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In search of Kerlon and his seal dribble

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2 months ago

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In search of Kerlon and his seal dribble

This was going to be about the search.

It was going to be one of those pieces with an absence at its heart, a kind of magical mystery write-around, Frank Sinatra Has A Cold for the Brazilian football heads.

Sometimes you get the interview. Sometimes you just have to shrug and tell the story without it. A version of the story, anyway.

That is how it was shaping up with Kerlon Moura Souza. It was going to be a long-distance profile, the story of one of the game’s strangest parlour tricks and its creator, told through the hazy prism of memory. I had dug out the videos of the dribble that made him famous and watched them countless times. Maybe it was better this way, I told myself. Nothing ruins a folk tale like interrogating the logic of its plot points.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried. No, the trying was going to be a big part of it. The plan was to really ham things up, to make a fruitless and objectively quite dull pursuit sound something like spycraft.

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I was going to reference the pleading emails I had sent him across a period of years; the time spent tracking his whereabouts from my bedroom; the Instagram messages to his personal and business accounts; the hopeful enquiry to one of his employers. All of which yielded a grand total of… nada. A big old nothing sandwich with a side of radio silence.

As time went on, I often imagined what the title might be. ‘The Hunt for the Seal Dribbler’, perhaps. Or, if that oblique reference to his trademark move didn’t cut it with my editor, something a little more on-the-nose. ‘Kerlon: An Unrequited Love Story’ would have worked just fine.

Earlier this year, I decided the moment had come. Enough waiting, enough frustration. I was going to do it, going to write the piece, going to finally tick it off my list and forget about it.

Then I found him.

Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy was a talented footballer. He was nippy, skilful and strong. People thought he was going to be a star one day. In many cases, that is as far as the fable goes. It is normally enough to suck people in.

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This particular boy, though, also had something else. He had a special move, an invention all of his own. He could make the ball stick to his forehead. He could flick it up and just… keep it there, gravity be damned. It went with him wherever he went. He could run, even change direction, and still it stayed there, just above his eyeline, a little round pet.

Some people loved the boy, loved his trick. It was fun and it was funny in the way that unusual things can be. If anyone had thought to do it before, they had given up long before showing it off. But the boy wasn’t embarrassed and he wasn’t scared. He did the trick even when he knew it would end in tears, even after it had begun to turn strangers into enemies.

The trick made the boy famous. It also made him a target.

The kids are leaving when I arrive. They shuffle off with their parents into cars and trucks, exhausted but happy. Day two of their week-long summer football camp is over.

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It is just after midday in Hemby Bridge, a commuter town just southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina. The air is hot and heavy with moisture; my T-shirt begins to stick to my back soon after I step out of the taxi. It doesn’t help that I am jogging, frantically plotting a path to the rear of the local elementary school, trying to get to the sports pitches before Kerlon leaves.

He is not expecting me. I don’t know what to expect of him.

As I approach across the grass, a man is packing the last bag of footballs into the boot of his car. He wears a bucket hat and a black training shirt. He is tanned and stocky, facial hair cropped into a neat goatee. It’s him.

I shout out his name. A grin spreads across his face.

He is gracious and friendly. He says he has lunch planned with his family, but that he will talk if I come back tomorrow, bright and early, before training. I tell him he has a deal.

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Kerlon was famous before he had even played first-team football. It was an inevitability: the trick — first dusted off at youth level for Cruzeiro, then for Brazil’s under-17 side — was always destined to make waves.

For one thing, it was just so odd, so wilfully off-kilter. There are a thousand ways to dribble past an opponent, but until Kerlon came along, they pretty much all involved the feet. To watch him set off on a run, ball bobbling up and down on his brow, was to be forced to resolve what instinctively felt like a category error. Little wonder that defenders did not seem to know what to do with him in the early days; it’s hard to counteract something you can barely even understand.

The element of surprise did not last. This was the mid-2000s, probably slightly too early for the trick to be called a viral sensation, but clips of it soon started doing the rounds. One, originally posted on YouTube in December 2005, has been watched over 3.7million times since. The seal dribble, people called the move, a name that conjured colourful circus images. Kerlon swiftly became O Foquinha — The Little Seal — and it wasn’t long before his club were selling seal toys, looking to cash in on his name.


