Night-Baird on Snow Street

As soon as Fulham’s lineup was published, you knew that it was going to be a long day. Even without Vincent Kompany – for my money the best player in the Prem this season – and without Yaya Toure, getting anything out of today’s visit to Eastlands was possible only if the match ended 0-0. We helped Sergio Aguero break out of his slump by conceding our first penalty of the season, gave another goal to Edin Dzeko, and in between contributed an own goal under pretty much no pressure at all. Could have been worse, though. Nobody got hurt. Could have been better, though. After 40 minutes or so I was hoping for the match to be abandoned as our match at Sunderland was several seasons back. Nah. On this day at least, God wasn’t a Fulham fan.

With a weakened City back four, what this match needed was a strong, physical presence at the point of our attack – somebody who could hold up the ball, distribute it, pressure the central defenders, and lay off the ball to our 4-D midfield attackers. In other words, we needed Bobby Zamora today. In that role in his last start, the enigmatic striker bagged three assists and a goal against a very good Newcastle team. Without him, we were lost in attack. We made a couple of decent moves, but using Dempsey as the fulcrum of the attack negates his greatest strength – those long runs that allow him to show up late and tap them in. Instead, he was prowling around the edge of the area with Davies and the excellent Duff, none of whom, of course, had Zamora to play off either.

The Future of Soccer on American TV: Some Good Signs

January 22 marked an important milestone in television coverage of soccer. For the first time, an American broadcast network aired a live Premier League match. Credit Fox, which has made a significant investment in soccer coverage (more on that later). The network has recently shown a few league matches on a tape delay on Sundays to fill in for gaps in NFL programming—and certainly other soccer competitions have found their way to the airwaves—but last Sunday marked a notable first.

The broadcast earned a 0.8 overnight household rating. On paper, it may not sound all that impressive, but when put in the proper perspective, the 0.8 rating offers plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the television future of our beloved game.

For those who are unfamiliar, a quick note on ratings: Ratings are simply percentages (extrapolated from a measured sample) that reflect how many households (or people of a certain demographic) are tuned into a program. The 0.8 rating mentioned above means that 0.8 percent of U.S. households were tuned into the match.

Fox has shown significant dedication to the sport, most notably with its successful bid for domestic rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but also with its coverage of the UEFA Champions League, which started in 2010 and currently is scheduled to run through the 2015 Final (both competitions previously had deals with ESPN). Fox also has rights deals in place with the FA (for FA Cup and Three Lions matches), and Serie A, although those competitions still see all their action run on Fox Soccer and Fox Soccer Plus.