Every four years, FIFA holds its World Cup tournament. Last year’s men’s tournament was held in Qatar and received high levels of viewership and engagement across the board, with the final game alone reaching 1.5 billion viewers worldwide. Andrés Cantor is tasked with bringing a large faction of those viewers a preponderance of the action throughout the tournament, something he has been doing since the early 90s.
With each game he announces, Cantor ensures he is providing his audience with an effusive, dynamic show of knowledge and passion, encapsulating the adrenaline of the showcase event and communicating it en masse.
“It’s 64 Super Bowls rolled into one month,” Cantor said. “If we get hyped here once a year with one Super Bowl, just imagine 64 of them in 28-29 days. That is the magic and the beauty of the World Cup; it has a worldwide appeal in every corner of the globe.”
Throughout his years working in sports media, Cantor has narrated and witnessed an interminable number of seminal moments in the history of the sport. Equipped with bilingual versatility and a goal call that penetrates cultural boundaries, he immerses himself and his audience in each match and looks forward to watching the next generation of illustrious soccer players take center stage. Calling the sport, however, was not Cantor’s modus operandi from the time he was young; instead, he wanted to be on the field playing the game imbued in every fiber of his being from a young age.
“I always say that most, if not all, sports reporters; anchors, etc. are frustrated athletes in their own sport that they cover,” Cantor expressed. “I would have given my life to play one minute of professional soccer somewhere. Since I couldn’t, I decided to do the next best thing, which is [to] call the games that I would have loved to play.”
To Cantor, working as a journalist was the means through which he would be able to be involved with professional soccer, and it was a career choice made difficult by assimilating to a new culture. Cantor grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to the United States when he was a teenager and experienced various challenges in enduring a cultural shift. The culture he was used to involved going to watch his favorite soccer team (Boca Juniors) play on the weekends and then taking the field himself on weekends from dusk until dawn.
Although soccer is the No. 1 sport in terms of popularity around the world, it is not so in the United States; after all, the technical name of the sport is “fútbol” but it is referred to as “soccer” to prevent confusion with American football. The word itself is somewhat homonymic in that sense, as the only aspect of American football that involves one’s foot is in kicking field goals, points after touchdowns (PATs), punting, or kickoffs.
Additionally, Cantor faced the arduous task of learning a new language, something that was accentuated when he was determining how to go about calling games in English. He grew up the son of two parents – his mother, Alicia, a psychologist of Romanian descent; his father, David, a gastroenterologist of Argentinian descent; and his father’s parents fled Poland during the country’s occupation by the Nazis.
His parents made the decision to leave Argentina after growing frustrated with the government before the eventual coup d’état in 1976. The family found its way to San Marino, Calif., where his father worked at Huntington Memorial Hospital and his mother established her own psychology practice. Experiencing aspects of multiple cultures, in essence, was routine for Cantor; however, the change in lifestyle made him feel very much displaced early on. Through hard work and perseverance though, he was able to face this adversity and triumph, eventually becoming fully bilingual and adopting a sense of belonging.
“I was pretty miserable the first couple of years – first and foremost because I didn’t speak the language and I was coming from a totally different culture,” Cantor said. “….I went to school and it was fairly tough, but then over the years obviously once I started learning the language and being more used to the culture – like pretty much most immigrants, I became pretty acculturated and now I can probably say that I feel as much an American as I do an Argentinian.”
After graduating from San Marino High School, Cantor remained in the area by matriculating at the University of Southern California where he studied journalism. Although he was learning about the industry and receiving chances to hone his craft in the classroom, Cantor worked professionally as a correspondent for Editorial Atlántida, an influential magazine publisher in Argentina. El Grafíco, a prominent Argentinian sports magazine. Based out of Los Angeles, he wrote sports stories for the publication, along with covering boxing matches in Las Vegas, Nev.
Some of his assignments included following Diego Maradona, widely regarded as the world’s top soccer player at the time, and attending the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cup tournaments in Spain and Mexico, respectively – the latter of which Maradona led Argentina to a championship. Through it all, he worked hand in hand with editor, and eventual magazine director, Ernesto Cherquis Bialo, who started at the outlet himself as an intern in 1963. Cantor also covered select events alongside him, including the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles, Calif., all while gaining exposure, credibility, and unparalleled industry wherewithal.
Another part of his correspondent role was covering entertainment for the magazine Gente, affording him experience in an area where he did not have as much experience. In fact, he had the chance to interview economist Milton Friedman, actor Laurence Tureaud — better known as “Mr. T” — and author Ray Bradbury. Cantor was frequently on the road to report on and cover pertinent events, growing accustomed to eloquent storytelling through the written word.
