fanzone

This will be old news to some of you, and nothing news to most of you, but I came across a great show on teevee tonight. It's called "FanZone" and as far as I can tell its from Sky Sports in England (it shows here on Fox Soccer Channel). I can't exactly speak as an expert, considering I've only seen like 15 minutes of one episode, but as far as I can tell, here's the concept:

You start with an English Premier League soccer match ... the one tonight was Chelsea-Arsenal, a highly-anticipated early-season match from last weekend. You get two fans, one for each team, stick them in a booth with a microphone, and let them commentate the match. That's it.

So, to take the example I just watched, you've got some guy in what is to my American ears an almost unintelligible accent yelling and screaming about Chelsea while the other guy yells and screams in an equally inscrutable accent about Arsenal. The two guys know their stuff ... imagine if you were asked to offer opinions about your favorite sports franchise, you'd probably have a lot of interesting information to pass on. They are also brutal ... to each other (slagging the other's team at every opportunity), to the referee (they reminded me of my brother Geoff), and best of all, to their own club (no one knows how to criticize a team better than its own fans).

In the match in question, which I'd actually already seen with "real" commentators, Chelsea had a 1-0 lead late in the match, and the Arsenal fan was going totally bonkers. Every time Arsenal had possession, he'd yell at the top of his lungs, exhorting them to get the ball forward, making passionate appeals to their club loyalty, running off an amazing, long streak of pleas that often made no sense ("HEART! PASSION! CHARISMA! FEELING! RUNRUNRUNRUN! GO FORWARD, YOU BLOODY IDIOT! HEART! PASSION! TOUCH YOUR SHIELD!"). All the while, the Chelsea fan is blathering away as well. It was the damnedest thing.

I have no idea if this show has a regular place on the Fox Soccer Channel lineup, but I'm gonna be looking for it.