Kerlon became O Foquinha — The Little Seal (Daniel de Cerqueira/AFP via Getty Images)

There was more to Kerlon’s game than his trademark move. He was top scorer for Brazil at the South American Under-17 Championship in Venezuela, outshining future senior internationals Marcelo, Renato Augusto and Anderson. The title of another popular YouTube video compared him to Ronaldinho and while that was certainly on the generous side, Kerlon could be similarly effervescent on his day. He could hurt opposition teams with his passing, with his finishing and with his dead-ball ability. Still, everything always came back to the dribble.

Brazil went loopy for Kerlon’s dribble in a way that maybe only Brazil could. This was football as improvisational theatre, as streetwise problem-solving and, above all, as unrefined play. The seal dribble was experimental, naive curiosity supercharged by technique. It was ludic and it was ludicrous — not the thing itself, necessarily, although it did have a certain came-up-with-this-after-six-beers energy. No, the ludicrous part was that Kerlon would do it in actual matches.

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He did it in the South American Championship against Colombia and Uruguay. Later, he did it for Cruzeiro in a local derby, sparking a mass brawl and a moral panic. But we’ll get to that later.


Kerlon performing his signature skill (AP Photo/Ana Maria Otero)

Beneath trees that sway in the morning breeze, Kerlon gets as comfy as the wooden bench will allow. We’re a little behind schedule — training starts in 20 minutes — so there is no great preamble, no backlift. Slowly but confidently, Kerlon just launches into the story of the trick that changed his life.

“When I was a very young kid, I would train a lot with my dad,” he says. “Just us two. One day he kicked the ball up high for me. It bounced on the floor and came up to my head. I did four or five little headers in a row, keeping the ball up. My dad stopped. He asked, ‘If you ran with the ball on your head like that, would it be a free kick?’. I said that I didn’t know but that we should find out. My dad looked up the rules and saw that it was legal. There was no issue with it.”

Kerlon’s father, Silvino, asked him to keep practising the move. At first, he would do it on the spot. Later, he tried it while walking in a straight line. “Then I would keep it up while running and finally I did it with cones, dribbling around them like they were opposition players,” explains Kerlon. “We worked on it every day in order to perfect it. It was a real process.”

When Kerlon had nailed the technique, Silvino began to think about how his son might use it in games. He bought a book on peripheral vision and incorporated that into the training regime, the idea being that Kerlon would be able to see opponents approaching even when he had the ball up high.

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“It was the product of great dedication on his part,” says Kerlon. “It was easy for me to keep the ball up, but he worked out how it would work on the pitch. The strategy was all his.”

Kerlon was 13 when he first did the trick around other people. He had just joined Cruzeiro and was playing in midfield in an academy match.

“At one point, the opposition goalkeeper took a goal kick and it was just like it was in training with my dad,” he says. “My dad would hit the ball long and I would control it on my chest, lifting it into the air. The same happened in the game and off I went. The other kids just stopped. I kept going and kept going, from the middle of the field to the edge of the box. When I got to the penalty spot, I brought the ball down and scored. It was all so automatic.”

It was also proof of concept. Now that Kerlon and Silvino knew that the dribble could work, they doubled down on it. Kerlon kept practising the trick and often brought it out in matches — although never, he insists, just for the sake of it. He strongly rejects the notion that the seal dribble was some kind of gimmick.

“I think it was a solution I had available to me, a way of getting out of a tricky situation,” he says. “I never walked out onto the field planning to do it. It was just something that would happen naturally.”

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It was predictable that certain people would come to view the move as a provocation. Dribbling is a blood sport at the best of times; this felt to some like an attempt to humiliate. At youth level, Kerlon would get tripped and kicked. By the time he was playing with adults, the worst challenges had started to look quite a lot like sucker punches.

Case in point: the Belo Horizonte derby in September 2007. Cruzeiro were beating Atletico Mineiro 4-3 with 10 minutes to play when Kerlon — a second-half substitute — flicked the ball onto his head following a short corner.

One, two, three touches later, Atletico full-back Coelho came along and shoulder-charged him into another dimension, making Kerlon’s head snap back with the impact. It was an awful, cynical challenge. A few seconds later, as players from both sides piled in, the scene looked like something from a martial arts movie.

The incident provoked a good deal of hand-wringing on both sides. Many thought Kerlon — the victim, by any sensible measure — was somehow to blame for the rough treatment.

