South Beach Sessions - Andrés Cantor

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Look, you see how happy I am right here.

This is un Gigante.

We've got an icon, a legend in here.

Andres Cantor, the last name means in Spanish, singer, and he is the voice of song, the booming voice of gold calls, one of the most unique scoring calls in the history of broadcasting and 25 years with Telemundo.

Thank you for making the time.

I've been an admirer of your work.

I hugged you when you came in because I feel like your voice has been a part of my life for a long time.

I'm sure you get this a lot.

Thank you, Dan.

Likewise, it's a pleasure to be here.

I do.

It's really incredible, really, when people recognize me by my voice and not my appearance.

I've been working in television for 40 years, and yet the best compliments I get is when I'm in a supermarket line and the lady behind me says, wait, aren't you the voice?

How often does that happen?

Quite a bit.

Quite a bit, which is super, super nice.

You never expected any of this, right?

Like, what did your professional dreams look like when you were first thinking about working in sports i think we have something in common because i went to usc

and wanted to be a professional a writer i started my career as a written journalist i went through the four years of the journalism curriculum in usc without taking one television or radio course because i started writing for a magazine in argentina or actually a company a publishing company that had five very, very popular magazines at the time.

You were going to be a sportswriter.

I wanted to be a sportswriter.

I was a sportswriter for many, many years until I was called for an audition at the old Univision.

Without having stepped

a day in my life in a TV studio, I had a break.

Your story is remarkable for a number of different reasons, but can you explain to people, as someone who is now more identifiable as the voice of soccer than I think anybody in the world.

I think I can say that fairly.

Your early beginnings at Telemundo, does anybody have any idea of how gritty and small and dirty and cheap all of that had to be because you were just trying to learn how to do things?

And it probably seemed glamorous to people and wasn't glamorous at all.

It wasn't glamorous.

First, my start was at Univision.

I was 23.

So everything that happened in my early professional life was super glamorous because I had never stepped on a TV studio in my life.

So there I was, you know, the lights, the camera, the counting down, the three-to-one.

It was awesome to me.

And then we started traveling around the world to do games.

And I said, this is the best life I could have.

And actually, it is.

40 years detached from that moment.

But I had no clue, honestly, of what to do, where to look.

I mean, I have a funny story, if you want to know.

I asked,

I will never forget it.

And I believe I put this in writing somewhere.

I went to the studio, my very first

assignment was to the sports segment on the national newscast next to Maria Celestia Radas, who at the time was young and upcoming, but a very good news anchor.

So I said to the director,

okay,

so what do I do?

Because I've never been in a TV studio or this situation.

This Cuban lady,

I forget her name, she tells me very simple just

read the teleprompter it's a machine called teleprompter sit in your chair like you have stick up your ass in spanish and just read and be yourself i say oh

that's easy okay so i i did this and

hola vuera tables como

and then i sweated it out and i said how did i do great and then i did the newscast like every other day.

So hold on a second.

So you go from a writing career in that instance to now I want to do something else, what I wanted to do, my vision, and everything is different now.

Yeah.

I go from writing four or five pages of

literature, you know, because I thought I wrote very well at the time.

And, you know, I went to Vegas and covered boxing.

And I went to the Oscars and covered the Oscars.

And for me, the five pages that they gave me were novels and I thought I wrote very very well.

I went from that to writing 20 seconds of information.

It was the transition, believe me, was very hard.

Well it's probably happened to you.

Well it's God's sense of humor with you that you would love all of the words but be known for one above all, that you would have to be that efficient and even there you wouldn't want to be efficient.

So you lose your breath saying that one word for 30 seconds.

Well that took a long time to happen but yes definitely it was very funny because obviously if you have to summarize my career with just one word, we know what but what a legacy though, right?

Like I don't know if you're thinking about any of those things now at your age as you broadcast with your son, you become the first ever father-son team on English sports television to be doing that particular thing on soccer.

How much do you think about your legacy?

Is it something that you think about at all?

No, never.

Honestly, never.

I mean I'm sixty-two.

I think I have a few World Cups left.

I'm I'm not going anywhere, either in Spanish or in English or in French for that matter.

Who knows?

I don't, I mean, we all work

because we love what we do.

I mean, at the end of my career, I'll just paraphrase, I always paraphrase athletes.

