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One of the greatest strikers of all time, Zlatan Ibrahimovic made some appearances on Fox’s late-night World Cup show, “After Hours with James Corden” the previous day, in which Corden strapped Ibrahimovic to a lie detector for a play.
“You share a desk with fellow Fox analysts Rebecca Lowe, Thierry Henry and Alexi Lalas,” Corden said, reading off cue cards. “Do you think a panel of four Zlatans would be better than these four?”
As expected, Ibrahimovic believed his “I’m the most confident man in the world” thing and said yes. The lie detector monitor said he was telling the truth.
The actual correct answer so far for this World Cup is:
Less Zlatan.
Less Lala.
And Fox’s main studio show would be better.
The Zlatan-Lalas dynamic is strange. To Zlatan’s credit, he is not working in his native language. On many occasions, we wish Lalas had never learned English, especially in his chosen dialect, “Hot Take”.
Give us a more enjoyable, balanced, and informative combination of Lowe and Henry, and then Fox will really have something.
During Wednesday’s pregame, Henry described the intricacies of France star Kylian Mbappe’s first goal against Senegal on a diagonal run into the box.
After Portugal’s 1–1 draw against DR Congo, Henry spoke about the selfishness of Cristiano Ronaldo’s movement, which was not opening up space for teammates.
“The team needs to score, you don’t need to score,” Henry said.
The breakdowns were beautiful and illuminating.
Heading into this World Cup, Fox planned to create a major studio show with Hall of Fame star power similar to its NFL and MLB pregames, including Michael Strahan, Terry Bradshaw, Derek Jeter and David Ortiz.
Fox brought in proven TV winners in Lowe, who leads NBC’s Premier League studio show, and Henry, who is part of CBS’s excellent Champions League presentation. Signing Zlatan was a bold move.
LaLas was the American holdover from Fox’s 2022 studio show – which was in need of such a revival.
The risk with Zlatan was whether he would be any good. It took Tom Brady an entire season before he became the No. 1 NFL game analyst. The studio is easy, but Zlatan’s clock is ticking as the World Cup final is only a month away on July 19.
So far, the problem for Zlatan is that he doesn’t know anything special about many teams or their players. When Fox broke the story about American-turned-Canadian coach Jesse Marsh before his first game last week, it seemed as if Zlatan had never heard of him.
When the segment was complete, Zlatan said he wanted to meet the confident Canadian coach. The cocky crutch is a big trick of Zlatan’s, making him look like a striker who can only use one leg.
The Foxes really need to get Zlatan’s goal-scoring insight. It should use his field studios to explain techniques and tactics so that Zlatan can demonstrate that, while he was a physical beast on the field, his intelligence and instincts allowed him to find the back of the net often. Let’s hear more about it.
As for Lalas, we’ll borrow his general tone for a moment: He’s one of the most insufferable analysts in American TV sports history. And while he was one of the best American defenders of all-time, his credentials pale in comparison to Zlatan and Henry. His broadcasting skills are third class only to Lowe.
(Now, go back to your regular tone.)
During Wednesday’s pregame, Fox gave us the unnecessary “Alexey’s Power Rankings.”
“Reminder, these are my power rankings,” Lalas announced on the segment. “If you don’t like them, get your own power rankings.”
How about no “power rankings”? This is not a “first take”.
The other day, after the Corden segment was shown on pregame, Zlatan said a very good line, saying that Lowe and Henry’s outfits were well put together and turning to Lalas he said, “We can discuss.”
Lalas spread his hands and gave a small smile, but he did not enjoy it. Zlatan said, “It’s all love. It’s all love.”
It might be fun to watch Zlatan score on Lalas all day long, but all they’ll have to do is laugh – and that can’t really happen at Lalas.
Of course, Lalas started it, because he is adept at trolling, so at the beginning of the coverage he said that 25-year-old Norwegian Erling Haaland would surpass Zlatan’s career status with a strong World Cup. Zlatan didn’t appreciate it but he got his reaction.
On Tuesday, after France’s disappointing first half prompted sports analysts Landon Donovan and Lalas to bring up the word “arrogance” in relation to the French opening 45 minutes, Zlatan had enough and delivered his best moment of the tournament with a scorpion kick from commentary.
“It’s not arrogance,” Zlatan said. “It is confidence. Ignorant people will say it is arrogance. Intelligent people will say it is confidence.”
Maybe we can all agree.
Instead of exposing egos, the Foxes should lean toward intelligent coverage of Lowe and Henry, bringing Zlatan and Lalas down to their level.