“In the future, he could miss a lot of football,” said Atletico’s coach, Emerson Leao. “Maybe one day he does that, gets kicked in the face and never plays again.”

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Luiz Alberto, the captain of rival club Fluminense, was even more explicit: “It’s disrespectful to his opponents. They are professionals, too. He wouldn’t get past me. I would use capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art) moves if I had to. I would take the ball, his head and everything else.”

Kerlon, at least, was able to defend himself with eloquence beyond his years. “Fans go to the stadium to see a spectacle,” he said. “We need to decide what the main idea of Brazilian football is — art or violence.”


(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

His advocates included, bizarrely, Atletico midfielder Maicosuel, as well as a number of readers of Placar magazine. “It brings people to the stadium in the same way Garrincha’s feints once did,” read one message of support, published on the letters page. “No-holds-barred fighters like that troglodyte Coelho must be punished.”

The best part of two decades later, Kerlon sees the funny side of it all. He says he realised early on that the seal dribble would be divisive.

“There was a lot of support for me in the youth sides,” he says, “but at senior level, even my own team-mates thought I shouldn’t do it. They would say I was asking for trouble. I had a few issues with the older ones. They really didn’t like it.”

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What about his opponents? Did their violence get to him? Kerlon laughs. “No,” he says. “I liked it. When you love to play with freedom, when you love to dribble and beat your man, it feels good to get kicked. As long as you don’t get injured, it’s brilliant. It’s not a bad thing. It drives you on.

“You see that the other guy is pissed off with you, but you do it anyway because it’s part of your game. I think that’s cool. Look at Neymar. He feels good when he beats his man and gets fouled, when he can be a bit dramatic. That’s part of the Brazilian style.”

When it came to his coaches, some were more open to the trick than others. “A few of them thought it was unnecessary; others thought it put our team at risk,” he says. “I was always clear that I would never do the move in my own penalty area. I said I would only do it near the opposition box, where we might win a dangerous free kick or a penalty. The idea was to come up with something for the team, not for me.”

Even when he did get the green light, other issues emerged. Kerlon says one manager asked him to do the seal dribble straight from kick-off. “This is when I was playing for Sliema Wanderers in Malta,” he says. “The coach wanted Rafael Ledesma, the other Brazilian on the team, to flick the ball up for me as soon as the referee started the match. He explained this in a team talk before a match. All the other players just looked at me, as if to say, ‘Really?’.

“I said, ‘How am I going to do that? I’ll have 11 opposition players in front of me. What’s the point? What chance do I have?’. He said that I could win us a free kick. In the end, I told Ledesma to flick the ball up and I’d give it a go. But it was impossible. I took a couple of touches and then the other team just smashed into me. I injured my leg and had to go off. I didn’t even make it out of the centre circle.”

It is here that the other strand of Kerlon’s story — the diminishing returns, the gradual tumble down the slopes of the football pyramid — comes into focus.

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(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

The tide of early fanfare carried Kerlon to Italy — he moved to Inter Milan via Chievo and was represented by the late super agent Mino Raiola — but not much further. He never played a competitive match for Inter or for Ajax during a loan stint there. His next full-time employers were Fujieda MYFC in Japan. There was a fleeting spell in the U.S. with Miami Dade FC. After a handful of games in Malta and a few more in Slovakia, he retired in 2017, aged 29.

It would be easy to glance at that confounding CV and assume that Kerlon was never actually that good — that the seal dribble had written cheques that the rest of his game couldn’t cash. There may be a degree of truth to that, but the reality is that his body never allowed him to fully test the limits of his ability.

There were six ACL injuries — two of them while he was still in his teens — and a pair of serious ankle problems. Each one slowed him down. It was impossible to build up any semblance of momentum.

“I gradually lost my love for football,” he says. “After every surgery, I took six or seven months to fully recover. When I came back, it was hard to keep up, physically. Then I’d get injured again. I looked at other players and they would run up and down constantly. I tried to keep up but some muscle would go and I’d be out for three weeks.”

He endured it for as long as he could, but there was a limit. “Everything hurt by the end,” he says. “It was so bad. It wasn’t that I didn’t love football. It was that I didn’t want to be in pain anymore. That’s why I stopped.”

