ESPN FC has a prominent place in my DVR. I love the show; never miss an episode.
Their daily rotating panel has so much multicultural diversity that the finished product is basically: soccer roundtable meets the “United Colors of Benetton” ad campaign from the early 1990s. As a Manchester United supporter I was taken aback when they literally devoted half their show yesterday to ripping apart Man United.
United bashing consumed their entire A Block on Monday. And as this tweet from ESPN FC host and moderator Dan Thomas shows, they knew what they were doing.
The show certainly anticipated and also definitely invited a backlash from Man United supporters on social media.
United fans look away now @ESPNFC about to start on ESPNews
— Dan Thomas (@DanThomasESPN) September 22, 2014
If you missed this segment, you can get the gist of it by clicking on the video library at the ESPN FC Man United page. Look at some of their headlines:
“Van Gaal worse than Moyes”
“United deserved to lose,”
“United unraveling,”
“United failing to control games.”
Then I watched their Manchester United segment again as a small media business owner and news content distributor. As a fellow decision maker when it comes to providing football/soccer coverage, I totally understood why they thoroughly shredded Louis van Gaal’s side in such exquisite detail. United truly did earn this harsh critique; because they collapsed in such an epic manner on Sunday.
Then on today’s episode of ESPN FC, they addressed the backlash they encountered from United fans in response to yesterday. It was quite entertaining as they read some of the tweets from angry United supporters.
Most of them were upset with the panel overlooking that horribly blown call which set up the Foxes’ penalty kick and subsequent second score of the game. That horrible officiating truly turned the tide, and Twitter users were upset that the ESPN FC personalities didn’t focus on that non-penalty which gave way to the momentum swinging penalty.
One of the tweets compared ESPN FC to The View, and said that Whoopi Goldberg knows more about soccer than the show’s analysts. LOL!
Another tweet accused them of being biased against Man United because their panel is composed of ex-Chelsea and ex-Arsenal players.
You can dismiss those crazy ideas of the show being biased against United right now. That’s complete rubbish.
In the segment today discussing the MUFC supporter backlash, Analyst Craig Burley said that Arsenal fans are the ones who have been the most offended lately by the opinions of the show’s panelists. Also, you’ll see this second tweet from Thomas. Like the first one that I embedded, it also showed up in the ESPN FC feed.
Time for Arsenal fans to look away now. Take the stage Mr Stewart Robson https://t.co/BPRm9AVv10
— Dan Thomas (@DanThomasESPN) September 24, 2014
In May I went out to Bristol and got to tour the ESPN headquarters. I did not see the ESPN FC studio, but did see pretty much everything else of note. I’m sure they would have showed me to tour the FC set had I asked politely and stuck around long enough.
Well, hopefully there’s a next time. I also think it would be a great idea to interview an ESPN FC personality as a follow up to this article. So I’m going to get working on trying to make that happen my fellow United fans.
#MUFC #GGMU
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and sometimes writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partners with Fox Sports and Yahoo. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN2