I had the pleasure yesterday evening to watch the opening match of Copa America as Peru shocked Uruguay 3-0 in a thoroughly entertaining match. The Peruvians were incredibly impressive in all areas of the pitch. And what a magnificent goal by Juan Carlos Marino to make it 2-0 for Peru.

If you watch the above clip from Sky Sports and you watched the same match on GolTV as I did, take notice of the difference in crowd noise. While it was a pleasure to listen to Phil Schoen and Ray Hudson commentate the game for GolTV, the crowd noise on GolTV seems to be considerably less than the Sky coverage.Does that matter? To me, it’s an emphatic yes. The louder the crowd is, the more goosebumps I get on my skin and the more exciting it becomes.

My only other criticism of the GolTV coverage was Phil Schoen’s comment that this 3-0 result was the biggest result in the history of Peruvian football. For example. Peru beating Brazil 3-1 (in Brazil, may I add) in 1975 in the semi-finals of the Copa America was a more historic win.If you’re interested in catching the Copa America fever, be sure to join host BCJohn at the EPL Talk Chat (from the homepage of EPLTalk.com), where he’ll be hosting the following matches over the coming weeks:

June 27 8:50: Brazil v Mexico
June 28 6:35: Paraguay v Columbia
June 28 8:50: Argentina v United States
June 30: 4:05: Bolivia v Uruguay
July 1 4:05: Brazil v Chile
July 2 6:35: United Stated v Paraguay
July 2 8:50: Argentina v Colombia
July 3 6:35: Peru v Bolivia
July 3 8:50: Venezuela v Uruguay
July 4 6:35: Mexico v Chile
July 4 8:50: Argentina v Paraguay.
July 7: To be decided
July 8 4:05: Group B Winner v 2nd Group C
July 8 6:50: Group C Winner v 2nd Group A
July 10 8:50: 1st Group A/2nd Best Third v Best Third/2nd Group B
July 11 8:50: Winners of the July 8th games.
July 15 5:05: Winners of games played July 10 and 11.

All times are PM and Eastern.