You know, when you ask the same question of active athletes, they'll say, not really.

I'm just looking forward to the next game.

And I actually am to my next broadcast game.

And then, you know, when it's time to retire, I'll probably look back and say, whoa,

what does happen now to me is I am, I mean, my viral call of the winning penalty kick in Qatar for Argentina, the fact that I am Argentinian,

did shake me a little bit because the recognitions that I've been getting all over the world, actually, because of that, you know, two-minute clip with me crying, you know, over Argentina winning the World Cup, it just it moves you a little bit because I got stopped in Australia in Europe in Argentina anywhere I go they say hey wait a second you made me cry and up to this day people come up to me either in the supermarket that recognize my voice or people stop me and say, I tried with you, you made me cry, and you made me remember my parents are not longer alive.

We watched the games with you when we were, you know, when I was young and there was a family connection.

it's like really, really moving.

So, if that is considered part of what I did throughout my broadcast career, whenever I retire, and that is the legacy,

this is happening now, and it's very, very powerful.

Tanto, Luizo Luque, Luisiel Uter Cuadore,

Que segan

Cielo,

Argentina champion el mundo,

merci campión del mundo,

no poría sel de otra manedas y no sinso fli

Argentina,

the selection of Argentina de Lionel Caloni es campión del Mundo

Argentina

You should

know that this was as moving a goal call as there has been because you were going to get an authentic feeling of you love this as much as you ever have and you knew that you were seeing a moment that you somehow met with your broadcasting even though the expectations in that moment had to be really high but I'm guessing you didn't even feel the expectations because you were just simply moved and being yourself.

Well, every time then I call an Argentina game, it's probably the toughest assignment that I have because obviously

I'm looked at

with love and hate, even by the Argentinians.

Because, you know, the Argentinians are watching or listening.

They want me to always say good things about the Argentinian national team.

So if they can't put three passes together, and I am very opinionated in my play-by-play, and I say, come on, guys, you can't put three passes together.

You know, I'll get criticized and killed by the Argentinian community.

And then on the other side, if I'm talking, I mean, the first 75 minutes of that final was the best any finalist played in a final of a World Cup.

And I said so.

And I'm probably got lots of heat from people that were not Argentinians.

Argentinians, you might know, are not the best lights in the world.

I don't know why, really.

We're the best.

We're number one.

We're World Champion.

No, but

so it's a very, very tough assignment.

So I have to

balance and be extremely careful with every word that comes out of my mouth.

And when you have so many emotions going in the final of the World Cup with your national team, and I'm on the record that I'm not a hypocrite, I mean, you ask me who do you want to win?

Argentina.

La procession papor dentre.

I mean, I try to keep it inside.

The second biggest compliment or the biggest compliment that I got after the final was from people not from Argentina saying how

loud and long I yelled the Mbappe goals because they said that they thought that I would say goal.

Oh, France scored because they were scoring on Argentina.

And that is a big, big compliment.

You pride yourself, right, on trying to be honest and I'm not going to, I mean, sort of objective or aspiring to objectivity, right?

But in the moment that Argentina wins the World Cup, your mask falls off.

Yes, and the professionalism too, right?

And it's okay.

I think it's okay because at the end of the day, I mean, the World Cup is a very powerful

event.

You have to be, you know, especially in Argentina.

Argentina has

an identity with its national team like I think no other country has.

We live and breathe that team.

Come the World Cup, you know, we are all fans.

And especially, I think there is a different type of connection with the people that live outside of Argentina.

So, you know, for me to having called somebody else campión del mundo, Bracero Campión del Mundo, Italia campión del mundo, and this campión del mundo, and okay, when is Argentina's time?

You know,

I called the 2014 final in Brazil, we came that close.

I've called, you know, all the Argentina games since the 1990 World Cup and hey I was in in Azteca Stadium in 96 as a writer working for for Argentina but I wasn't you know with a microphone in my hand so I mean from then to 2022 I was waiting for that moment and that moment happened and it happened naturally I had nothing planned I had

everybody and their mother asked me, did you plan this?

What did you have written?

I said, I never write anything that I say because, you know, soccer is

a fast-moving game and whatever happened, happened.

Oh, but you also do the whole thing from your heart.

Yeah, I mean, it came out from my heart.

