Phil Schoen was nice enough to give the Brotherly Game some of his time about a week and a half ago. The GolTV play-by-play announcer discussed plenty of topics with the Brotherly Game, some of which included the Philadelphia Union.

Interview with Phil Schoen of GolTV

Here are some highlights of the chat:

• Schoen's time with GolTV, along with his coverage of Colombian soccer, has enabled him to have a more advanced take on players from South and Central America.

Watching the FA Cup 3rd round tie between Arsenal and Leeds United on Monday evening might not have proved so entertaining if former Arsenal defender Martin Keown had not have been struck by a ball hit by a visiting Leeds player in the pre-match warm up. Keown was standing by the pitch alongside ESPN presenter Rebecca Lowe and ex-footballer Robbie Savage.

Google and Apple may not exactly be the first names that spring to mind when looking for alternatives to challenge Sky's dominance of sports broadcasting in Britain, but it should be no surprise that two of the giants of the tech and online world are eyeing up sport as a way to lure consumers into their new offerings.

This could be the first step in the Americanization of the game. Probably, few people would be willing to call it that, but some purists feel the pull. It's like a riptide over the Atlantic Ocean.
And, yet, other purists say they're ready for it.
The announcement was made this week by FIFA President, Sepp Blatter.

Confirmation of the live televised matches for the Third Round of the FA Cup came early this year, and while there was no great shock in the Manchester derby a match which has, arguably, taken on a heightened level of importance given the events in the Champions League last night, even if it still isn't the main even of either teams season it was a little surprising to see that the decisions were taken by both ITV and ESPN before next weeks Second Round replays had even been played.

NBC Sports announced today that it has hired Arlo White as the play-by-play voice of its MLS coverage starting in 2012. White had served as the voice of the Seattle Sounders the past two seasons.

His first broadcast with NBC Sports will be March 11 on opening weekend.

"It is a tremendous honor for me to join the NBC Sports Group, an organization that I have revered from afar for many years," said White in a news release.

Viewers looking at the television schedules for last night may have noticed a gap in the football coverage. For the first time in more than two decades, there were no highlights from the FA Cup First Round on the television on the Saturday night after the matches were played, and viewers were forced to wait until this morning to catch up with what happened yesterday afternoon instead.

By Alan Duffy

Current Partick Thistle manager and former Celtic star Jackie McNamara has used his experiemce in this apparently 'funny old game' to pen a pilot for a new sitcom.

'The Therapy Room' concerns itself with the players at a Premier League side who use a video booth at the club to get things off their chests.

Ayre-headed idea is a leaf out of Kenyon's blotted copybook

Liverpool believe they have a sound economic case for breaking up the collective agreement on overseas TV rights. And when your club attracts 40,000 Asians to training sessions you could probably use that as evidence Far East broadcasters aren't paying a fortune to show Blackburn or Bolton.

By Tony Attwood The highest court in the European Union has ruled that it is legal for individuals within the EU to buy set-top box decoder cards from other EU broadcasters and watch whatever they have to offer. The ruling cannot be appealed. That means that in the UK, for example, we don't suffer the [.

Perhaps we are now so used to the gamesmanship of Sir Alex Ferguson in press conferences and interviews that we now look for subliminal messages in everything he says without even thinking about it. His comments yesterday on the nature of the relationship between football and television have certainly provoked debate, though, not least from those that have chosen to reflect upon the irony of the manager of a club that has arguably benefited more than any other from the expansion of television rights into being the main financial mover in the modern game commenting on the influence of broadcasters being to "shake hands with the devil.

We are on the road tonight, so here is a vault piece from earlier in the season. This was part of our series that looked at the art of televising soccer.

The Major League Soccer 2011 season got started on Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast match carried by ESPN. Fans of all sports are frequently critical of the television presentation of sports events and soccer fans are no different.

Denmark was victorious in the "Nordic Derby" this evening, there was much anticipation leading up to this game with some mind games going on. Featured player, Nicklas Bendtner played 87 mins and had a great game to be honest, he lead the line really well and showed what he was all about dropping deep for the ball and driving at the heart of the Norwegian defence and putting in Rommedahl and Krohn-Dehli on a couple of occasions, along with that he scored two goals the latter was a great fizzing low drive from about 25 yards.

When it was discovered today that Bobby Rhine passed unexpectedly of a heart attack, it hit the greater MLS community fairly hard. Rhine had played 10 years with Dallas and just recently entered the broadcasting field as a rapidly rising star. Fans in Dallas are holding a memorial this evening. His family is asking for donations made in his name to the FC Dallas foundation.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has ended his 7 year BBC boycott after agreeing to put the past behind them.

Fergie hasn't given an interview to the BBC since 2004 when they broadcast a programme which insinuated his Son Jason was a corrupt football agent.

