ESPN’s New Bundesliga Correspondent’s Nervous First Week?

Salma Mitha has joined the ESPN Soc­cer­net pod­cast this week as their Bun­desliga cor­re­spon­dent. While it is under­stand­able that the great Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger wouldn’t have time to spend on a pod­cast, I do feel that it was a pos­i­tive sign by ESPN, who pro­duces a bi-weekly pod­cast ded­i­cated to the EPL and MLS to try and include our great league in their dis­cus­sion. Typ­i­cally the Soc­cer­net con­trib­u­tors are down­right igno­rant of the league and embar­rass them­selves when they speak of it. This week they added a Ger­man res­i­dent and blog­ger to their ranks to cover our beloved league.

But I do hope that Salma’s first gig won’t be an indi­ca­tion of the future as he sounded no more versed in the league than Dom Raynor. One would hope that a per­son liv­ing in Ger­many (if loca­tion was the bench­mark, then our friend Jan from the Off­side would have been the best choice) would be able to bring more than the great Der­rek Rae, who has filled in nicely with Bun­desliga reviews when called upon by ESPN. Unfor­tu­nately, it sounds like the new cor­re­spon­dent has a long way to go to touch Rae, let alone put Soc­cer­net on par with the vastly supe­rior Foot­ball Weekly by the Guardian which boasts Rafael Honig­stein as the Ger­man expert (and he seems to be the most knowl­edge­able when it comes to the EPL many times).

The Guardian has been one of the only audio sources for Eng­lish speak­ers inter­ested in the Bun­desliga for a few years. World Soc­cer Daily tries with Johannes Berendt and Andy Bras­sel, but Bras­sel cov­ers the full of Europe and Johan­nas is a rare inter­view these days although Kenny Has­san has lived in Ger­many and has shown good knowl­edge when they speak about the league. Deutch-Welle has a bare bones sports report, but it cov­ers For­mula 1 more than the Bun­desliga. The Game by the Times is pure EPL. So the only other source of note is ESPN and Soc­cer­net had seemed to give way upon real­iz­ing they couldn’t com­pete against the Guardian in the Bun­desliga any bet­ter than the other major leagues in Europe with Richard­son cov­er­ing Italy, Lowe cov­er­ing Spain and Doyle cov­er­ing France. They had ded­i­cated them­selves to the EPL, UCL and MLS for a while, but it now seems that they may be try­ing to expand. And I hope it works.

But there were a cou­ple of major bun­gles in week one that worry me. The Bun­desliga cor­re­spon­dent shouldn’t refer to Dzeko and Grafite as D-zeko and Grafee­tay. It’s Juh-eko and Grafisch. Telling us that Mag­ath was fired to make way for Klins­mann is a gaffe of epic pro­por­tion, although maybe I was just unaware of Hitzfeld’s year and half interim label. And frankly, rehash­ing the same old story about Ibesivic’s injury caus­ing Hoffenheim’s down­fall is ridicu­lous as Herr Honig­stein has already given us the real reason(s) for their down­fall weeks ago.

So let’s hope that Salma was just ner­vous and has bet­ter days ahead of him. I am hop­ing that he does and I hope every­one here will lis­ten and give the new cor­re­spon­dent both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive feed­back as it is jus­ti­fied via their face­book group.

Tagged as: Football Weekly, Rafael Honigstein, Salma Mitha, Soccernet, World Soccer Daily