There is no more spectacular or emotionally charged moment during the 90 minutes of a soccer game than when the ball hits the back of the net.
It's no wonder then that many soccer announcers put more thought into their words uttered in the immediate aftermath of a goal than any other moment in a game. And in many MLS matches, as in many soccer cultures around the world, a goal is the trigger for a familiar phrase on the game’s broadcast.
For D.C. United fans, it’s veteran play-by-play man Dave Johnson’s signature “it’s in the net!” For Max Bretos, formerly of FOX and ESPN and today the television voice of LAFC, it’s a particular extended version of “yeah!” Perhaps the most iconic is the lengthy “gooooollllll” intonation of Andres Cantor, the legendary Spanish-language broadcaster, which has spawned legions of copycats, tributes and derivations.
But the decision of which word or phrase to utilize, or even whether to adopt one at all, is far from straightforward and is sure to be scrutinized by fans glued to their television sets at home.
“It just started happening. I don't think I used it on every goal call, but then fans started to react to it,” Johnson explained of his goal call, tracing it back to his work on Baltimore Blast indoor games several years before MLS was even born. “Next thing you know, it becomes just a part of what you do.
“Like anything, if you get a positive reaction from fans, you kind of feed off that energy, too. So it becomes a two-way street.”
Searching for a marketable style early in his career, Bretos tried the Cantor-style “gol!” but felt it wasn’t really him, and that it simply took too long. Then he stumbled onto a FOX Sports World broadcast of a darts competition, and the English announcer’s excited, escalating “YES!” on climactic throws caught his ear, and “I just kind of jacked it,” in his words.
“I would do the ‘gol!’ call and I immediately felt this was too self-indulgent because I'm like, 'hey, you're screaming,'” he recalled. “I don't really anglify my call and I try to be very close to my Hispanic roots, but this is the one very British thing I got.”
The case against the signature call
As distinctive and well-loved as these catchphrases can be, it’s fraught territory for many in the business.
“I toyed around in 2011 on the radio with a more traditional Spanish-language ‘goooolll!’ call and it just didn't feel natural,” recalled FOX’s John Strong, who made his name on Portland Timbers broadcasts.
“The audience is so smart,” warned his FOX colleague Rob Stone. “They know if that's something you cooked it up or that’s a gimmick. If you bark it out, it almost sounds too rehearsed and too processed.”
Others say they’ve tried to settle on one for themselves, to no avail.
“It was suggested to me that it might be good for my brand to have a signature call,” said New England Revolution play-by-play mainstay Brad Feldman. “So I came up with something and I used it two or three times, and I thought it was really wooden and it sounded rehearsed. Maybe I would have gotten more notoriety with a signature call. But I think my signature call is not to have a signature call. And if I find myself using the same phrase too often, I actually shy away from it.”
Others avoid the concept entirely.
“To me broadcasting live sports is a spontaneous act,” said ESPN’s English standout Jon Champion. “And so I don't want to be reliant on signature calls, or cliche. I just want to be able to respond to what's unfolding in front of me and I think that a spontaneous response which doesn't rely on some sort of formulaic, signature way of calling something is the way I want to do it. I appreciate that others will take a different view and that's the beauty of being an announcer on TV – you do it in your own style.”
Cultural differences
In yet another sign of what a mixing bowl North American soccer can be, there’s a distinct cultural component to this topic.
“The signature call, I think, is something that maybe is a little bit more of a North American thing, whether it's in soccer or basketball or any sport,” said Luke Wileman of TSN. “Growing up in England, I never felt that is something that I needed to do or wanted to do.”
Unique personal phrases – and not just on goals – are almost a mandatory rite of passage for broadcasters in many Latin American nations, as Univision’s Raul Guzman explains.
“When you start, especially in Mexico, you have these dudes like [Enrique] 'El Perro' Bermudez or other ones that, they're very recognized for some phrases. So when you start to learn how to do play-by-play, playing video games, you start to construct your own sentences, your own signature sentences,” said Guzman, who today works alongside Bermudez’s distinctive baritone on a range of Univision soccer properties.
“When I was a teenager, I was thinking [about] how I can start a game, for example. Because I can hear ‘comienzan noventa minutos del deporte mas hermoso en el mundo’ [so begin 90 minutes of the most beautiful sport in the world], that is the signature of Luis Omar Tapia, or ‘aficionados que viven la intensidad del futbol’ [fans who live the intensity of soccer] that is Perro Bermudez’s signature … it was like a normal thing in my town in Mexico: If you want to be a play-by-play man, you need to have a special sentence.”
Guzman settled on “se mueve la pelota, como inicia la aventura” [“as the ball moves, so the adventure begins”].
The differences run deeper still. Spanish-language play-by-play calls tend to carry a markedly higher tempo than their English counterparts, and brim with emotion and flavor. Growing up bilingual in a working-class Mexican-American family in Southern California, Ramses Sandoval experienced both approaches and today is the standard-bearer of the hybrid approach of a new generation on his calls of MLS and Liga MX matches.
“As a kid I used to watch a lot of the soccer games in English, and I used to listen and wish that somebody would scream a ‘gol!’” said Sandoval, noting the influence of beloved Los Angeles Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn as well as the old-school Mexican soccer commentators. “Where does it say that if you're calling a game in English you cannot scream the ‘gol’ – why can’t it be done? Why can’t it be mixed? I don't understand. Why can’t the tempo of the play by play be faster? It's faster sometimes in the NBA and especially listening to NBA on the radio, I would say it can absolutely be done.”
He’s since carved out his own distinct call for high-quality goals: “No no no no, that’s not a goal; that’s a golaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazo!”
The first commentator in Univision history to call games in both English and Spanish, Sandoval loves the rapid-fire intonation that can bring extra enthusiasm to buildups and counterattacks – but cautions that it requires a “crispness, clarity, cleanliness” that takes practice.
And, while feedback is never in short supply where play-by-play announcers are concerned, often it's crucial for broadcasters to shut out outside voices when it comes to their signature style — and phrases.
Sandoval says he knows of Latino colleagues who’ve been pushed to “completely modify” their approach for mainstream audiences. He credits his superiors over the years – starting with former Chivas Guadalajara owner Jorge Vergara, who gave him his start in the business at Chivas USA a decade ago – for encouraging him to be true to his own style and supporting him despite occasional complaints from viewers unaccustomed to his manner.
“I screamed the ‘gol’ from the beginning,” he said with a laugh, “and it was taken with mixed reactions, but I remember my boss was always backing me up, and that was huge. I like to really just transmit the energy of the game to the fans.”
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