Fergie had received a series of fines last season as he went against protocol whereby managers must make themselves available to broadcasters who pay to cover matches.

Great weekend for soccer in the United States. Before we get to a our weekly wrap of MLS attendance, here are a couple of other business stories from the past couple of days. First, ESPN couldn't have asked for a better match-up than Brazil/USA in the WWC quarterfinal. Despite the 11:30 start time on the East Coast, the lenghty match started to bleed into better ratings windows in the later stages.

Editor's Note: We LOVE to hear about your Free Beer Movement in action. Whenever and wherever you're buying beers to bring the beautiful game to soccer newbies we want to here it. Send your stories to us at freebeermovement(at)gmail.com. We'll even send you one of our FBM stickers for your troubles!

The Halftime show has t-shirts and everything!We love us a bit of the old NutCan. While the Canadian Championship may be a far cry from England's FA Cup (we kind of lack the 755 other clubs), it is our national equivalent and has usually been good fun. 2011 saw a change to a knockout format which has led to an exciting two-leg final between the two "best" clubs - Toronto and Vancouver.

Here's an awesome video find: highlights of an (original) MISL broadcast from January 1985 as the Cleveland Force take on the Pittsburgh Spirit. Not everyone knows that the dean of American soccer broadcasters, my man JP Dellacamera, got his start with the Spirit. Check out the first half of play and the halftime with highlights and features and enjoy a trip back to the mid-1980s.

The team has already made the trek, but the broadcasters follow on Friday a.m. via three different flights from three different ports. If all goes well, we should be in our southeastern Mass. digs by 9 p.m. ET, just in time to catch the second half of the Sox opener with the locals.
I'm a New England guy, but my teams are the Red Sox and Bruins.

- Jason Davis
It seems that in the interest of improving league broadcasts, Major League Soccer's broadcasting department has set up a Twitter account specifically for TV-related feedback. Under the name @MLSonTV, the account appeared yesterday with a call for any and all opinions fans might have on the way the league is presented on the magic box - from announcers to the use of replay.

LONDON, England — The soccer broadcasters who left the British TV station Sky Sports after they were caught making sexist remarks have been hired by a sports radio show. Richard Keys and Andy Gray will work a three-hour show every weekday for the London-based show TalkSport. Keys says "this is the start of something new [.

Video killed the radio star. But, in fact, it didn't. It only transformed the industry. Radio still lives. It's just not that important anymore. However, record companies surfaced a worse fate. Napster brought music piracy to the mainstream, while later iTunes revolutionized the industry making albums less important and singles more consumable.

The greedy Premier League might well yet live to regret pursuing Karen Murphy, through the law courts following the news that Juliane Kokott, the EUs advocate general, has advised that the Premier League's exclusivity agreement – an arrangement which is supposed to prevent broadcasters from screening Premier League matches beyond their country borders – goes against EU law.

International women's soccer seems to grow quite a bit between every Women's World Cup and this summer's tournament in Germany will set some new milestones.
On the topic of TV coverage, this is a press release that FIFA put out today. Pretty cool stuff.

The FIFA Women's World Cup 2011 Germany from June 26 to July 17 is poised to mark a milestone in competitive women's football with unparalleled coverage on television in terms of both production and distribution.

Venues showing live Premier League matches from foreign broadcasters are not breaking EU law, court advised

LONDON, England The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice has put forward the view that it is against EU law to stop broadcasters across the continent from showing football matches using foreign decoder cards. Juliane Kokott gave her thoughts to judges at the ECJ, who are expected to deliver their verdict on [.

Broadcasters like to wrap the FA Cup in nostalgia and treat its history and traditions with reverence. ESPN, who screened the first of three fourth-round ties in two days yesterday, is pioneering a more experimental approach.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few days, or indeed watching Sky Sports News, where they valiantly pretended the story wasn't going on around them, you may have heard about the spot of bother Richard Keys and Andy Gray got themselves into, going all 1950s alpha male by slagging off the 'state of football today' for daring to employ a female lineswoman (who, incidentally, was excellent), while 'hilariously' joking about how she would need to be taught the offside rule, being, you know, a woman, and therefore incapable of understanding some complexities.

I'm a little surprised they didn't also fire Richard Keys.

Gray was initially hauled off air on Monday after he and Keys were caught on tape making derogatory comments about Massey. Speculation last night centred on who leaked the offending clips. Insiders said the most likely explanation was that disgruntled colleagues had systematically leaked the footage to seal Gray's fate.

I'm a little surprised they didn't also fire Richard Keys.

Gray was initially hauled off air on Monday after he and Keys were caught on tape making derogatory comments about Massey. Speculation last night centred on who leaked the offending clips. Insiders said the most likely explanation was that disgruntled colleagues had systematically leaked the footage to seal Gray's fate.