It came out from my heart at the moment that that ball went in.

You can see, if you analyze my anguish in my eyes while I'm looking down on the field, I'm like all the way up, you know, in the broadcast booth, and I see the ball going in, and I just went like,

it's, you know, it's happening.

And it was just a moment of joy.

My kids don't like it.

Neither does my wife when I say that it was probably the best part of my life because, you know, my wife comes back, all right.

When we got married, it wasn't, yeah, kind of.

And my kids say, hey,

wasn't the day that I was born the best part of the day of your life?

Yeah,

in a different sort.

No, you're lying to them.

You're lying to your family.

The best moment of your life was calling that goal and weeping for two minutes because, and doing your job extraordinarily well in that moment,

showing yourself to the audience, laying yourself bare, and

I don't know if it's forgetting broadcasting principles, but not needing to adhere to them, like just feeling, showing everybody how you felt, honestly.

But I don't think I...

you know, I broke any broadcasting rules, really.

I was, you know, myself.

And I've been doing this for 40 years, and I've been always very true and genuine, genuine to my audience.

They can see my face when I'm pissed off about the result or about how bad a team that plays.

I mean, we're all behind the U.S.

national team battlewagon here, both men's and women's, because, you know, we're all Americans and we live here and we want them to do well.

And every time I get to call a game that they don't do well, whether it be the men's or the women's, it shows in my face and I'm very vocal about it i'm just saying that when it comes to broadcasting professionalism i'm saluting what is a majestic moment that has no criticism i'm just not used to seeing my broadcasters sob with their championships it's not it's not the most common thing in the world it probably is not that is the way i feel for this game it's it's my life 20 i i live think about football soccer 24 hours a day.

Well,

take me through your history here.

Like, where does your ambition come from and and how competitive were you at the start of your career?

I was super, I mean first and foremost I was 23.

So it was like I was sitting in the golden chair for many many years.

I started working at the network that it was the only network that televised soccer in this country on a regular basis.

So I knew I was sitting on the throne and everyone was you know watching us, whether we broadcasted Mexican league, Italian league, whoever we happened to put on air, it was the only source of getting your 90 minutes of soccer on a weekly basis, Saturday and Sundays.

So, and I was the only one.

This is crazy.

It sounds absolutely crazy if I tell you that in 1990, 1994 and 98, I've called every single World Cup

game for Univision.

We're talking about 52 and 64 matches.

That is a lot.

Don't ask me how in the heck I did it.

Probably I was, you know, my voice was younger than

it is now, but it's unheard of.

So I knew exactly what job I had and where I was sitting.

And I always was very grateful.

And was it that, you know, I was obviously very aware of my surroundings because I knew that there were people, you know, wanting my job.

Well, how competitive?

You're not giving up the seat for any reason, right?

You're not going to allow someone else to sit in that seat and replace you.

If it were for me, no, of course not.

You know, I didn't call the shots, but obviously the network liked me.

My career exploded after 1994.

So it was kind of,

you know, easier to

solidify myself as the number one voice of soccer.

But actually, I was the only one until the last World Cup I did for them in 1998.

I called every single shot.

But how competitive were you?

How unreasonably competitive were were you?

Because I don't think successes like this are an accident.

No, of course not.

I'm super competitive with myself.

I mean,

I am 100%.

I mean, it's bad that I talk about myself, but I'm 110% professional and I prepare as much as I can.

And when I fail on a given instance that I think I should have said something different, I can't sleep at night.

I mean, I prepare myself.

I'm not talking about stats.

I'm not talking about, I'm talking about something that I've seen on the pitch that could help understand the game better for my audience or that is relevant to what happened in that moment.

Still you can't sleep at night?

Still you're that unforgiving of yourself?

The other day it happened to me.

I broadcasted the South Korean national team and I missed

the player's name.

There were like four kings, four leads, but when that happens, and this happens every time I call the South Korean national team, I have to

give the first name of that Lee.

Because if I have 10 or 6 Lebatards, you know, you're Dan.

He's, you know, John.

So, and I missed it, and it took me a while to, I missed the guy.

He didn't score, but he had the pass, the assist to the score.

Like, why wouldn't you be more forgiving of yourself at the same time?

Because I can't.

No, it's not at this point.

I was like this from day one, and I'm still like this and it bothers me.

