World Cup Story Feed / 世界杯事情流
World Cup Story Feed / 世界杯事情流
I can't point out where Bosnia and Herzegovina is on the map.
"I can't point out where Bosnia and Herzegovina is on a map."
"And I don't want to know either."
On the live feed of ABC7 Los Angeles, reporter Abigail Velez tossed these two lines onto the desk. On July 1st, the U.S. national team was set to play Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup's Round of 32. Velez had just jumped from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles in November of last year, less than eight months on the job. She called this "sports trash talk." American-style sports trash talk, pre-game bravado to heat things up, adding a bit of spice to the broadcast. A local TV reporter who couldn't even place a country on the map of Eastern Europe was trying to pull a Super Bowl move from the World Cup broadcast seat.
The clip spread, and the Bosnian community erupted. Within 24 hours, Velez squeezed out the words "thoughtless" and "insensitive" on Instagram. She tried to cover up her naked lack of basic geography with the excuse of "wanting to add some edge to the coverage."
That trash talk smokescreen simply didn't hold up. While North American sports do have a tradition of pre-game trash talk, with the Super Bowl and NBA playoffs full of it, that's between major teams and equal opponents. Taking shots at a small nation that only returned to the World Cup after 12 years, a team squeezing the last drops of effort from a 40-year-old veteran—that isn't humor. That's flaunting ignorance as personality and trading arrogance for ratings.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was never a charity case on a taxpayer-funded trip to California. At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the nation stepped onto the main stage for the first time, packed their bags after the group stage, and went home. Twelve whole years later, they fought their way back. Captain Džeko, aged 40. Before the match, he said something honest: "I didn't think I'd still be playing at 40." This is his last World Cup. A 40-year-old striker still slogging through World Cup elimination games—the kind of grit that grinds a career into dust is enough for any savvy reporter to dig out three in-depth features. Velez didn't write them. She chose to prove on camera that she flunked geography class.
She probably thought she was joking about a nobody team no one cared about. But St. Louis has one of the largest Bosnian communities in the U.S., and Atlanta has a sizable Bosnian immigrant population too. With that one remark, she stomped all over the homeland minefield of hundreds of thousands of Bosnian-Americans in the U.S. The baseline for a sports reporter is never about how clever you can be on camera. It's about knowing when to shut up.
The U.S. team advanced out of the group stage. The World Cup is on home soil. The hosts have every right to be confident. But that confidence isn't something a host who can't even point out her opponent's country on a map gets to cash in.
At 5 p.m. on July 1st, at Levi's Stadium, the Bosnia and Herzegovina team bus will pull into the players' tunnel right on time. As for whether Velez can point out Sarajevo on a map—the grass doesn't care. And the scoreboard certainly doesn't care either.