I've been tuning ESPN "analyst" John Harkes out along with the vuvuzelas as much as I can during the World Cup so far, but watching Algeria take on Slovenia on Sunday morning, some of his inanity managed to get through, despite my watching a bunch of the game on mute when a friend called. Aside from not being able to speak in complete sentences and having no real tactical understanding of the game past what a U-8 player already knows, one thing that jumped out at me is that he seems to have failed sixth-grade English. Here are four examples of common, everyday words that "Harkesie" misused badly:
- Prepared. I'm paraphrasing, but in discussing Slovenia's path to the World Cup, he talked about how Russia had "prepared" for the match, obviously, but they weren't "ready" for Slovenia. Huh?
- Controversial. When discussing Zinedine Zidane's role with the Algerian team, Harkes made reference to his "controversial" red card in the 2006 final. The red card was not controversial. No one would argue that Zidane shouldn't have received a red card. This was unquestionably the right call. In another match, one of the real, grownup (and yes, British) announcers called it "famous, or maybe infamous." Much better.
- Anticipation. So, apparently anticipation is important in soccer, and in this tournament. Which is fine. Harkes followed this up by saying something like "and we saw that with the U.S. team last night, who gave up a goal early, and then found a way to get back into the game." So, what, they anticipated going down a goal? This is what frustrates me so much about him. There is a point to be made there -- the U.S. defense did a good job using anticipation to clog up passing lanes and make tackles, particularly Oguchi Onyewu, whose timing might have been off -- but Harkes managed to avoid substantive commentary and just say "oh, and hey, how about the U.S.-England match!"
- Ironic. This was especially impressive, because so many people screw it up all the time, usually to describe bad luck or a coincidence. But no, Harkes went with the overturning of red card suspensions to two (I think) Algerian players as "ironic." That's thinking outside the box. Or not thinking. One of those.
I'm sure there will be more. Going in, I was worried that, with all this attention paid to the tournament, and all the money invested by ESPN to showcase it, the content of the coverage -- particularly Harkes and Alexi Lalas -- might actually hurt more than the other stuff helped. Now, that's maybe on equal footing with low-scoring matches and draws through the first 16 matches.