By Paul Kennedy

NBC Sports has a new voice for its MLS coverage. Like his predecessor, Arlo White, John Strong was plucked out of the soccer-crazed Pacific Northwest, where he made a name for himself covering the Portland Timbers.

While White was aseasoned broadcaster when he joined the Seattle Sounders broadcast team from the BBC in 2010, Strong was all of 24 when he called his first game on radio for the Portland Timbers, then playing in theUSL in 2009.

Only 28, Strong caught the broadcasting bug early, convincing his high school principal to let him add a broadcasting program. He broadcast Oregon’s women’s soccer matches incollege and was the voice of the Eugene Generals Junior A hockey team at the age of 20. In 2011, the Timbers hired him to handle play-by-play, the same position he will hold for NBC’s MLStelecasts.

Strong earned MLS’s Broadcast Call of the Year in 2001 for his call of Darlington Nagbe’s 2011 AT&T Goal of the Year forthe Timbers and last year was named the Oregon Sportscaster of the Year.

Soccer is a big part of Strong’s life. The former Timbers Army supporter is married to former Washington Statestar Nicole Wilcox, who was leading scorer in the WPSL for the BSC Portland Rain in 2011.

Strong will call MLS games alongside Kyle Martino with host Russ Thaler beginning July 6 with the Vancouver-Seattle Cascadia Cup matchup on NBC Sports Network at11 p.m. ET.

“I’m thrilled to join NBC Sports Group’s MLS team,” said Strong in a statement. “To be a national voice of Major League Soccer has been my dreamjob for a long while. To do it with the iconic NBC Sports brand makes it perfect. My first game can’t come soon enough!”

The move to hire Strong follows NBC’s acquisition of EnglishPremier League broadcast rights, beginning with the 2013-14 season, and its decision to have White handle the lead EPL play-by-play duties.

— Portland native Christian Miles will serve as the Timbers’ television play-by-play announcer for the remainder of the 2013 season. He will begin calling Timbers matches on July 7, on the ROOTSPORTS broadcast of the club’s road match against the Columbus Crew.

Strong’s Timbers partner, analyst Robbie Earle, will also contribute toNBC’s MLS coverage in addition to his duties as an EPL studio analyst, but he will remain a member of the Timbers broadcast team, according to the Timbers.
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3 Comments

  1. MLS 36 and MLS Insider programs were very strong on NBC Sports Network. I am very pleased to see professional polished broadcasting of our sport on our shores. I miss only two things from FOX: 1) Fanzone – the anti-professional local fanatic calling the game alongside another local fanatic from the other team and 2) Fox Football Fone-In, the best review, preview, commentary EVER for any sport. The twitter, email, and phone call interaction with the hosts and “special guests” was beyond compare. I know that MLS markets and uses the web and new media better than any other American sport, and would hope they could at least do these two shows on the web, until they could prove their worth on live tv.

  2. Best thing TV soccer can do is to make it a one-man commentary which would eliminate much of the yaking that suffocates the game.

  3. Fox Football Fone-In had bite and entertainment at the same time; it’s professional content shames the current Fox Soccer News format.

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