I don't know.

It's just a competitive my comp, you said how competitive was I?

That's the way that I handle competition within myself.

Well, where does it come from?

The ambition?

Probably the,

I don't know where it comes from.

It's probably because of, you know, the Argentinian

way of playing football and upbringing, I guess.

I've always been very, very competitive.

I mean, my friends

hate it.

I don't play that often.

My knees don't allow me to play that often now.

But when I was younger, my friends hated to be on my team because

I was the most competitive out on the pitch.

I yelled at everyone.

I got into fights, even with my teammates.

They hated to be on my team.

This is hard to believe.

You are a lovable person.

You are just a rabid competitor.

But you know what it was?

When I started working on TV, I said very young, and we moved to Miami and I started going to the pickup games here and people started

recognizing me.

I had somebody tell me, hey.

you better take me off because you're gonna get in trouble and you're gonna lose your job because somebody's gonna punch you in the face.

But you don't know where it comes from.

You haven't examined your...

I mean, it comes from my personality.

I'm super competitive in everything that I do.

I play to win.

I mean, I'm extremely competitive in business, in life, in broadcasting, in everything that I do.

So take me back to your acclimation to this country.

How much of an outsider were you 10 years before you're broadcasting?

You're 14 years old or you're thinking about going to USC.

Where are you in your life?

How difficult is the transition to the States?

It was very, very hard.

My parents, my dad, a physician, gastroenterologist, my mom a psychologist.

They moved.

I mean, we have similar stories, you know, because your dad came from Cuba.

You know, my parents fled.

My grandparents fled, you know, the Nazis from Eastern Europe, Romania,

and Poland.

They settled in Argentina.

The military junta was about to take over in Argentina.

My dad was a physician.

Things weren't very going very well.

They moved to Sacramento.

I had never seen a horse or a cow in my life.

I I came from Buenos Aires.

I was playing soccer every weekend.

I was going to see my beloved team, Boca Juniors, every weekend.

I had all my friends.

I had my family.

I didn't speak a word of English.

It was super, super tough.

I go back, live in Argentina for a year by myself.

I was in heaven, even though everything was very, very prolonged.

How old are you?

I was 14.

By yourself, you go back to Argentina for 14 years.

Because I got stuck actually in Argentina because my parents were in the process of getting the green card.

Their lawyer said, oh, you're both professionals.

It's going to come out in the summer.

So in the summer, when I finished my last year of school here or my first year of school,

the lawyer said, you know, send your son.

If he wants to go...

send them because when the green card comes out, you have to go to the Argentine embassy, to the U.S.

Embassy in Argentina anyways.

Well, it did not come out through the summer, so I had to wait a year or 11 months.

But we're happier there because at least you spoke the language.

That has to be very hard to be a young teenager and not speak any English in Sacramento.

It was not only that, but they asked me, Where are you from?

Argentina.

Oh, Rio de Canedo.

I said, Oh my god, this is going to be tough.

No,

it's Buenos Aires, actually, where I'm from.

So it was really, really tough.

I mean, I had to, you know, learn the hard way.

Then, when my family relocated to Los Angeles, you know, they came, picked me up, grabbed me by the hair and said, you're not staying, you're coming back with us.

And I did.

And then, you know, I got that climate.

I mean, it took me a couple of years in LA to, you know, to start really learning the language.

And I didn't have any visions of where I was going to go to school.

I finished high school in LA.

And then I went to USC thinking that I wanted to be a professional writer, a sports writer.

And I started writing about sports, like I said, about everything else.

Because...

Do your parents think you're wasting your life and your career by making that choice?

Because when I made that choice, my mother had to fight my father tooth and nail over that.

My father didn't forgive me for a long time.

I mean, he came to this country and paid for a private education so I would become an engineer.

And so when I don't want to become an engineer because I want to become a writer, it's an asinine choice.

Did you tell him?

I did, and he didn't like it.

Like, it's not what he wanted.

And it's only, I think, I would have ended up doing whatever he wanted me to do.

You know, I don't need to tell you, the Latino father, if it had not been for my mother saying, you cannot allow him to choose something that might lead to unhappiness.

We're watching at the dinner table.

You come home every day complaining about your bosses because you're not happy.

