Live Blogging: Fox Football Fone-In, Part II

Inter-Roma play tomorrow in Italy, and Inter figures to start pulling away. Stephen says Juventus is a sham team and "punching above its head" in third place right now. Roma, however, has Totti back, is second in their Champions League group and one of those teams no one will want to play in the knockout round. Roma closes out against Manchester United and one has to wonder about potential trouble given last year's mess. The game is meaningless since things are settled in that group, and hopefully the English fans stay away. AC Milan, speaking of messes, are a mile back in Serie A and one has to wonder how long it takes for them to again shift focus toward the Champions League?

• One vote for the Premiership as the world's most competitive league. But what the callers are missing is that the question is really asking about the depth of the league, not the dominance of a top three or four teams.
• I don't know if I'll hang in for the whole show, but I know they have favorite announcers on their agenda tonight. I want to go old school for a minute. Anyone remember Toby Charles and Soccer Made in Germany. I was really young, but I remember watching this match-of-the-week style show every Saturday afternoon and Toby Charles' voice was awesome. He really helped introduce football to me and the Bundesliga as well. I did some Googling on Toby and he retired a couple of years ago at age 68 for health reasons. Cheers to Toby Charles, here's hoping he comfortable.
• I liked Seamus Malin back in the day because he seemed to really know the game, at least more than his American counterpart doing the NASL or US men's telecast. His lost a bit on his fastball of late, but still a quality announcer.
• This brings us to Derek Rae. Hmm. I'm just not sure about Derek; I swear that accent is phony. I know he's from Scotland, speaks German and rolls his Rs with the best of them, but his schtick seems like pretense. He's a big fish in a small pond that is football on ESPN. He's found a great niche for himself, and I guess he's the best we've got. But watch a game on FSC from England for example, and the gap is considerable between Rae and the best of the rest.
• And let's not even start on ol' Tommy "Onion Bag" Smythe.