ESPN Classic Comes Through for CL Soccer

One of my biggest US television soccer frustrations has been the decisions made by the programmers at ESPN2 when it comes to which Champions League matches to air in this country. Whether they have it on good authority or not, the folks at ESPN seem to believe that any game involving an English team is preferable to any other matchup, regardless of how compelling it is. What this usually translates to is: Manchester United one day and Arsenal/Chelsea/Liverpool the next. So, for Matchday 1, we were treated to the excruciatingly dull snoozefest that was Liverpool vs. PSV. We could have been watching Barcelona put on a clinic against Levski Sofia or Sporting take Inter down a notch. The next day we had to watch ManU vs. Celtic (granted, this was a pretty good game) when we could have seen the more interesting Real Madrid-Lyon match. Last year I missed a good number of Barcelona's games because ESPN decided we'd be better off watching Everton or Arsenal or Liverpool. (I did catch the occasional taped Barça-Milan game when FSC aired Milan Weekly, the downside being that I had to watch the match narrated by the annoyingly obsequious Brit that does the play-by-play for Milan)

However, my usual scan of the extremely valuable SoccerTV this morning revealed something that is new (or I'd never noticed before) -- ESPN Classic is airing alternate CL matches a couple of hours later. This means that next week, for Matchday 2, the Deuce will air ManU vs. Benfica (of course) live, but ESPN Classic will air Madrid vs. Dynamo Kiev at 2 pm PDT. The next day, Classic will air the Barcelona-Bremen game.

Maybe the best part of watching these games on Classic? Tommy Smyth won't be ruining the games with his nonsense...