SoccerBlogs

In addition to FOX Soccer bidding us goodbye today after 15 years of Premier League coverage, it was the final day for ESPN's Ian Darke and Steve McManaman bringing us their Premier League matches.

Here's a video they did to say goodbye, which includes funny outtakes.

Darke and Macca will continue on at ESPN but will also work for BT Sport.

After 15 years of soccer coverage, today marked the final day of FOX Soccer's coverage of the English Premier League on US television.

I'd personally like to thank everyone at FOX who's been involved in bringing us the world's best soccer league to us through all of these years. For years, the talent and the crew at FOX Soccer have been waking up at ungodly hours in the morning (west coast time) to bring us an incredible amount of live Premier League matches.

In 30 seconds, this is everything that's wrong with FOX Sports. Even though the TV commercial below is focused on college football, it underlines what's broken with FOX Sports, FOX Sports 1 and FOX Soccer. The sport should be the main focal point, not the announcer.

Titled"The Gus Johnson Effect: Everything's more exciting," the more appropriate title should be "The Gus Johnson Experiment: Everything that's wrong with FOX Sports.

With Arsenal's impressive 4-1 home victory against Wigan Athletic today, the Gunners are just one match away from guaranteeing a spot in the UEFA Champions League next season. For viewers in the United States, the match between Newcastle and Arsenal will be shown live on ESPN2 and WatchESPN.

While Arsenal will need to win on Sunday to qualify for the UEFA Champions League, a draw will be enough if Spurs draw their game.

The FA Cup Final is being shown nationwide throughout the United States for the first-time ever on free-to-air national television. Except if you live in Indianapolis or Hartford.

The TV coverage begins tomorrow at Noon ET on FOX. However, two FOX affiliates — WXIN in Indianapolis and WTIC Hartford — have decided to show the game on delay at 2pm instead, after the game has already ended.

The two highly-anticipated friendlies between Chelsea and Manchester City, to be played on US soil after the 2012-13 season ends, will be televised live on US television by FOX Soccer and ESPN.

Both Premier League sides are heading to the United States immediately after their season ends to prepare for two friendlies.

If Gus Johnson and FOX Sports have paid any attention at all to the commentary on Gus's play-by-play match calling on Twitter and EPL Talk, they should be deeply concerned. From initial outbursts of outrage, much of the commentary has shifted to mockery and humor. This is not a good sign.

It is one thing to be considered controversial (witness Stephen A.

With NBC Sports Network announcing their Premier League coverage plans for next season, the end is near for FOX Soccer.

Next season will see the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, CONCACAF Champion's League and the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments shown on the new FOX Sports 1.

How well did Gus Johnson commentate on the UEFA Champions League semi-final second leg between Barcelona and Bayern Munich that was shown live on FX today?

According to Tweetfeel, a sentiment analysis tool that measures positive and negative messages on Twitter, 69% of the tweets posted about Gus Johnson were negative.

Gus Johnson has returned from the wilderness.

Controversial soccer announcer Gus Johnson will make his return to soccer commentating on Wednesday, May 1 for the return leg between Barcelona and Bayern Munich. The game will be shown live on FX beginning at 2:45pm ET.

FOX Soccer 2Gowill be offering two streams of the commentary — one with Gus Johnson and one without (using the Sky Sports feed instead).

FOX Soccer has decided to add two marquee Premier League matches to its FOX Soccer 2Goplatform.

Historically, the Sunday 11am ET Premier League matches are reserved for FOX Soccer and are not available for viewing on FOX's FOX Soccer 2Goproduct until midnight that same time. However, FOX Soccer has decided to showcase two high profile matches on FOX Soccer andFOX Soccer 2Go over the next two weeks.

FOX Soccer is reportedly working on a deal to televise a brand-new soccer tournament that will launch this summer featuring eight prominent teams playing exhibition matches around the United States, with the final to be played at Miami's Sun Life Stadium in early August, according to reports in Sports Illustrated and Sports Business Journal.

A topic that seems to crop up a few times every season is the technical issues that FOX Soccer 2Gosubscribers experience. I am a former subscriber, and one of the many problems I have had with the site is their conduct and accessibility when these issues occurred. The lack of any sort of response from FOX Soccer 2Goconcerned me.

It's no secret that MLS has struggled to generate big national television ratings. Despite impressive live attendance, the league's television partners have tolerated viewership numbers hovering in the low six figures or below. This season the ESPN2 games have averaged less than 200k per match while the NBSCN telecasts have averaged approximately 100k.

The second week of the Major League Soccer season included a series of mid-week CCL matches televised by Fox Soccer. As we said in 2011, FSC pours significant resources into televising an event that has yet to interest a significant portion of American Soccer Fans. Games from Honduras, El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago do not grab the imaginations of fans focused on European soccer and the MLS regular season.

We'll find out today what two teams will be in Friday's draw for the semi-finals of the 2012-13 UEFA Champions League tournament alongside Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund.

As we saw in yesterday's matches, anything is possible so there's still a chance that Paris Saint-Germain or Juventus could cause a shock today.

While there aren't any Premier League clubs remaining in the UEFA Champions League, there's still plenty of good football to watch today with the second legs of the quarter-finals set for later today.

If you live in the United States, both matches can be watched live on television and the Internet.

Three Premier League sides are in action today in the quarter-finals of the Europa League. All three first leg matches are being shown live on US television and/or Internet.

Here's the schedule for today:

Chelsea vs Rubin Kazan, 3pm, FOX Soccer, ESPN Deportes andFOX Soccer 2Go
Spurs vs Basel, 3pm, FOX Soccer Plus andFOX Soccer 2Go
Benfica vs Newcastle, 3pm,FOX Soccer 2Go

Follow along with the matches by joining the conversation in the comments section below.

Depending on your allegiances, the last day for FOX Soccer as a network is either (a) May 19, when the 2012-13 Premier League season (and FOX Soccer's rights to show the EPL) come to an end, (b) August 17, when FOX Sports 1 launches or (c) September 2, when FOX Soccer becomes FXX.

Millwall plays Wigan Athletic today in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley (kick-off time is 12:15pm ET). The victor will play the winner of tomorrow's semi-final between Manchester City and Chelsea. Plus, either Millwall or Wigan will potentially book a place in next season's Europa League if/when City and Chelsea finish in the top four in the Premier League.

During today's match between Arsenal and Norwich City that is being televised live on FOX Soccer, FOX accidentally interrupted the broadcast in the 28th minute to show 30 seconds of beIN Sport's live coverage of Nottingham Forest against Cardiff City.

The 30 second interruption showed Cardiff City scoring a goal to take the lead.

Club football is working its way to champions on every continent. Seattle Sounders FC and Santos Laguna are in the semifinals of their climb in North America. The Liga MX is favored in the contest (a Sounders win is listed at 9.00, Santos at 1.33), which isn't really a surprise. You certainly know of the big UEFA contests involving Malaga's trip to Dortmund and Turkish club Galatasaray needing a miracle to get past Real Madrid.

You can probably count the number of hours before FOX Soccer or the Premier League asks for this video to be removed due to copyright infringements, so watch it while you can. It's the pilot episode of what eventually became My Beautiful Game.

The original name for the documentary was 'The Greatest Goal I Ever Saw.

Back in January we were overjoyed to find out that, finally, after 2 years of proving that Portland was a great pace to host a US national team game, we would be getting one. Despite the popularity of the game here. Despite the selling out of the stadium time after time after time, US Soccer continued to overlook Portland, and indeed the Pacific Northwest overall, in favor of places like Tennessee.