And you're hearing your son say, I don't know what I want to do later in life, but I don't want to be at the dinner table complaining about what I'm doing for a living.

Well, I remember vividly.

It happened pretty much the same thing.

I had, my dad didn't push me that hard, but he obviously wanted my brother and I to be doctors just like him.

When I had to make the choice of going to USC and choosing my major, I remember they were in bed already, it was, you know, evening.

I knocked on their door and I said, I have something to tell you.

I'm going to be a journalist.

I'm not going into, you know, medicine.

They looked at each other and I think one of them said, we support you and my dad said, pero tebas amoriro de ambri.

You're gonna die of hunger.

Right.

And then you know, my dad made me say, we support you, but you're gonna die of hunger.

Those two things don't feel necessarily like support.

Well, I could care less really because I didn't want to be a doctor anyways.

But it's funny because,

you know, my dad remembers that day.

and every other time that he sees me,

he comes up to me.

Oh, boy, was I wrong.

Thank God you chose journalism because now, obviously,

let me take you back and take the audience back.

40 years ago, medicine was one of the best paid professions in this country.

They didn't have to see...

40 patients in an hour to make a buck.

They only saw like, I don't know, whatever it was, you know, 10 patients in a day and they made a very good living.

So that was the standard of living was very good.

That is why they comment.

And every time my dad sees me, he remembers what he told me.

And he's lucky that I became a journalist.

Well, what do they have to say about, have you watched the clip of you calling Argentina winning the World Cup with them?

Like,

what are the conversations like about that as an achievement for you?

They're obviously very, very proud.

Actually, I have not watched that the clip.

I haven't watched too many of my games

they watch on the other side.

Now they are super proud of of myself because every time they go to a restaurant and they pay with a credit card, if there's a Latin owner or a Latin you know server and they see cantor are do you have anything to do with Andres?

I'm his dad.

Oh no you're not.

Now you're not.

And he shows pictures and he gets either a discount or a discernment for free.

Gets to celebrate just how wrong he was about trying to make his son a doctor.

Exactly.

Exactly.

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What was it like for you emotionally to broadcast?

broadcast a game with Nico?

It was.

Your son, I should say, to the audience.

It was super weird.

Honestly, I mean, super, it was a very proud moment.

The proud family,

everyone was watching

that game.

I was a guest on his network, and it was, you know, they presented me like the legend, we have the legend, Andres Cantor, you know, for the first time calling a game with his son, first, father-son on an American broadcast booth in English.

It was super moving, super touching, but I needed to be detached from that moment because if not, I wasn't going to be able to do my job.

And I told Nico right away, hey, you take it.

I'm here.

I'm a guest.

Forget that I'm your dad.

Just let's pretend that I'm a guest on your network because I'm a guest on your network.

So, you know, pick it up and just, you know, let's do how

it's usually done.

So in that sense, it was, you know, super smooth.

And then, you know, I looked at him, and it was weird because you know, he's so good at what he does and the way he sees the game and analyzes the game.

That I had a lot of comfort by doing a game with somebody that had never done a game before, but I knew that he knew about the game.

And then I looked over, and you know, he's an ego, he's my son.

And it's like you have to disassociate yourself from the moment because, you know, Latinos, we are very,

you know, maybe.

Repressed is the word you're looking for.

Well, we cry a lot.

Oh, well, wait a minute.

So, no, you went a different way than I thought you were going there because I thought, okay, so you were trying to keep from crying there.

You're pushing down everything so that you can remain professional.

I'm trying to remain as calm as I could because I didn't want to mix the fact that this was a moment.

Because this moment could happen again and it will happen again for sure.

But a proud moment you're talking about.

I think of the Latino man as being more constipated with his feelings.

You're saying, no, we're criers.

No, we're criers.

I mean, at least I am.

I mean, I'm very emotional about everything.

I mean, I knew what was going on, but I kept it inside because if not, you know...

I mean, the CBS sports wasn't used to a Latino crying just because he has his son next to him.

Okay, but when your team wins the World Cup, you're allowed to sob for two minutes when you're feeling parental love.

No, that's where I draw the line.

I have to be, I think they wanted you there at least in part to mine the emotion of the legendary moment.

We did kind of manage the emotions because we gave a couple, he gave a couple of personal anecdotes and at the onset he said, what should I call you, pops?

