Interview: Landon Donovan on commentary, ownership, and U.S. soccer

Planet Fútbol with Grant Wahl

Sports Illustrated

Sports, Sports News, News, Soccer

4.6 • 859 Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2016

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Landon Donovan is the all-time leading goal scorer for the U.S. national team, but he's been mostly out of the public eye since his retirement from the game a year and a half ago. That is beginning to change in the Copa America, as Donovan has provided color commentary for games on Fox during the tournament, and he talks about that and more with Grant Wahl on the new Planet Futbol Podcast. Besides his burgeoning broadcast career, Donovan also speaks about potential paths forward for him in the game of soccer, whether it be coaching, more media work, or perhaps even ownership of an MLS team. He also discusses the U.S.'s performance in the Copa America, and gives his take on whether or not the team's performance in the tournament could be considered a success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We've got a great guest on today's Plan of Football
0:12.8	Procast.
0:13.4	He is the all-time leading goal score
0:16.0	in the U.S. men's national team
0:17.7	and in Major League soccer, among other things.
0:20.8	He's working for Fox Sports during the Cop America Centennial.
0:24.0	He's Landon Donovan.
0:25.0	Thanks for joining Landon.
0:27.0	Nice to be here.
0:28.0	Where did the Planet Football name come from by the way?
0:30.0	This was actually my idea.
0:31.0	I'm going to take some credit for this. And it's not easy coming here. What if I said I hated it? Well then that would be your prerogative.
0:37.0	But I would say football is recognizable in the US as a specific sport, not American football.
0:44.0	We're also reaching all the possible audiences are the big ones in the US with that term.
0:50.0	And the planet is kind of a mission statement. Okay.
0:53.0	So what about do you think all
0:57.0	MLS teams should be called football clubs and not soccer clubs?
1:01.0	My philosophy is that I don't care what you call the sport. We all love the sport and you can call it whatever you want.
1:09.0	Okay, fine. All right, continue. I was just curious.
1:12.0	Lots to talk about, but let's talk about this first.
1:17.0	You're here on behalf of Sprint.
1:19.0	I am. They've been great to me. They've been great for the Copa America Centennial and when this tournament came about, as you know, very quickly in probably five or six months, they wanted to be a part of it and they've been part of gold cups in the past,
	...

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