Excuse the poorly executed title. Despite the existence of far superior news sources for the game of football, I can't help but always check ESPNSoccernet. They have one aspect that really no other good newspaper/news source for soccer does, and that's an American perspective. There are always plenty of articles relating to Americans abroad, the MLS and the national team. It's to be expected obviously, as it's an American source intended for an American audience. Then I really have to ask the question, why on Earth is it so Anglo-centric? I can understand a bias towards the Premiership (equally so to La Liga and Serie A) but SoccerNet is becoming pretty ridiculous in how one-sided it is for European football. For the last three days, two of the cover pages have related to Alan Shearer rejoining Newcastle and the game over Ukraine. If I'm coming from an American perspective, do I really care about that more than the 6-1 thrashing Bolivia doled out to Argentina? Or the fact that Bosnia or Northern Ireland are shock group leaders? I don't know a single American without direct blood-ties (i.e. parents, maybe grandparents) who gives two shits about the English national team. Everyone has players they like, I am a huge Steven Gerrard fan for example, but I really could care less about how England do. In fact, I kinda like it when they do poorly, because the British press are absolutely hilarious in times like those.
It's ironic that the website is so biased when it appears the station is not. Sportscenter showed selected highlights from a variety of matches, and only did a particularly long highlight on the USA-T&T match. I've noticed a champions league bias, but that's quite understandable. Outside of huge upsets (on days when the Premiership isn't in action), you're never going to see mainland European news hitting the frontpages of Soccernet, and this flummoxes me. There's probably a plurality amongst soccer fans with Premiership fandom, but I really doubt it's overwhelming enough to basically snuff out any mention of the rest of Europe. Do I really care that much about Alan Shearer or the manager of Newcastle (No). Do I care more about England beating Ukraine than Spain beating Turkey or a handful of other games involving big teams? (No) Do I care about Harry Redknapp's latest soundbits? (Hell no). Maybe it's just been slow news out of the rest of Europe, and maybe I'm just irritable, but really, I'd like to see more variety of my SoccerNet.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment