The Italy-France World Cup final earned a 7.0 rating on ABC, nearly three times the 2.5 rating for the 2002 World Cup final between Brazil and Germany. This year’s telecast averaged nearly 12 million viewers (people 2+) and 7,750,000 homes.
The rating was ABC’s third-highest rated men’s soccer game and also the third most-viewed since the network resumed televising the World Cup in 1994 (behind the 9.5 for the 1994 World Cup final between Brazil and Italy and the 9.3 for the USA-Brazil game on July 4, 1994).
And I probably shouldn’t but for another angle on Zidane…
3 Comments
Forget the headbutt & subsequential disqualification. To me, that was just a product of heavy competition. What I found most appalling about the World Cup championship game was the manner in which the winner was determined.
Soccer is one of the first sports we teach our children to play, not only for it’s simplicity, but mostly for the lessons about team play. In our community, we teach our youngsters to win and lose as a team.
So what kind of message is sent to our children when the World Cup championship is determined by a “place-kicking” contest by individuals??? We (as Americans), would never want our World Series to end with a tie….. just to have the winner decided by who can hit the most homeruns.
To not allow the entire team to play to the finish is not what we teach our kids.
It’s no wonder soccer in America is ranked just under Pop-Warner football
A football writers take on the final game can be found here - http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/dr_z/07/10/zidane/index.html
I imagine it will be the only time I point to a football writer
Zidane as Achilles, as only a French commentator in the Wall Street Journal, could write it
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115258471710803033-email.html
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