It’s now the morning after the United States’ heartbreaking loss to Belgium in the World Cup’s Round of 16, and everyone from the talking heads on television to your uncle who never liked soccer before is chiming in with commentary. But the best summation of yesterday’s defeat to the Connecticut of Europe came, perhaps surprisingly, from the Bristol-based ESPN.
During a video postmortem on ESPN FC, the colorful commentary duo of Men in Blazers described the extra-time loss as “sadder than a Joy Division album,” and even referenced some Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell.
Of course, Men in Blazers aren’t your typical ESPN commentators; ESPN writer Roger Bennett, a writer for ESPN, and TV executive Michael Davies (producer of Wife Swap, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire are two British ex-pats who are becoming famous not only by clips like the one below, but also their podcast on Bill Simmons’ ESPN sub-site Grantland. Buzzfeed lifted the veil on these two yesterday in a pretty great profile, shining light on two of this 2014 World Cup’s breakout media stars.
Check out their postmortem below; it’s a great watch all the way through the nine minutes, but the brilliant Joy Division line comes at 8:07.
As we as a country lick our wounds and prepare for two Gold Cups, the Copa America, and the women’s World Cup, we’ll take solace in knowing we’ll always have Unknown Pleasures and Closer to fall back on. Thanks, England.
[embedvideo id=”wVvoQIdD80U” website=”youtube”]
[embedvideo id=”GVVdEqBbr4k” website=”youtube”]