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There is no bitterness in Kerlon’s voice. It helps that he is content with life in the U.S., his home for the last few years. He first moved to Connecticut, seeking job opportunities he felt were lacking in Brazil, then came down to North Carolina during the Covid pandemic. His family is happy and work is good: he is the technical director of the local soccer school and also puts on private sessions. “I love being involved in the game,” he says. “It’s what I know best.”

The American kids have a vague sense of his story, he says, but don’t get too excited by it. The relative anonymity suits him fine. He is happy with his legacy and has no huge desire to burnish it. He has done a couple of short interviews with Brazilian websites since retiring, but he ignores most requests. He got enough attention in those early years to last a lifetime.

“Today, I prefer a quiet life,” he says. “People tell me I have to get my name out there. No. The story is already there and people do remember. Whenever a player does a little header to himself in a game, commentators in Brazil start talking about me. ‘The Little Seal! Remember Kerlon?’. People do remember.”

I don’t mention all the messages and emails. It is always a little uncomfortable when your interviewee details his or her aversion to interviews. Perhaps sensing this, Kerlon explains why he agreed to talk.

“When you came here to find me, I felt proud,” he says. “Look at us here now: you’re from England and you found me, hidden away here. Do you understand? Look how far my dribble travelled.

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“If you had just called me, I would have said I wasn’t interested. But you found me. Thank you for coming. This was nice.”

The first boys and girls are now making their way onto the training pitch. A couple look over, quizzically. I thank Kerlon for his time; he poses for a couple of photos.

There is, however, one more question. I don’t know how he’ll react to it, but I feel obliged to ask it anyway.

Can he still do the seal dribble now?

He smiles. “Easy,” he says, grabbing a ball. He throws it to me and asks me to kick it to him at chest height.

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A second or two later, he’s running across the turf, his old partner in crime dancing on his forehead, the decades and the injuries and all of it fading away until only the gentle tap-tap-tap of leather on skin remains.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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The State of Punditry – part 2: How the world analyses football – and the U.S. lead the way

Published

4 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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The State of Punditry – part 2: How the world analyses football – and the U.S. lead the way

Football coverage is a divisive subject.

Some think the standard of punditry is great, others will tell you it needs some work and some will deride it as awful. The analysis of the analysis never ends.

This week, The Athletic is looking more closely at the state of the industry, starting with yesterday’s piece assessing what is demanded of pundits in the United Kingdom in 2024 and how people consume their work.

Today, we broaden the discussion to see how UK coverage stacks up against the rest of the world, including the proudest of all football nations Germany, Brazil and Spain, together with those pesky upstarts in the U.S..

In Europe, the landscape of punditry can be wildly different. Travel to Italy, Spain or Turkey, switch on a television and scan through the channels and you’ll almost certainly be able to find some football coverage, be it via a football talk show, replays of matches, or on the news.

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This is the case in the UK, too, via Sky Sports’ network of channels, but we’re talking free-to-air here in countries where people are arguably far more obsessed with football than your average UK football diehard.

It borders on fanaticism in a place like Turkey and the at-times frantic coverage reflects that. One grim incident recently showcased how seriously football is taken, when pundit Serhat Akin was shot in the foot when leaving a TV studio.

The former Fenerbahce player had been covering the club’s match against Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise from an Istanbul studio, after which he was approached and shot by a masked man.

Akin posted a picture of his bloodied foot on Instagram with the caption: “They shot my foot, our last word is Fenerbahce.”

Over in Germany things are a bit calmer.

In many ways the coverage is very similar to in the UK, only probably a bit better. Standard Bundesliga behaviour.

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Why? Well, depending on your disposition, they don’t quite have as much forced melodrama that you tend to find with the Premier League.

The punditry industry is not quite as accessible for ex-players, so the notion of former pros that you’d get on, say, a certain national radio station in the UK where certain people will make certain comments to attract attention doesn’t really exist.

Presenters, again, unlike in the UK with Gary Lineker, Alex Scott, or, until recently, Jermaine Jenas, are media professionals rather than players. Pundits include Per Mertesacker and Christoph Kramer, the 2014 World Cup winner who has been an analyst for many years already despite being only 33 years old and still not officially retired (he left Borussia Mönchengladbach in the summer).


Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann speaks with Christoph Kramer (second right) and (right) Per Mertesacker (Tom Weller/picture alliance via Getty Images)

They have a tactics corner on Sky via Dutchman Erik Meijer, the one-time Liverpool striker who spent much of his career in Germany. In a recent interview with The Athletic, Meijer described his reaction to being asked to appear on German television: “The first question I had was, ‘There are 80 million Germans in this country so why do they need to employ a Dutchman? But they wanted a different voice — someone who would say that Bayern Munich were c**p when they were.”

Julia Simic, who used to play for the women’s national team, is also a regular, while pundits who cover the Premier League include former goalkeeper Rene Adler and ex-Croatia international and Fulham and West Ham striker Mladen Petric.

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While Germans do like other sports, such as basketball, handball and tennis, football is the main draw and the coverage can be dense and fanatical, although it tends to be quite considered and mindful of weighty issues. The rise of vloggers and influencers we have seen in the UK hasn’t yet caught on.

Probably the most high profile figure is Wolff Fuss, inflection king extraordinaire. Search for him on TikTok and you’ll find 20 million matches. Fuss has the stage to himself because, in another difference to the UK, co-commentators are quite uncommon in Germany.

If Fuss is the main man, then Lothar Matthaus is the loudest. Not necessarily in volume, but in the decibel level of his opinions (and his outfits… Matthaus caught the eye at this summer’s European Championship with some striking gilets).


Lothar Matthaus (right), complete with gilet (Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Matthaus could probably be compared to Gary Neville or Jamie Carragher in that he gives forthright views on “his” club, which in this case would be Bayern Munich. Neville and Carragher constantly attract the attention of Manchester United and Liverpool managers with their views but Matthaus — and his partner-in-crime, Dietmar Hamann — tend to take it a bit further.

In the past year alone, Matthaus has called for Thomas Tuchel to be sacked, questioned the signing of Eric Dier, claimed Jadon Sancho’s influence at Borussia Dortmund had been exaggerated by the media and said he “felt sorry” for Cristiano Ronaldo whose “ego trips” had “damaged the team and himself”.

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Last November, Tuchel referenced Matthaus and Hamann in a press conference after a 4-0 victory over Borussia Dortmund, saying: “Can I quote Lothar and Didi? For a team with no further development and a bad relationship between coach and players, that was alright today, I’d say. I’m sure the experts will tell you the rest themselves.” Nice.

Matthaus is probably still tame compared to Rafael van der Vaart, who, since retiring, has very much earned a reputation for making unfiltered and inflammatory comments in his role as a pundit in the Netherlands.

You may recall Van der Vaart had a pop at England’s Declan Rice after the Euro 2024 final on the coverage of Dutch broadcaster NOS, saying: “£100million for Declan Rice, what does he do? He comes to collect a ball only to pass it back to John Stones. He is useless. If you are truly worth £100m then you should be able to play a ball forward.”

This was very much in character for Van der Vaart, whose appreciation for the England team seems to be somewhat lacking given he also decried the whole side as “s***”, also on NOS, after they defeated the Netherlands 2-1 in the semi-finals.

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Over in Spain, you may be most familiar with Spanish football TV punditry from clips of El Chiringuito de Jugones, a late-night debate show in which a cast of big personalities voice their opinions — usually quite loudly and with little sense of impartiality.

In recent years the programme has gained notoriety for interviewing Real Madrid president Florentino Perez after the attempted launch of the European Super League, using the phrase “tic tac” to announce incoming transfer news (imitating the ticking of a clock) and showing three minutes of former Madrid midfielder Guti looking sad after his old side’s 4-0 Champions League defeat by Manchester City last year.

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You will find a more sophisticated level of discussion on TV channel Movistar Plus and streaming platform DAZN. The former features former Madrid and Argentina player turned pundit Jorge Valdano while presenter Miguel Quintana and former Equatorial Guinea international Alberto Edjogo-Owono, who spent his career in the Spanish lower leagues, are two respected voices on DAZN.

But the way fandom works in Spain — in particular with the big two clubs, Barcelona and Madrid — means those pundits are often labelled the enemy of one or other team, despite trying to be impartial.

In Spain, there is also a deeper layer of scrutiny towards refereeing and why decisions do or do not happen (possibly linked to the above). There is no equivalent of Match of the Day, perhaps because there is not much interest in analysing games like Osasuna versus Getafe from a tactical perspective. And the tactical insight mainly comes from social media rather than mass media.

As for other prominent pundits, Guti has made a name for himself on DAZN, while Gaizka Mendieta and Juanfran Torres are also regulars on television.

