These World Cup Broadcasts Are Almost as Good as Being There : Television: Spanish network announcers watch games in Laguna Niguel studio, but the action’s in Italy. Arrangement hasn’t hurt ratings.
An hour into a World Cup soccer match in Italy last week, West German defender Andreas Brehme launched a kick that bounced off an English player’s backside, ricocheted high into the air and flew over sprawled English goaltender Peter Shilton into the net.
“Goooooollllllllllllllll! Gooooooollllllllllllll!” shouted Andres Cantor, play-by-play man for the Spanish-language Univision television network, momentarily transporting millions of viewers in the United States to Turin’s delirious Stadio Delle Alpi. “ Golllll, Alemania! “
But Cantor was about as close to Italy as a pizza from Domino’s. Before each game during the monthlong futbol frenzy, he and color commentator Norberto Longo don blue blazers with network logos, splash on a little makeup in the men’s room and hunker down in Univision’s studio in Laguna Niguel. They call the games from 6,300 miles away, over a steady background din of stadium crowd noise, while watching on a TV monitor six feet in front of their noses.
“We don’t tell people we’re in Italy,” said Univision senior producer Art Izquierdo. “We’re not trying to fool anybody.”
Maybe not, but you don’t hear Cantor or Longo beginning their World Cup broadcasts with a greeting from the well-known soccer hotbed of Orange County, either.
Instead, they simply tell their viewers that the games are coming to them “live,” which they are, courtesy of Italian TV and a satellite relay through Mexico City., Their broadcasts reach 512 stations across the country, including Los Angeles’ KMEX Channel 34.
Actually, sending Cantor and Longo to Italy for the World Cup tournament would have made little sense for Univision. The tournament is structured so that games are played in several cities within the host country, sometimes on the same day, and Cantor and Longo are Univision’s sole broadcast team. From Laguna Niguel, they can announce two games in one day from cities on opposite ends of the country, and cut to Univision’s four reporters and crews in Italy to provide live interviews with coaches and players.
And the pair’s distance from the games hasn’t hurt Univision’s ratings. KMEX has seen its audience jump by 25% to 50% during the World Cup matches, and the station is outdrawing the English-language soccer broadcasts on the TNT cable channel 5 to 1. The competition concludes with today’s championship match between West Germany and Argentina.
There are drawbacks to announcing from a studio, however. “You get limited vision and only see what everyone else sees too,” Cantor said. “I try to anticipate the plays, and if I’m wrong, I correct myself immediately.”
He’s not wrong too often. Rarely glancing at the lineup sheets he has scribbled in front of him, Cantor immediately identifies the small images on the screen and calls the action almost before it occurs.
“I do this every week of the year,” said Cantor, who announces Univision’s weekly international soccer broadcasts from the Laguna Niguel studio. “At this stage, I’ve seen the players time in and time out.”
Cantor, 27, grew up in Buenos Aires but moved to Pasadena with his parents as a teen-ager. He played soccer and graduated from San Marino High School, then studied journalism at USC. He has been doing the weekly Univision broadcasts for about three years; this is his first World Cup.
Cantor’s distinctive gol! cry isn’t really much different from those of other Spanish-language soccer announcers, all of whom draw the three-letter word out for several seconds, at least.
“A goal is the climax of the action, and there may be only one of them a game,” Cantor said. “All the Latin announcers call the goals the same way.”
Longo, 46, is also Argentine. He is Univision’s regular boxing announcer, but he has broadcast seven World Cup soccer tournaments on radio or television, and brings to the game an outspoken style that sometimes makes his producers cringe.
When a French referee began showboating in a pivotal Italy-Argentina match, Longo railed against him. “This referee is fatal ,” he said. “He wants to be the protagonist, he wants to make a show. . . . He is so on top of the action that he’s making a nuisance of himself.”
With his rich baritone voice and penchant for sports psychology, Longo has no problem imbuing the contests with his own sense of drama from the darkened Univision studio. The closing minutes of each game are “the moment of truth.” Well-struck shots are “ impresionante “ or “ violentisima .” Wednesday, he described the England-West Germany epic like this:
“England is trying to replace technique with energy and desire. . . . Here is the difference in this game: the superior skill of Germany and the vigor of England . . . an old clash between two things almost as traditional as soccer itself.”
Both announcers said calling the games from the studio is more exhausting than working from a booth at the stadium. “We have to concentrate so that it’s as if we’re in the stadium,” Longo said. “It’s a great effort to transmit the emotion of the game.”
After the England-Germany overtime encounter, which ended at 2 p.m. PDT, but 11 p.m. in Italy, Cantor said he felt ready to go to sleep. “For me, it’s midnight already,” he said. “When I see it’s dark in the stadium, I feel like it’s nighttime here as well.”
Today, the pair will announce their last game--the Cup final between powerful West Germany and defending champion Argentina. With thousands of Argentines in the United States tuned in and praying for an upset, will Cantor’s heritage make it a difficult game for him to call?
“No, of course not,” he said. “I’m a professional, I call all the games the same. But I would be a hypocrite if I told you my heart wasn’t with Argentina.”
