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When confronted with the American habit of ascribing an overseas soccer team’s style of play to its most recognizable national characteristics, Europeans tend to get a bit sniffy. To suggest the elements that define die Mannschaft could only have been assembled by the people who brought you Kraftwerk is to risk giving offense, although that doesn’t necessarily make the assertion any less true.
If reducing the German team’s essence to a few dour adjectives (“workmanlike,” “ruthless,” “efficient”) is merely a function of a collective unwillingness to dispose of some outmoded Teutonic stereotypes, that isn’t to say that these terms aren’t largely consistent with how Julian Nagelsmann’s roster attacks each match. The 36-year-old manager’s charges were relentless in securing the top rank in Group A of the Euros, scoring a tournament-high eight goals while conceding two. At the same time, the young coach has livened things up with a vertical, downhill style—one that allows for considerably more risk-taking than we’re used to seeing from the four-time World Cup champs.
If this isn’t your Vater’s Germany, reductionists can take comfort in knowing that the Italians remain wholly incapable of change. The familiar idiosyncrasies that define the Azzurri are on full display at the Euros; along with the usual bursts of operatic hysteria and prodigal hair flouncing, Italy hasn’t been stingy with the ol’ pinched-fingers salute. A gesture that conveys aggrieved disbelief in the face of life’s onslaught of insults and reversals—torments that are mostly summoned out of thin air—this frenzied semaphore rarely seems to sway the referees. Then again, when you manage only one goal per game, you have to work all the angles, which is what accounts for all the frenzied flopping and diving.
There are more extreme ways to curry favor with the officials. In 1999, the president of the Serie A club AS Roma had gifted each of the league’s top referees with a $13,500 Rolex—timepieces worth $25,806 in today’s currency. Machiavelli probably would have loved soccer.
If we’re singling out the Germans and Italians here, it’s only because these programs represent the absolute pinnacle of European soccer. (Well, not only. They’re also the easiest groups to poke fun at, other than maybe the English, who embody a sort of febrile dullness. Boring and vastly overrated: That’s Albion for you.) In keeping with their legendary standing, our continental cousins have really moved the needle for Fox Sports, as Italy’s 1-0 loss to Spain in their Group Stage broadcast peaked with 2.24 million viewers, while the Germany-Switzerland match maxed out at 2.30 million fans.
At last count, Fox’s Euro deliveries were up 30% compared to the analogous phase of the 2021 tournament, a trend which would seem to bode well for the network’s staging of the 2026 World Cup here in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Meanwhile, as much as the goings on in the distant hemisphere have been a source of fascination stateside, Fox’s other summer soccer spectacle is putting up even bigger numbers.
Little wonder, really. The parallel Copa América tourney not only serves as a showcase for the ratings darlings on the U.S. national team, but also features the likes of Argentina’s Lionel Messi and a Neymar-deprived Brazil squad that’s still the most watchable unit on turf. The audience for the U.S. team’s 2-0 win over Bolivia topped out at 4.01 million viewers, making it the most-watched non-World Cup match ever to air on Fox. Through Tuesday, Copa América is averaging 1.09 million viewers across Fox and FS1, up a smoking 420% compared to the corresponding stage of the 2021 event.
If Fox’s summer of soccer can be seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup, the TV numbers for both tournaments would seem to suggest that Americans are getting a lot more comfortable with the international game. Once upon a not-so-distant time, getting Yanks to watch soccer was like pulling teeth—although admittedly the networks that first experimented with international football were out of their element.
(Pet theory: The reason that it’s taken so long for Americans to cotton on to soccer is because the networks actively disdained the sport. The lack of commercial breaks did more to scare off the TV suits than did all the weird mononyms; as The Simpsons memorably joked years ago, the Brazilian naming convention—“You’ll see all your favorite soccer stars: Ariaga! Ariaga II! Bariaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!”—may have been puzzling, but nothing made network execs scratch their heads more than the relative dearth of ad revenue.)
It’s still no easy trick to make a buck on televised soccer, but the expansion of the World Cup field from 64 to 104 matches means Fox will have 63% more inventory to sell than was the case during the time-shifted event in Qatar. Plus, as a host nation, the U.S. will automatically be in the field, with no nasty CONCACAF qualifying necessary.
That’s making life a lot easier for Fox Sports’ ad sales team, which a few weeks ago began the process of selling inventory off to official FIFA partners in a 70-day exclusive window. Among the brands that are free to negotiate with Fox during this period include Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa, Hyundai/Kia, Budweiser and McDonald’s. After the dealings with Most Favored Nations ends on Aug. 20, Fox can engage with past World Cup advertisers and newcomers alike.
However you choose to interpret the state of global soccer, it’s apparent Fox’s twin sultry-weather showcases should help stoke the fires for the first local World Cup since 1994. Naturally, ratings will be largely dependent upon how the U.S. fares on North American turf, and since that is very much a work in progress, we’ll forego any predictions. That said, from what we’ve seen from this team thus far, the broad national characteristics that color our perception of European soccer arguably apply equally to our own side. As any European will tell you, presumably from under a funny hat and through a cloud of cigarette smoke, the U.S. squad is often overeager, overconfident and overmatched—a trifecta of traits that can be used to describe an awful lot of us.