Major League Soccer have experimented with the Grand Old Game quite a bit. In a bid to attract new fans at the inauguration of the competition , they played about with the rules, introducing hockey-style penalty shoot-outs: players had five seconds and 35 yards of space to slot the ball past a goalkeeper. They also introduced a countdown clock, but admitted that these changes did not work, as they ended up alienating the traditional football/sawker fan.
In the past few years, however, MLS has become quite a big deal in the U.S., and this weekend's MLS Cup final between Toronto FC and Seattle Sounders helped attract audience's away from UFC 206.
The game finished in a dreary 0-0, with Seattle winning 5-4 on penalties, but the best part about the whole thing was the camera angle used for the penalty shoot-out. Broadcasting innovation is what American sport have done better than most, and this is an example of exactly that.
Rather than the somewhat static angle used on shoot-outs on European TV - the angle is called 'tele-broadcast' on FIFA - the MLS set up a camera behind each taker, that zoomed forward as the penalty-taker advanced forward to take the spot kick. It's dynamic and really added to the whole experience. See for yourself:
That's quite cool. Although perhaps the reason such an angle was not used during the Euros was in danger of some Simone Zaza-related flouncing about: the camera would have overshot Zaza by some distance by the time the Italian got around to taking his penalty against Germany.
