Too Much Football!

No, not the NFL lockout, there are too many FIFA-sanctioned football events this summer. It began with the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which saw Mexico defeating the U.S. Then, right in the middle of the tournament, the U-17 World Cup began. In the middle of that tournament, the Women's World Cup began. In the middle of that tournament, Copa America (the CONMEBOL equivalent of the Gold Cup) has begun. This much football is just plain exhausting. In fact it's so exhausting that Mexico didn't even bother sending their A-Squad to Copa America, instead (initially anyway) sending their U-23 team with 4 members of the national team.

Four major tournaments being held in quick succession (currently 3 simultaneously) is also exhausting on the Spanish-language broadcasters, Univision choosing to only broadcast the Gold Cup and Copa America, letting Galavision broadcast the Women's World Cup, and not even bothering with the U-17 World Cup. In English, Fox Soccer Channel broadcasted all of the U.S.'s games during the Gold Cup, ESPN will be broadcasting every game of the Women's World Cup, ESPN U will broadcast the majority of the U-17 World Cup games. Copa America will not be getting any coverage in English, which isn't surprising given that even the Gold Cup got only minor coverage in English.

So yes, even the mighty Univision is incapable of broadcasting this much football. None of the matches have occurred simultaneously and there's too much licensing fees involved in broadcasting all 4 tournaments, but Univision won't broadcast the Women's World Cup for two reasons: Mexico and Colombia were the only Spanish-speaking countries to qualify and neither were expected to do well, and Latinos just do not care about women's sports, no matter how good they are. A clear-cut example of this is evident with Brazil's top player, Marta, the FIFA Women's Player of the Year 5 years in a row. Despite that incredible honor and distinction, Brazil doesn't have a women's football league. Marta instead plays in Women's Professional Soccer, the 2nd attempt to create a women's league in the U.S., the capital of women's football.


Now I was basketball crazy during the NBA playoffs, but those 2 months are just awesome and full of underdogs and spectacular failure, coupled with the joy of seeing LeBron James fail yet again when he was so close to winning it all. This feeling only compares to last year's World Cup when media darlings Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi utterly failed to aid their teams, Ronaldo only scoring 1 goal in the entire tournament (during the 7 goal massacre of North Korea), and Messi failed to score a single goal.

That being said, can we spread out these FIFA events? It's hard enough to watch up to 6 FIFA games per day, an MLS game, a baseball game, and live my normal life all in the same day, which I ended up doing today.