cplayers to watch, sponsored by Adidas\u201d, of \u201ckeys to the match, sponsored by Jeep\u201d, of \u201cyour moment of the half, sponsored by Visa\u201d, of \u201cyour moment of the match, sponsored by Kinder Bueno\u201d. Which brings us, at last, to your World Cup conclusion, sponsored by Aaron Timms: thank you for everything, Fox \u2013 and please don\u2019t come back!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Goodbye, then, to Fox, to its band of upbeat Brits and grown men dressed in suits and sneakers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-545644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}