They’ve Found Their Trophy Life

Two of the most prestigious soccer trophies in the world are sitting in a radio studio in Santa Monica and two men armed with microphones are treating them like dime-store drums.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

“That was the Premiership Trophy!” an excited Steven Cohen tells his listeners. “In your ears!”

“Ready for the FA Cup?” Nick Geber eagerly chimes in.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

“Sounds a little tinny,” Geber surmises, “but let me tell you -- there’s no tin in there!”

Cohen and Geber are completely over the moon, as they say in England, where Cohen and Geber were born and the Premiership Trophy and FA Cup usually reside. Last spring, when the English soccer club Arsenal won both of these trophies, Cohen and Geber were just a couple of transplanted Englishmen living in the Southland and following their favorite sport the way most ex-patriates do, via Fox Sports World, the Internet and phone calls back home.

Less than a year later, Cohen and Geber find themselves hosting a series of nationally syndicated radio talk shows about soccer, with connections strong enough to lure two of the sport’s most famous trophies to America for the first time, for a week-long tour of the Southern California coast.

“Amazing,” Cohen keeps saying. “Just unbelievable.”

Geber can hardly keep his hands off the silverware.

“Oh my God, I’ve got to fondle it,” he says as he rubs his hands again over the curves of the FA Cup.

Cohen, who supports Arsenal’s London rival Chelsea, and Geber, a hard-core Liverpool fan, are clad in bright red Arsenal shirts as they settle in for their three-hour “World Soccer Weekly” Monday night show on 1540 AM. This, of course, is treason -- no less a sacrilege than fans of the Sacramento Kings donning Laker colors with no apparent threat of blackmail or bodily harm.

Cohen and Geber plead guilty. They are soccer fanatics, first and above all else, and to them, turning coats for a few hours is a reasonable price to pay for spending quality time with what Cohen calls “the crown jewels of English soccer.”

Besides, being a Chelsea supporter, Cohen realizes this may be as close as he ever gets to the Premiership Trophy, awarded annually to the regular-season champion of England’s top-flight division. It’s a trophy he dreams Chelsea might somehow win “just once in my lifetime.”

The FA Cup is the prize given to the winner of England’s most prestigious domestic tournament. To win them both in the same year, to “do the double,” as Arsenal did in 2002, is a rare achievement.

“The way I’ve explained it to people is: Imagine if the same team could win the World Series and Super Bowl trophy,” Cohen says. “Now imagine the importance of that, to be able to put that together.

“That can’t happen in America. But it can happen in English football.”

For years, the same was said about the idea of nationally syndicated radio talk show about soccer. Can’t happen in America. “World Soccer Weekly” was born last May when Fox Sports Radio was trying to fill its Saturday morning schedule and Cohen and Geber, without an hour’s worth of broadcasting experience between them, simply happened to be the right lads at the right time.

“It could have been tiddlywinks,” Cohen says. “There was an hour of block programming they were prepared to sell on a Saturday morning.”

Fortunately for them, the World Cup was coming up and Fox bought into the idea of a soccer show, provided it didn’t take up too much valuable time. All right then, how about one hour, Saturday morning, 7 o’clock? Can’t do much harm there.

After that, hosts were needed, preferably someone who knew something about soccer. On that, Cohen and Geber qualified.

Both had been involved in radio advertising and, at the time, Geber says, he was “coming out of a corporate marketing position, being a victim of a corporate shakeup. I thought I would use the opportunity to really do what I wanted to do, which was to really work at promoting [soccer] here and building its exposure.

“I’d done a lot of media buying, and had the opportunity to meet Steven through some [radio] contacts and discovered he was an Englishman who grew up blocks from where I grew up in north London, was about the same age and served in the U.S. Army at the same time I served in the U.S. Army. We’re probably the only two English Jews to serve in the U.S. Army.

“We both had a passion for the game, and we met and just decided what we wanted to do.”

The Fox gig didn’t last long.

“Before we knew it,” Geber said, “the hour was gone and we still had 1,800 pages of stuff we wanted to talk about.”

Soon, Cohen and Geber moved their show to KMPC, which offered two hours on Sunday mornings. There, the show found a niche audience -- and interest from a soccer-friendly radio syndication company called Sports Byline. Cohen, 40, and Geber, 38, now host three soccer shows, including the pregame show for a live Saturday morning English Premier League broadcast, with a weekly hour-long Galaxy talk show set to debut next month.

“It’s boyhood dream stuff,” Cohen said. “Utterly unbelievable.”

The trophy tour was also the result of fortuitous timing. After unseating Manchester United as Premier League champion, Arsenal has decided to compete with United on the global marketing level as well. With Manchester United set to tour the United States this summer, Arsenal became interested in keeping pace Stateside -- and after months of haggling, a deal was struck with “World Soccer Weekly” to bring the trophies to Southern California.

The trophies were in San Diego on Tuesday and move to Studio City today, where they can be seen at Mini of Universal City car dealership from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. After that, there will be viewings in Santa Ana on Thursday, Santa Barbara on Friday, Studio City on Saturday and Los Angeles on Sunday.

It’s a U.S. first -- and a symbol, in Cohen’s view, of the sport’s growing popularity in this country.

“We want to help be a vehicle to develop the [U.S.] market,” Cohen said. “We believe there are certain clubs -- whether it’s Manchester United, whether it’s Arsenal -- who are going to have to take that first step and say, ‘All right, we’re going to see what America’s all about.’

“Once you win these trophies, the clock is ticking. It’s only a matter of time until you’ve got to give them back. So you might as well use the time to the best of your ability.”

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Trophy Tour

Itinerary for the FA Cup/Premiership Championship Trophy tour:

*--* TODAY

*--*

Mini of Universal City, 4270 W. Lankershim Blvd., Studio City, 9 a.m.-5 p.m..

*--* THURSDAY

*--*

The Olde Ship, 1120 W. 17th Street, Santa Ana, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

*--* FRIDAY

*--*

The Press Room, 1515 East Ortega, Santa Barbara, 11 a.m.- 9 p.m.

*--* SATURDAY

*--*

Fox and Hounds Pub, 11100 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, 9 a.m.- 9 p.m.

*--* SUNDAY

*--*

Ross Snyder Recreation Center, 1501 East 41st Street. Los Angeles. From 11 a.m.