Often more in-depth analysis can be found on late-night radio shows such as El Larguero on Cadena SER or Cadena COPE’s El Partidazo — both of which go on until the early hours and continue to attract huge audiences, as The Athletic’s Laia Cervello Herrero explored earlier this year. Even then, debates can get heated given the nature of football in Spain.

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You might think the tone would be fairly outrageous in a football-mad country like Brazil, but while passions undoubtedly run extremely high and some coverage can be melodramatic, there is also room for reasoned debate.

The biggest difference in Brazil is the volume of the commentators, who are the stars of the show.

“The commentator really goes for it,” Natalie Gedra, a football reporter for Sky Sports in the UK who previously worked for ESPN and Globo in Brazil, tells The Athletic. “Brazilians cannot understand countries who don’t scream ‘GOOOOOOAAAAAAL!’ There’s also a tune that comes with it, either the club’s anthem or a song that’s related to the national team.

“Visually it’s different too — for example, you will have a gigantic ball going back and forth on the screen between transitions of replays. I remember watching World Cups growing up and they had a little mascot who would show up on the screen and dance around.”

Having ex-referees as pundits, for example, has been a well-established practice in Brazil for at least a decade, formerly in the commentary box but now more as studio analysts. Oh, and the studios are always at TV HQ, not on site at stadiums.

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Talking of the commentary box, it’s typically filled with three people – a commentator, i.e. the star, a journalist and a former player.

“They have more ex-players now, but a lot of journalists are co-commentators or pundits on both pre and post-match shows,” Gedra adds. “Everyone knows the commentator; they’re massive stars.”

Reflecting how their best players tend to head to Europe, Brazil’s most famous ex-players aren’t really part of the TV coverage over there, other than for World Cups. Ronaldo worked on the 2014 World Cup and, most famously, Pele was a commentator for the 1994 World Cup.

“There are some ex-players, like, for example (Walter) Casagrande, who played for Corinthians. He was the most prominent for many years,” Gedra says. “He was a bit of a pioneer, he had a big profile and didn’t back down from making big statements, but he was also very articulate.

“The main Brazilian football names don’t become pundits in Brazil, but Pele in 1994 is by far the most famous example. There is a picture of him celebrating in the commentary booth with commentator Galvao Bueno which is one of the most iconic images in the history of Brazilian television.

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“Galvao Bueno is probably the biggest name in the history of Brazilian TV, he’s absolutely huge and the voice of many of the biggest sporting moments, like all the World Cups. Yes, people love or hate him but everybody knows who he is.”

Commentators in the UK don’t have anywhere near as big a profile. No wonder Guy Mowbray has started doing Gladiators.

Another difference is in the make-up of the post-match chat. Gedra has observed that Brazil’s coverage is less data-orientated than in the UK, although the tone depends on the channel. Globo, the free-to-air channel, have largely monopolised coverage but they are now under threat from newer players such as Sport TV, ESPN and TNT Sports. YouTube channels are also growing.

“I worked for ESPN and I think they got the tone just right, very analytical and not too spectacular or passionate,” Gedra says.

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Unspectacular is definitely not a word you would use to describe the stylings of Alexi Lalas, one of the most prominent broadcasters in the U.S., whose brash persona brings a love-it-or-hate-it quality.

He works as an analyst for Fox Sports, has a podcast called Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union and doesn’t care if people like him or not. But his bold, direct and outspoken opinions have made him an influential figure in the U.S. and beyond.

Lalas is another who doesn’t seem to especially like English players, saying during the Euros that Gareth Southgate’s team were “insufferable as they are talented”.

“But I’m in the entertainment business,” Lalas told The Athletic earlier this year. “I am a performer. When you say that, sometimes people cringe. By no means am I saying that I can’t be authentic and genuine. But I recognise the way I say something is as important as what I say.

“When I go on TV, I put on a costume and when that red light goes on, I don’t want people changing the channel.”

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Lalas’ audacious approach is a bit of a leap from the English-style NBC coverage that rose to prominence a few years ago. A number of ex-Premier League players headed Stateside and made names for themselves, such as Robbie Earle and Robbie Mustoe — while having decent careers in England, neither was a household name when playing for Wimbledon and Middlesbrough respectively.

