link_box id=”81189″ site_id=”94″ layout=”link-box-third” alignment=”alignright”]With baseball over, football struggling to gain back viewers, basketball and hockey early in their seasons, soccer is here to get back into the sports landscape. With the United States and Mexico ready to square off in Columbus, OH on Friday to begin the final round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifiying, Fox Sports will be all over the game. Providing exclusive coverage of the rivalry will be FS1 which airs the game starting at 8 p.m. ET.
But there will be multi-platform coverage before the game beginning with a one-hour online show on Fox Soccer’s Facebook page. It’ll be hosted by Rachel Bonnetta and she’ll be joined by present and past U.S. National Team players to discuss the US-Mexico rivalry which always seems to end in scores of “dos a cero.”
Then FS1 starts its coverage at 7 p.m. ET with Mr. Soccer, Rob Stone will host with analysts Alexi Lalas, Fernando Fiore and Seattle Sounders forward Herculez Gomez on-set in Columbus.
John Strong will call the game with analyst Stu Holden. Jenny Taft and Francisco X. Rivera will be the on-field reporters in Columbus.
It’s all going to be part of the run-up to Fox’s coverage of the World Cup in Russia in 2018. Fox will have plenty of coverage of the USMNT home “hex” games as the Americans hope to return to the World Cup for the eighth straight time.
