The broadcaster\u2019s tournament coverage was a mix of flat and fizz. It could also have been a long farewell with World Cup rights up for grabs<\/p>\n
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 Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The broadcaster\u2019s tournament coverage was a mix of flat and fizz. It could also have been a long farewell with World Cup rights up for grabs 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, his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}