“I was very, very fortunate that while I was being taught how to become a journalist, I was on the road doing all of this,” he said. “I guess that was a double whammy for my career – going to school and, at the same time, practicing exactly what they were teaching me.”
The repeated cycle of instruction and implementation set Cantor apart from other prospective journalists, giving him an inherent advantage upon his graduation. While his work was not primarily focused on soccer, he maintained his alacrity for the sport throughout his time in college and consumed games on the radio. From the time he was young, the commentator whom he most frequently listened to was José Maria Muñoz; in fact, Cantor recalls that Muñoz, at one point, had a 90% share of the radio audience in Argentina. Listening to him call the games inspired Cantor to work to find his voice and develop a style to call his own, amalgamating tradition and innovation.
“It was a very different style of doing play-by-play back in the day,” Cantor said of Muñoz. “My friends [and I] would go out and play soccer and we would repeat phrases that he used in his radio broadcasts.”
Combined with his experience as a writer, Cantor utilized his passion and knowledge of soccer to land an audition with Univision in 1987. At that point, he had never entered a television studio and knew he was taking a risk shifting his career at 23 years old; nonetheless, it was a chance to focus on soccer on a full time basis. Cantor was expeditiously hired in the first quarter of that year and covered myriad events leading up to his first FIFA World Cup on television in 1990, including the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The early repetitions allowed him to gain a foothold as a play-by-play announcer and communicate with a large viewing audience.
“I guess I had already found my voice as a play-by-play announcer and just kept on growing professionally year by year,” Cantor said. “There’s not, obviously, one broadcast where 30+ years later, you don’t get goosebumps when you’re at a big event. Now, it’s obviously a little bit easier than it was way back in the day.”
In his early days of calling the FIFA World Cup, Cantor quickly rose to prominence when his elongated goal call caught the attention of sports fans and media consumers around the United States. Following the 1994 FIFA World Cup, Cantor was invited to appear on a variety of talk shows, including The Late Show with David Letterman and Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. This all took place during a time before social media; therefore, becoming “viral,” as it is oft-referred, was ostensibly harder to achieve.
Cantor was the only play-by-play announcer for Univision, meaning he was calling all of the tournament’s matches from mid-June to mid-July, and it is a remarkable feat of which he remains unsure as to just how he pulled off.
“I literally was exhausted, and I had five or six different outlets at our studios that came to interview me because of the success of the World Cup broadcasts we were having,” Cantor elucidated. “We put Univision on the map, literally. We were blowing away our competition, which I believe was ABC, and everybody was talking about Univision’s coverage and everyone was talking about my style.”
The style Cantor exudes on each broadcast renders him unique among the paradigmatic role play-by-play announcers execute. While he is usually paired with an analyst when calling soccer games, Cantor interprets the game and expresses his opinions, challenging his partner to expand his viewpoints and broaden the scope of what is being discussed.
“I’m very passionate about every single game that I do,” Cantor said. “I cannot make them better if they’re not good games, but I try to have people on the edge of their seats while they’re watching the television.”
When he was working with Univision, Cantor was calling games in Spanish, and it remains the primary language in which he commentates. Whereas he is able to express his thoughts both in Spanish and English, Cantor was brought on by NBC Sports to broadcast soccer games at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in English – an effort by the network to capture the exaltation he brought to the broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup.
Initially, Cantor was processing his thoughts about the game in Spanish and translating them in real-time to be spoken in English, a burdensome task wherefore following the game became less facile. Because of this, he started thinking about the game in English, omitting the translation, and settled in.
“When you do play-by-play in Spanish, your mind is going so fast because I need to be seeing the action [while] anticipating the next play [and] where the ball is going to go,” Cantor said. “I can’t be caught off guard, so I have to have a 360-degree [view] of what is going on.”
During that same year, Cantor left Univision to work with Telemundo, a network owned by Sony and Liberty Media. It should be noted that the network was subsequently purchased by NBC (before the merger that created “NBCUniversal”) in October 2001, and is currently part of NBC Sports’ Telemundo Deportes headquartered in Miami.
The transition was made easier because of the fact that Univision had moved on from many of its prominent on-air talent, and Cantor was essentially the last of them to make the move to Telemundo. He was offered the chance to remain at Univision, but made a prudential decision in transitioning, albeit taking a risk in joining an entity that did not have rights to the FIFA World Cup. While Telemundo did not broadcast the tournament until 2018, Cantor continued calling the games on Fútbol de Primera, a radio network created by Cantor and Alejandro Gutman in 1989.
