Guests at Training

While in England, the MNT Blog is diligently working on its British restraint. It is going well, thank you. However, any soccer fan would forgive the Blog for the geek out moment it experienced this morning when both John Motson and Martin Tyler turned up at training.

If you've watched any soccer in the past quarter century, odds are you've heard the voices of these two commentators. And if you're trolling around youtube looking at soccer highlights, their calls are all over some of the most memorable instances in the sport. Indeed, their voices have become nearly as iconic as the images and events themselves.

Like this one (Tyler):


And this one (Motson).


And this one (Tyler).


That search took about five minutes.

Like any good pros, Mr. Motson and Mr. Tyler were at training putting in some research ahead of Wednesday's game, and the Blog was eager to help identify players. The commentators even braved the bitter cold and rain weather that in any other situation would have made training miserable for us onlookers. Their visit made for a great conversation and some good anecdotes too:

Martin Tyler said that he remembers Steve Cherundolo's strike against Germany in 2006 as one of the most bizarre goals he's ever seen. If you can recall, Cherundolo hoofed a ball forward towards Eddie Johnson up front for the U.S. German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn came out, collided with Eddie Johnson and ball bounced away into the net with Chernudolo getting credit for the goal. Mr. Tyler said that he and his commentary team had no idea that the ref was giving a goal, or that the ball had even gone in. When the confusion subsided and the ref finally did give a goal, they had no idea who even scored it. The solution? A quick visit to ussoccer.com by the Sky Sports producer. Big props to Matchtracker!

We also spoke about David Beckham's goal this past weekend. If you remember, he scored a similar goal (albeit with a goalie in the net) and Mr. Motson commented that the goalie on that day, Neil Sullivan, was part of Doncaster Rovers successful Championship promotion bid yesterday. Here's Beckham's goal from 1996 (guess who was calling it):