While most people go out for drinks, movies, dinner, or whatever normal activity you find pleasurable on a Friday night soccer fans like myself stayed home with dreams of Rooney and Torres dancing in our heads. It's Christmas Eve soccer style and the English Premiere League is but a couple of hours away as of this writing. One of my EPL Christmas wishes for the upcoming season is simple: A competent soccer news show which looked like the big boys at Fox, ESPN or NBC Sports Network fashioned.

Santa came early and boy does the present have potential!

Gone from the screens (as of Thursday night) are the gang from Toronto who did an admirable job with Fox Soccer Report for 10 years. Tonight at 10 pm Fox Soccer News is now the go to daily news program talking all things football. New set, new host Brenden Dunlop (formerly of The Footy Show on Hardcore Sports Radio (Sirius XM) and former UCLA and Canadian women's national team forward Kara Lang. The only hold over from the old news program is Scotsman Bobby McMahon. Other analyst includes former Canadian national team captain Colin Miller and Toronto FC academy director and former MLS and U.S. Under-20 head coach Thomas Rongen as analysts.

Now in past writings I've said the old set looked like something produced on a college news set, but this is a great step forward especially with the growth of the beautiful game here in North America. Fox Sports/Soccer spent big money (it looks like) to give it a set that is similar from the old school Soccer Report but with a few new features . Since tonight's focus was on the opening day of EPL season it was mainly covering the top four by season's end, the bottom three by seasons end, and mention on the big headlines of the EPL. Clint Dempsey of Fulton in a row against his manger and the club for not moving to a championship team this summer took up most of the talk. Some U.S. Men's soccer mention about their big win against Mexico this past got a satellite chat with Goals on Sunday analyst Eric Wylenda was a nice touch (wow, actual satellite interviews).

As I'm dancing around the football tree with glee over a better looking daily show I have to temper the fact this is the first baby crawl. There are growing pains working on a live show with Twitter drops along with the new first team working along building chemistry. No surprise there for me. But when the other leagues---Ligue 1, Bundesleague, Serie A, and others—seasons start it will be interesting how they will juggle the league action from around Europe and the world.

But if this is Christmas Eve, and our Soccer gods are allowing us to open our presents early, I can't wait to see what the first week of Premier League will look like.

“It's beginning to look a lot like...soccer!”

Gone from the screens (as of Thursday night) are the gang from Toronto who did an admirable job with Fox Soccer Report for 10 years. Tonight at 10 pm Fox Soccer News is now the go to daily news program talking all things football. New set, new host Brenden Dunlop (formerly of The Footy Show on Hardcore Sports Radio (Sirius XM) and former UCLA and Canadian women's national team forward Kara Lang. The only hold over from the old news program is Scotsman Bobby McMahon. Other analyst includes former Canadian national team captain Colin Miller and Toronto FC academy director and former MLS and U.S. Under-20 head coach Thomas Rongen as analysts.

Now in past writings I've said the old set looked like something produced on a college news set, but this is a great step forward especially with the growth of the beautiful game here in North America. Fox Sports/Soccer spent big money (it looks like) to give it a set that is similar from the old school Soccer Report but with a few new features . Since tonight's focus was on the opening day of EPL season it was mainly covering the top four by season's end, the bottom three by seasons end, and mention on the big headlines of the EPL. Clint Dempsey of Fulton in a row against his manger and the club for not moving to a championship team this summer took up most of the talk. Some U.S. Men's soccer mention about their big win against Mexico this past got a satellite chat with Goals on Sunday analyst Eric Wylenda was a nice touch (wow, actual satellite interviews).

As I'm dancing around the football tree with glee over a better looking daily show I have to temper the fact this is the first baby crawl. There are growing pains working on a live show with Twitter drops along with the new first team working along building chemistry. No surprise there for me. But when the other leagues---Ligue 1, Bundesleague, Serie A, and others—seasons start it will be interesting how they will juggle the league action from around Europe and the world.

But if this is Christmas Eve, and our Soccer gods are allowing us to open our presents early, I can't wait to see what the first week of Premier League will look like.

“It's beginning to look a lot like...soccer!”

Fox Soccer News