Twellman on CSN, again

I posted a few days ago that Taylor Twellman would be doing some World Cup coverage on CSN's Comcast Central show, a half-hour long Boston sports news show. I've seen a few clips on the show's website, but I actually watched the show for the first time tonight.

Firstly, Twellman's segment lasted about two minutes. There was basically no time for him to say anything insightful. For the time he had, he spoke well, but it was almost a waste of time for being so short. Also, it was stuck in at the very end of the show. The show went from 10:30-11pm, and Twellman's segment went from 10:36-10:38. In the first fifteen minutes they covered the Red Sox, Seabass-- I mean Cam Neely-- and the Bruins, the Celtics, and the Patriots. Then they took a commercial break, and said something like, "Coming up, we'll show you the first major upset of the World Cup. Guess which favorite they beat!" But when they came back from the break they went over two of the same exact news stories they had opened with: Cam Neely becoming President of the Bruins, and Perkins's knee injury in the NBA Finals. They took a second commercial break before coming back with brief WC highlights and Twellman's two and a half sentences of commentary.

It's cool that Twellman has something to do while he waits for clearance to return to training with the Revolution, but the CSN show doesn't quite do it for me.

I'd actually like to hear more of Twellman's take instead of an hour of Andy Gray's over on FSC, which I'm watching right now on a show called "Ticket to South Africa." It's a decent review show, but there are four panelists and they totally lean on Andy Gray. It might as well be called "Hear What Andy Gray Thinks of Today's World Cup Games While These Three Other Guys Take Turns Asking Him Questions." For those of you who don't know, Andy Gray is ridiculously pro-everything English. However, he's a big name and a big personality, with a well-known voice, and FSC is getting everything it can out of him while they have him, originally getting him for Champions League games this season.

-John

USA 1-1 England

A few notes on the US's 1-1 draw with England. It was an okay performance by the US. It was a normal performance by England. I expected the US to win going into it. England has bigger names than the US does, yes, and they qualified more easily than the US did. However, my account of both teams comes from experience watching both teams pretty regularly throughout qualification. By that perspective, the actual performance of England measured up to how the the team has performed in recent history. By the same perspective, the US's performance was not quite where it has been over the past year, but still respectable.

I'd like to see Buddle or Gomez start in the remaining two group matches. Findley was alright, but he doesn't have the nose for goal that Buddle or Gomez has. I also want Clark out of there. Having watched Slovenia-Algeria this morning (and once or twice in qualification), I don't think either team needs any more help running up its tally of incomplete passes. Bradley will be enough disruption for both teams. I wouldn't mind seeing a start from Torres, Edu, Feilhaber, or Holden.

The tournament so far has been very even, and very low-scoring. The games haven't been totally defensive; the teams just haven't been good, overall. Greece is just awful. South Korea should be cautious in its celebrations, because I expect Nigeria and Argentina to beat Greece too, and the scorelines might be even more crooked than 2-0.

I haven't seen Twellman on that CSN show yet; I turned on the 10:30 edition last night to see his commentary on the US-England game, but the first 15 minutes of the show were about the Celtics and Red Sox so I turned it off. Nothing against the Celtics or Red Sox, but I wasn't particularly interested in those subjects at the time.

Revolution-Cruzeiro tonight.

-John