Or, you know, how do we go about this?

I mean, we had those moments which were super, super nice.

And I mean, out of the broadcast guideline book, but you know, that's the reason we were there.

And it was super, super emotional.

At the end, I started crying like, you know, like a baby.

Tell me about that.

What was happening at the end?

Well, at the end, we hugged, and I asked him, it's it's funny because usually I give him advice, or I gave him at the beginning of his career.

And then at the end, we hugged, and I asked, How did I do?

And he goes, you killed it.

Really?

Yeah.

And then, you know, I went, see, I'm going to cry now.

And then, you know, we went to the green room to with with all their people and then when I got to the hotel I broke down I didn't want to break down in front of him because because I was happy I was elated that I had to

do this it's it's called age then and you're younger than I am and it's going to happen with you I have now suddenly a column in my career called bucket list of things either career or life of bucket list of things even though I consider myself to be very young and active, and but I have bucket list things, and that was one of them.

And it's going to happen again.

I know it's going to happen again somewhere.

But, you know, bucket list checked and it was a lot of fun.

I find it interesting though that you would have to go in private to break down and that you wouldn't just share it with him.

I he he knows because I of what I told him when we hugged at the end, uh what I've told him, which I was more proud of himself than I was of whatever I did.

But there were, you have to understand, like you have here in your company, there were 45 people around that are not used to, you know, hey,

what's happening to the legend?

Why is he crying?

So I kept it to myself.

And, you know, when I went like this in my room, started backtracking and thinking of what had happened.

And I was in that moment, I was a very proud dad.

When I was on the booth, I was a very proud professional dad doing the game with my son.

You carry yourself with a great deal of gratitude.

You love it every bit as much now as you've ever loved it, yes.

I love it every day.

I mean,

I'm loving it.

I don't know if I love it more now than

I loved my professional, my profession when I started,

but I cherish every moment now.

I savor it differently.

It's, you know, the glamorous part, been there, done, that.

It's just, you know, my job consists of trying to get people interested in a soccer match that perhaps is not

as entertaining as it might be.

And I have challenges because, you know, technology obviously has changed the way we have to broadcast because anything that I say now is scrutinized immediately through social media and I turn my phone off just for sanity and

mental hygiene until the end of the broadcast and I'll answer or I'll realize that perhaps I did something or I said something that wasn't right and then I fact-checked and oh

again I can't sleep that night but I am enjoying I'm full of gratitude that I get to sit

in the best best seat in the House, in the biggest sporting events in history, called Olympics, World Cup, you know, the big matchups in international football, World Cup qualifying,

and they pay me for it, and they pay me very well.

What else

can you do?

When you mentioned the Olympics, calling the Olympics in 2000 in English, doing it in English, was that meaningful to you?

Where does that rank in terms of career achievements, the specifics of doing it in English?

I believe

we will have to, you know, fact check this, that I was the first Spanish language broadcaster to cross over into a major tournament to do English.

I think I was.

It was super, super important.

Dick Ebersoll wanted me to do the Atlanta 96 Olympics.

I was working at Univision back then.

They didn't allow me to.

And then it happened that NBC NBC bought Telemundo and

they allowed me to go call the games.

And it was something that I wanted to prove myself.

Like I told you, I'm super competitive.

I knew I could do it.

I had never done it.

My music for calling the game is in Spanish, so I didn't know how I was going to do it.

You know how there are different styles in English language, play-by-play broadcasting and soccer.

They're more English from England driven.

They're more subdued.

I mean sometimes you know I go make a coffee.

The game is 0-0.

I go make an espresso in my kitchen.

I come back and it's 1-0 and say wait is the what happened with the volume?

You know they don't say anything.

Say how could I not hear when the goal was scored?

So it was something.

It seems impossible to you.

You have to announce the goal.

Everyone in the world needs to hear that it was a goal.

Of course, that's the the biggest moment in the game.

I mean, you have to, when there's a touchdown, you, I mean, I know you make silence, but somebody screams, touchdown,

you know, whatever, or the hockey goal or whatever.

But, anyways,

it was super, super important.

I was very, very lucky to have a great team, you know, with me that helped me through my nerves.

I usually don't get nervous anymore.

I mean, I can.

Oh, but second language is tough.

And I think your expertise, you just flowed right over the music.