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The pair, who have their own podcast called The 2 Robbies, gave NBC’s coverage a familiar feel alongside commentator Arlo White and pundit Lee Dixon, while former Stoke City defender Danny Higginbotham is another face of the channel having moved Stateside. “What we’ve tried to do from the start is talk in a normal way about football,” Earle told The Guardian in 2017. An underrated concept.

Fox Sports also employ recognisable names from UK TV coverage including commentator (sorry, ‘play-by-play announcer’) Ian Darke, former Newcastle defender Warren Barton and ex-Sky Sports reporter Geoff Shreeves. Fox also use Mark Clattenburg as a refereeing analyst.

Undoubtedly the most renowned U.S. soccer coverage, though, is on CBS Sports via its hugely popular Golazo Champions League show, complete with the instantly recognisable line-up of Kate Abdo, Thierry Henry, Micah Richards and Jamie Carragher, whose on-screen chemistry make them a social media staple on every matchday.

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Left to right: Kate Abdo, Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards have been a hit on CBS (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

Pete Radovich, the coordinating producer of the UEFA Champions League coverage on CBS Sports, told The Athletic in September on how he came to realise that the network’s Champions League Today studio now owns the global conversation on major nights of European football.

“Thierry Henry, in no uncertain terms, says he gets asked more about CBS now than Arsenal,” he said. “That to me is wild.”

The show’s razor-sharp use of social media and its mix of humour, analysis and engaging post-match interviews with managers and players is a winning formula, while most importantly the quartet’s camaraderie feels natural, warm and unforced.

Americans showing the world how to make excellent football soccer coverage? It’s a brave new world.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)

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Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines calls out ‘deranged’ co-hosts of ‘The View’ over Capitol Hill bathroom ban

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November 21, 2024

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Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines calls out ‘deranged’ co-hosts of ‘The View’ over Capitol Hill bathroom ban

Former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines blasted the co-hosts of “The View” on Wednesday, calling them “deranged” and “out of touch” after they spoke out in defense of Delaware Rep.-elect Sarah McBride over a resolution that would ban transgender women from using women’s restrooms at the U.S. Capitol.

Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer who has publicly spoken out against trans inclusion in women’s and girls sports and advocated for protecting women’s spaces, posted a message on X calling out the group for speaking out on an issue that does not directly impact them.

Former competitve swimmer Riley Gaines speaks during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona. The rally, held in partnership with Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action, came two weeks after Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Harris held a rally at the same location.  (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

“I wonder if the deranged, out-of-touch women on The View would be comfortable letting Mr. McBride change in a locker room inches away from their own daughters,” she wrote in a post on X which accompanied a clip of the show. 

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“It never matters until it affects you personally.” 

Gaines competed against former UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete, at the NCAA championships in 2022, where she said the NCAA had opted to give Thomas the fifth-place trophy for the “photo op” despite them tying in the women’s 200 freestyle.  

Thomas would go on to win a national title in the women’s 500 freestyle. 

Gaines was responding to a segment of Tuesday’s episode of “The View” where the co-hosts reacted to a resolution by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., to ban transgender women from using women’s restrooms at the U.S. Capitol in response to McBride, the first openly transgender federal lawmaker set to join Congress in January.

RILEY GAINES REPEATEDLY TEARS INTO AOC FOR TAKING PRONOUNS OUT OF X BIO AFTER ADVOCATING FOR TRANS ATHLETES

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“I don’t understand how this is [Mace’s] welcome to someone who is coming to make a difference in the country,” Whoopi Goldberg said.  

Rep.-elect Sarah McBride

Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, D-Del., poses for a photograph after joining other congressional freshmen of the 119th Congress for a group photograph on the steps of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol Building on Nov. 15, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

“It’s not a welcome, it’s flipping her the middle finger. Because she is the one person in the House that this will affect,” Sara Haines responded, adding, “And this woman that came and sat at our table is one of the most decent, amazing politicians I’ve ever seen. Her messaging resounded across the boards.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin chimed in, calling the attempt to ban McBride “gross.”

“It is a new member of Congress, who ran as a centrist democrat, talked about issues – pocketbook issues. She said at our table ‘I am not a spokesperson for my community. I’m running to deliver for Delaware.’ And Nancy Mace is trying to goad her into a fight she did not sign up to be part of. She’s trying to pigeonhole her into ‘You have to be this culture warrior, who makes this your whole identity’ purely because Nancy Mace doesn’t like how she chooses to exist.” 

