Was I the only one who was completely bored while watching the new season debut of Fox Football Fone-In last night on Fox Soccer Channel?

A lot of the boredom was due to the show’s decision to go as far back as June and conjure up stale topics such as the Gold Cup and the U-20 World Cup, and then July events such as David Beckham’s debut and the Asia Cup, etc.

While they did mix in some news and discussion from the past week, I felt the show could have been much more interesting if they focused on timely topics such as:

  • Jack Warner’s comments about England and his snub against England which could impact their chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup,
  • The U.S.’s upcoming friendly against Brazil and why the match against Mexico was cancelled because of infighting between Telemundo and Univision,
  • The Premier League’s latest sweeps across YouTube this past weekend where goal highlights have been removed within minutes — and whether this is a good or bad thing for soccer fans,
  • And what’s going wrong (again) at White Hart Lane and whether Martin Jol has what it takes to be Spurs manager (I recommended last season that he get the sack because he his team consistently underwhelms and he’s done as much as he can at the club).

Sure, the combination of Nick Webster and Steven Cohen works well. The two of them together allow the conversations to flow a lot more freely and it sometimes feels like you’re watching and listening to two blokes at the pub discussing topics. But what matters most is that the topics need to be of interest and timely.

Based on the show last night, Fox Football Fone-In must believe that the majority of viewers have been hibernating the past two months. Rather than talking down to their viewership, I’d much prefer to see topics discussed that aren’t covered on World Soccer Daily and are deeper in context.

With a two hour show, there’s plenty of time to get into some very analytical topics about soccer that would be perfect for TV (and I don’t mean the ones mentioned above in the bulletpoints). I’ll give the show a chance and will see if they go down that path. I’m willing to forgive them for one poor show, but let’s see where they go from here.

Fox Football Fone-In airs every Tuesday night during the season at 8pm ET on Fox Soccer Channel.