78 Minutes With... Roger Bennett

U.S. soccer's loudest cheerleader may speak with an English accent, but he has distinctly American ingenuity.

- By Matt Stieb

"I'm humanly falling apart," | between stops on the show's tour for says Roger Bennett, co-host of the soccer podcast Men in Blazers, who is sitting in a red leather banquette in a train station turned pizza bar next to the Metro-North stop in Mount Kisco. He's back for a 36-hour window the World Cup, rejoicing with fans across the country over the U.S. men's team's breaking into the elimination stage for the first time in eight years. He was hoping to get some rest at his home in Westchester, but upon arrival from Austin late the previous night, his dog, a Lagotto Romagnolo named Martin Scorsese, took a dump in its crate. Between the cleanup, the bath, and preparation for the three episodes he needed to record that day, Bennett managed just a couple hours of sleep. "A hero's welcome," he says in a flourish of British self-effacement.

For 12 years now, Bennett and his cohost, Michael Davies, two bald guys in their 50s, have been the poster children for soccer's growing popularity in the States, English-splaining the extremely lucrative Premier League to American audiences while evangelizing for the U.S. soccer team. "It's a Star Wars cantina, football," says Bennett, who even in person is a font of pop-cultural references that attempt to close the gap between the sport and entertainment-addled Americans. "If you just wander in, you won't last very long. But if you have someone guiding you, it's so illuminating and life-affirming and innovative and all that crap."