Veteran U.S. Soccer Writer Takes Aim At Premiership & Fox Soccer Channel

Veteran Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner has never been one to refrain from writing what he believes, so it’s interesting to read his take on the English Premier League and its recent lack of goals and quality in an article published in The New York Sun newspaper.

What’s more interesting to me, though, is how Gardner takes a couple of swipes at Fox Soccer Channel. For example, Gardner writes “The EPL being offered with such ballyhoo on FSC is a fraud. This is not the best, nor the most exciting league in the world. Merely the richest.”

While I agree with many of Gardner’s points about the overall lack of goals and quality this season in the Premiership, I do disagree with his criticism of FSC. Prior to this season (when many of the promos and marketing would have been created by Fox), many regarding the Premiership as the best league in the world (including me).

The other thing about Fox is that when they’re promoting Premiership matches, they have no way of knowing whether the matches are going to be the most exciting of the season or “duds” as Gardner says.

Hopefully The New York Sun will publish my response to Gardner’s article. I brought up a few other points including the fact that Setanta Sports is also showing Premiership matches, and the three that they showed on Saturday featured 11 goals and were extremely exciting.