The radio network offers a wide variety of programming pertaining to soccer and has broadcast a countless number of worldwide soccer events in addition to the World Cup, such as Serie A, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and games for the Mexican national football team. Its programming, which includes Cantor’s daily show titled Fútbol de Primera, is disseminated to over 100 radio stations across the United States, and Cantor also contributes to the business operations of the entity. Calling games on the radio catalyzed a change in the way Cantor commentates in terms of being able to carry out his role.
“Radio takes an even bigger physical toll on [me] because you have to go into sixth gear,” Cantor said. “On television, I’m in fifth gear – the only reason I’m in fifth gear, not in sixth, is because I have to describe things that I assume people are not watching on radio. It’s lots of fun, but it’s very, very demanding as well.”
As Cantor views the landscape of sports talk radio, he has discerned a notable change in that there is less of an emphasis placed on providing up-to-the-minute scores and news. Cantor’s show initially started as a half-hour informational program broadcast on Sundays to circulate information to listeners.
Today, the audience can effectively discover information through digital platforms; therefore, the focus of the show needed to be shifted to bring people what they could not get anywhere else. As a result, the shows revolve around discussion and verbalization of opinion, distributed across multiple audiovisual outlets through the implementation of effective cross-platform integration.
“It’s funny [and] it’s light,” Cantor said. “We try to be up to speed with the way people are consuming everything nowadays media-wise. We have definitely adapted throughout the years.”
Last year, Argentina won its first World Cup championship since 1986 – and it was an especially fulfilling moment for Cantor who grew up in the country cheering on the team. In the 2014 FIFA World Cup, held in Brazil, Argentina lost to Germany in the final game, a particularly difficult moment for those in the country.
Cantor did not believe the team was built to win the tournament in 2018, likening the country’s performance to a “disaster,” but this time around, he felt differently. When the team dropped the opening match to Saudi Arabia, he began to have second thoughts about being enamored with the team and was behind the microphone for a pivotal matchup against Mexico that kept the team’s championship hopes alive.
After defeating Croatia to advance to battle France in the championship game, Cantor was trying to keep his composure and provide his audience with an objective call while observing a moment he had been waiting for; that is, until France tied the contest late in overtime, leading to a penalty shootout. Everything was on the line in Lionel Messi’s final World Cup, and his teammate Gonzalo Montiel buried the goal to secure the victory, leading to jubilation and an impassioned moment for Cantor.
“I came through because I always owe my audience my best call, and that was probably as good as it gets even though I was dying inside,” Cantor said. “This time, I was very happy inside and outside as well. It was 36 years in the making for that magic moment…. You couldn’t write a better script for that World Cup to end the way it ended.”
Cantor will be commentating the FIFA Women’s World Cup, marking the first time in Hispanic television history where all games will be televised on Telemundo and its sister network, Universo, along with NBC’s OTT streaming service, Peacock. The tournament, which will be hosted by Australia and New Zealand, will feature 32 countries as the United States aims to win its third consecutive title.
As women’s sports continue to grow in prestige and viewership around the world, Cantor eagerly anticipates promulgating the stars of the game and doing what he can to catalyze the growth of the sport. The quadrennial action commences on Thursday, July 20, and finishes on Sunday, Aug. 20.
“[It] should be very interesting to see how far the rest of the world has progressed in women’s soccer,” Cantor said. “It is going to be the first time that the World Cup is hosted by two different countries, at least at the women’s level, which is going to be very interesting. We will pay attention to the Latin American teams and Spain – the Spanish-speaking teams that will participate – and obviously Brazil as well to see how far they can get.”
Whether it is being bilingual or being able to perform an assortment of roles at a high level, versatility is a fundamental quality to garner in sports media. Despite being an established veteran in the industry, Cantor looks to learn how to apply new technologies to his work and remain at the forefront of innovation. He advises aspiring professionals with the “goooaaalll” of fostering careers in the ever-competitive niche of sports media to be proactive and find methods to apply what they have learned.
It is essential to have the knowledge and a willingness to learn and improve one’s craft to succeed in the business, and while much of that can be taught, passion is somewhat enigmatic and comes from within. Ultimately, it makes a big difference, and Cantor is grateful to fulfill his through broadcasting.
“I understand that I am very, very lucky and blessed to have a job in something that I love to do,” Cantor said. “Not many people have that luxury; many people just have jobs because they need to have a paycheck at the end of the week and they do something that they don’t like to do.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
