Thursday night’s CONCACAF Nations League semifinals in Los Angeles will feature a highly unusual broadcast pairing.
Mexico vs.Canada, which is set for a 9:30 p.m. ET kickoff, will see father-and-son team Andrés and Nico Cantor call the English broadcast on Paramount+. Ahead of that, the Cantors spoke to Awful Announcing together, with Nico saying watching and talking about soccer with his dad has been a huge part of his life.
“I feel like it’s going to be very natural,” he said. “I get to watch soccer games with my dad whenever I’m home. We can spend hours in front of the TV, wrought up on a Sunday in front of the TV, and just talk about soccer the entire time. I hope when we get to broadcast the game together, it gets to give people a little bit of a window into what our dynamic is like as father and son. We’ll have to behave a little bit more than we do on the couch on a Sunday watching soccer, but I think it’s going to be fun.”
Andrés said this broadcast will be a little more G-rated than their conversations about some of the matches they watch together at home, though.
“I was going to say that we’re going to have to curb our language for sure. Those Sundays or any time that we watch soccer, we act as just fans of the game and, you know, analyze things, but obviously in a more colloquial way, if you will.”
The senior Cantor, 62, has been one of the most prominent voices in soccer coverage for decades. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but moved to Southern California as a teenager. After attending journalism school at the University of Southern California, he quickly became a prominent soccer broadcaster, especially after joining Univision in 1987 and helping to popularize Latin American elongated “GOOOOAAAALLLL!” calls for a North American audience.
Over the decades, Cantor’s work for Univision, Telemundo Deportes, NBC Sports, his own Futbol de Primera Radio Network (which has held the Spanish-language radio rights for the FIFA World Cup since 2002), and other outlets has led to an amazing list of moments, including repeated appearances on The Late Show With David Letterman, plus voicing himself on The Simpsons. But he said this chance to work with his son (who has made his own reputation as a soccer commentator over the past few years, especially with hosting The Golazo Show whiparound coverage of European club competitions for Paramount+ since 2020), in an exceptionally rare father-son national broadcast, is a moment that stands out for him.
“It’s going to be definitely lots of fun,” he said. “I can’t be prouder of Nico’s career so far; he’s done great. And it’s just one of those bucket list things in my professional life. Being able to do this in English for Paramount+, it’s just amazing.”
Andrés added that he never expected Nico to follow in his footsteps, but he’s incredibly proud that he has.
“I never pushed Nico into this profession. My dad wanted me to be a doctor like he was, and he was kind of disappointed when I told him ‘No, I’m going to go to journalism school,’ and then I obviously became a broadcaster. So, I had that experience of my parents trying to steer my way into my profession, and I didn’t want to do that with Nico.
“But, you know, he started playing soccer at a young age, he started liking the game. So I took him pretty much all over the world whenever I could. And then he started coming to the World Cup, which my radio company has done since 2002, and got to get to work and see superstars or former icons of the game. And I guess he started liking the trade and found his way on his own. And the dynamic is supernatural because whether I pushed him or not, we’ve been doing this pretty much half of Nico’s life.”
Nico said watching soccer with his dad over the decades is a cherished memory.
“I feel like it’s something we’ve always done. I’ve learned so much watching and listening, watching soccer, and listening to him. You kind of take it for granted, you know?”
He said part of that is how important those memories are to him as family moments, not just soccer ones.
“Not only is it that you take it for granted because you’re sitting next to a legend of broadcasting, someone who calls the game better than anybody that I know, but also, you take for granted that you’re watching something with your dad. If people aren’t fortunate enough to be able to be watching soccer on the weekends with their dad, either they don’t have one or the family dynamic isn’t great…we have an extraordinary relationship that we’re able to just sit down, watch and enjoy the game for what it is.”
Andrés said one of the first memorable work trips he brought Nico on was for a FIFA World Cup qualifying match in Mexico City in June 2009, which he thought would be special for his son even if he didn’t do anything further in soccer.
“I remember when I told him then, because obviously I didn’t know how much he was going to absorb of the moment. It was a World Cup qualifying match between Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago in Azteca Stadium with 100,000 people, and we’re on the pitch before the match because I have to do a live hit. And I told him ‘Just cherish this moment, I don’t know if you realize where you are.’ And obviously, now he has traveled the world, been admitted to many pitches all over the world. It’s supernatural now that we get to to watch soccer together and now, obviously, do the game together.”
The conversations around family relationships in sports broadcasting have been notable recently, with everyone from Ian and Noah Eagle to Cris and Jac Collinsworth to the Carays to Phil, Matt, and Chris Simms to Mike and Leigh Mayock garnering attention. Nico said he recognized his father’s success would provide opportunities, but he’d need to work harder than someone without connections to prove he belonged.
“I knew that although my last name is Cantor, it would open some doors; I had to kick ass, probably double what somebody else would, just to prove that it wasn’t the last name that would propel my career forward.”
Nico said it was certainly helpful for him to learn from his father’s soccer insights, but he’s also had to balance that with finding his own opinions.
“Sometimes I pick up way too much. I think I think like my dad a lot of the time. I think we see the game on the same wavelength. But there’s a lot of times where I give him a little bit of pushback, he gives me a little bit of pushback.”
For Nico, that eventually led to him forming opinions that got his father’s respect.