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Mace speaks to reporters in Capitol hallway

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) arrives for a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2024, in Washington, DC. Mace introduced legislation that would require House members and staffers from “using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.”  (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Gaines said in a separate post on X Wednesday that she would be “happy” to join “The View” for a conversation after disagreeing with Goldberg’s numbers regarding trans athletes competing in public schools. 

Fox News’ Liz Elkind contributed to this report. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

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Freddie Freeman grand slam ball to be auctioned. Could bring 'life-changing money' for Venice family

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November 21, 2024

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Freddie Freeman grand slam ball to be auctioned. Could bring 'life-changing money' for Venice family

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind for Zachary Ruderman.

He’s the 10-year-old Dodgers fan who ended up with one of the most significant baseballs in team history — the one his favorite player, first baseman Freddie Freeman, hit for a walk-off grand slam during the 10th inning in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series against the New York Yankees.

Since then, Zachary has seemingly become one of the most famous people living in Venice.

“It’s a lot more attention than my son has ever had,” his father, Nico Ruderman, said. “He’s spoken to so many media outlets, so many interviews. People recognize him. I mean, literally everywhere we go people stop him and want to take pictures with him. He’s really actually been loving it. It’s been a fun experience for him.”

That experience is entering a new phase. On Wednesday, SCP Auctions announced the ball will be up for bid from Dec. 4-14. Coming just weeks after the Dodgers won their eighth World Series championship — with Freeman hitting four home runs and winning MVP honors, all on a badly sprained ankle — SCP founder and president David Kohler said his company thinks “the sky’s the limit” for what the auction could bring.

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“We think this is gonna bring seven figures,” Kohler said. “We think it’s one of the most historic baseballs ever, with the moment of this World Series, the first walk-off grand slam, the whole story of Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers, Game 1, extra innings. Just everything about it. I mean, it’s one of the most historic moments in sports and we feel that people are going to appreciate that.”

Last month, Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home run ball was sold by Goldin Auctions for a record $4.4 million. Could the Freeman ball be worth even more than that?

Zachary Ruderman holds up Freddie Freeman’s grand slam ball with his parents, Nico and Anne, at his side.

(Courtesy of Nico Ruderman)

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“It could be. You never know,” Kohler said. “We’re gonna find out. Certainly the Ohtani ball was very, very significant and Ohtani is beloved, but this is more of the history of the game of baseball and just the moment — seeing that happen was just incredible.”

Zachary, along with his father and mother Anne, were part of that moment. After Freeman blasted his game-winning shot into the right-field pavilion, the ball rolled next to Zachary’s feet. The fifth-grader batted it over to his father, who pounced on it, stood up and handed it back to his son.

“They’re just amazing memories,” Zachary said Thursday, looking back on that night. “Like after we got it, no one was mad. No one was trying to take it from us. Everyone was just super happy.”

His father added: “We just feel so lucky and honored to be a small part of such a huge moment in Dodger history.”

The experience was so special that at first the family had no intention of parting with the ball.

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“That night when we caught it we were like, ‘We’re gonna keep this forever,’” Ruderman said. “The problem is, if we keep it, we’re not gonna keep it in our house. I don’t want to pay for the insurance for it, so it would just be locked up in some safety deposit box. Nobody would ever see it.

Zachary Ruderman holds his Freddie Freeman grand slam ball while posing with L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park at City Hall

Zachary Ruderman holds his Freddie Freeman grand slam ball while posing with L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park at City Hall.

(Nico Ruderman)

“Maybe [the auction] brings life-changing money and pays for education for our son, and also allows somebody with the resources to actually display it and show it to the world. We’re really hoping that whoever buys it agrees to display it at Dodger Stadium for some time so everybody can see it. That’s really our wish.”

Even with all the incredible experiences he’s had because of the ball — including his favorite, speaking in front of Los Angeles City Council at City Hall and receiving a certificate of congratulations from Councilmember Traci Park earlier this month — Zachary said he’s “really excited” about the auction.

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“It’s probably going to be a pretty fun experience,” Zachary said.

“We’ve had our fun with the ball,” his father added. “At this point he cares more about the memories, the pictures. He loves reading all the articles and watching all the news stories about it. That’s what’s fun for him, not the item itself.”

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