“I remember out of college when I started getting a little bit of a better, more professional understanding for the game. And then when I was watching soccer with my dad, there was a back-and-forth. really intense shouting match at the house. And then when you realize that ‘Okay, he’s listening to me, I think he’s ceding to me here!’ It’s like, ‘Okay, respect, I like this.’
“It’s beautiful, because you do get to pick his brain, but at the same time it’s like talking to my dad. I don’t have that filter where it’s like, ‘Okay, let me tap into the professional mindset of my dad,’ because I think both of us are so obsessed with the game.”
Nico said his dad once gave him some helpful relationship advice…on when it was time to think about something other than soccer.
“When I started dating my girlfriend, my wife now, I was maybe like two years into it, I was still living with my parents. It was a Saturday morning where I was watching [the second-tier English Football League] Championship, [Marcelo] Bielsa was coaching at Leeds, so I was locked into the Championship that season. My girlfriend, my wife now, was sitting on the couch, and we weren’t talking, I was just watching soccer, just the two of us there.
“And my dad came back to the house, saw me watching, like, the Championship, brought me over and said, ‘Hey, can I talk to you?’ He brought me outside the house, and he goes, ‘Hey, Nico, I think you should take her to brunch.’ Whoa! When my dad, out of all people, is the one that’s telling me to abandon soccer and take my girlfriend out for brunch, I thought it was pretty ironic. So we do have that soccer obsessiveness, but we also have the human touch at times.”
For Andrés, Nico’s broadcasting growth to this point has been remarkable.
“In all honesty, he amazes me every time I watch him. First, he understands the game in itself very, very well, which for his young age, having watched only a quarter or so of the games that I have watched in my life, it’s really amazing. He understands the practical aspects of everything that has to do with the game, with the business of soccer, with the broadcasting of soccer on television.
“It’s just his preparation alone and his knowledge of things that are empirical and that have happened way before he was born. He asked me ‘Hey, do you remember this game?’ I was probably his age when it happened, and I have really no recollection of what the heck he’s talking about. Yet when he makes reference to things like that, he makes references because he has either watched the game on YouTube or read about it somewhere, or talked to somebody.”
Andrés said both of them like to offer analysis and play-by-play, which should add a layer to this broadcast.
“It’s always super fun because, obviously, when we watch the games together, I like to point things out,” he said. “As much as I like to do the play-by-play, I’m very analytical in my play-by-play, especially when I do it in Spanish for Telemundo, of the games I’m seeing. So I analyze the game with him, I tell him ‘The first substitution will be for this player because he’s not doing the right things.’ It’s a nice exchange that we have going.”
Speaking of that language distinction, Andrés is known for both English-language and Spanish-language play-by-play. He said he approaches those broadcasts differently, and English-language play-by-play, in particular, involves more preparation for him.
“I guess it’s just the tempo. I haven’t done English-language play-by-play regularly. I did some Premier League for NBC Sports, I did the Olympics in a couple of years for them, I did the Sydney Olympics in 2000 with Alexi Lalas. So, because I work so much in Spanish, my English-language work is periodical, if you will, so every time I go into the booth I have to start finding my voice again.”
He said he consumes plenty of English-language soccer broadcasts, though, and he thinks English-language audiences often look for something different from Spanish-language audiences.
“Obviously, I watch a lot of games in English, I understand the English culture of doing play-by-play, which is, I would say, 360-degree opposite the way I call games in Spanish. Because I have so much enthusiasm, and I guess it’s just a cultural thing that we live soccer with that much passion in the Latin American game. I’m not passing judgment, whether it’s for good or for bad, but it’s actually the way it is.
“And here I know I’m calling Mexico against Canada. I know what the Mexican bilingual audience will expect, I probably know what the Canadian audience will expect, and I know what the bilingual audience, non-Mexican, will expect out of me. I will just try to be as truthful and be myself as much as I can, and obviously I will try to find the right tone and the right voice for my English language play-by-play.”
The latest
“It’s become a staple of our European coverage, and that’s been amazing,” he said. “I guess seeing so many different dynamics of the game all at once, you welcome that you kind of get to focus on 90 minutes and not have to bounce around everywhere. There’s so much noise in my head when you’re doing a show like Golazo Show, because there’s so many moving parts, it’s really difficult to ultimately focus on 22 players over 90 minutes in one place. So it’s like dialing back the intensity and going in for the ride in a 90-minute game with a completely different context from European football.”
He said that the shifted context of club matches versus CONCACAF Nations League will matter as well.
“When it’s international break, things change, mentalities change. Players hit switches, for good or for bad, and you’re playing for something different. It’s exciting. But I don’t know how much I can bring from The Golazo Show into a 90-minute broadcast because I do think it’s a completely different broadcast.”
As for Andrés, he joked that Nico’s whiparound show experience may come back to haunt him.
“I’m afraid that I’ll be doing the play-by-play, and there’s a corner kick, he’ll just interrupt me and say, ‘Now, let’s go to New York.'”
But he said he’s thrilled to get to work with his son, and he knows Nico will have the preparation here locked down. He said that stood out on recent The Golazo Show broadcasts focusing on the UEFA Europa League and Conference League, which typically feature smaller clubs than those competing in the Champions League.
“I am really impressed at his preparation for every broadcast,” Andrés said. “Europa League and Conference League doesn’t have the marquee teams, and yet, he was talking about two teams like he sees them play every weekend. It’s pretty amazing.”