You are a singer.

You are calling a game and you are there providing accents.

And that language, it's easier to do in your first language because it's a richer language.

Trying to do it in your second language would leave you very insecure.

Doing it for the Olympics is a lot of pressure to try and do all the prep you need to do.

and the lack of confidence you might have of a second language that you can't reach the song.

Believe me, I was not insecure.

Whatever follows being being insecure, I was petrified.

As I said, I had a very good production team that helped me along the way.

And I'll tell you how insecure I was or how frightened I was.

I was obviously, this was 2013 years into my career.

It's not like the Olympics I called in Tokyo.

I called a couple of games.

No, but second language.

I know, it's super tough.

I didn't know.

And believe me, thank God there wasn't any social media at the time because the reaction would have been immediate.

So

first day off,

I'm in my hotel in Sydney.

I get a phone call.

Remember, hotels used to have telephones.

I get a phone call in my hotel room from Dick Ebers' office.

He wants to see me.

And this is halfway through the tournament.

And I said, okay, I'm going there.

Just chop my head.

You know, he's going to pick up.

Dick Ebers saw one of the most legendary production voices in the history of sports television.

Yes,

the guy that made

Saturday Night Live SNL,

the guy that worked with Rune Arledge on Monday Night Football, and he was Mr.

Olympics for NBC for many, many years, the executive producer.

He's the one that hires me.

He calls me into his office at the IBC.

He lived inside the IBC.

He had a bathroom and lived inside the IBC during the Olympics and supervised every minute on air on NBC.

He calls me onto the office and I'm going there thinking, okay, here's my plane ticket on the way back.

Thank you, but no, thank you.

And he says, son, I will never forget.

Son, I want you to know you're doing a terrific job.

The reaction back home is great.

And he opens a closet and takes out like a varsity jacket.

He says, I only made 20 of these for very special people.

And you already earned this.

So please take it as a memento of

and of course if I was insecure up to that day because I was you know I was very nervous every time I went on air from that moment until the final I was Al Michaels Vince Coley

Chick Hearn all together oh wow you saw you're on

I was on fire it gave me you know such confidence that it was incredibly comforting that this man a legend in the broadcast business gave me one of 20 varsity jackets that have the NBC logo, NBC Olympics, and said, you're doing a great job.

I said, whoa, really?

Thank God.

Do you still have it?

Do you still have the jacket?

I don't know where it went.

I cannot for the life of me think who threw the freaking jacket away.

I look every time we find, you know, we go to the basement.

Okay, let's look it up.

I can't find it.

And I regret so much not having it.

Can you explain to the people who may not know where it is that success and greatness are forever hungry, what would be a great example of how obsessive, compulsive you still are about preparation because you're not going to do your job lazily?

Well, nowadays, it's totally different than when I started.

So now I have to double up because everything,

all the preparation that I have, everyone else can have, you know, through either AI, through Google, through the club's websites.

You know, before when I started or throughout my career, this wasn't the case.

You were the reporter on your own information.

Exactly.

And I had to call the teams, call the players, have access to the coaches, to the media persons, et cetera, et cetera.

Now you've got to find the different things that everyone else can't have to make your broadcast special.

And it's my expertise on analyzing the game through the lens of the people that I know.

If they want to hear how many, what's the average corner kick that Arsenal takes on a given Premier League match, they already know that, or at least they can find it.

So it doesn't, I mean, I'll probably say they scored, you know, 38 goals from corner kicks in the last, you know, two seasons.

That is a good stat, perhaps, if there's a corner kick.

It happened to me the other day because I gave that stat and they scored.

I was very, very lucky.

It doesn't happen often.

But, you know, I have to enhance my broadcast in a different way because obviously the information that I have is also readily available for people.

And the way you get scrutinized nowadays is,

you know, through social media.

And they have direct contact.

They think that they know you.

You said you gave me a hug because you think they know me.

Well, people think that because you know, I'm in their living rooms every weekend, they get to say things to me like I know them, you know, for for their entire life hey Andresito Andrew Andresito what Andresito I'm do I know you

and so I have to be very well prepared beyond the stats that are obviously

you know available

can you explain to the people from all of the places that you've ended up in pop culture you've been a spokesman on campaigns you've done super bowl commercials you've done the late night circuit.

So it's not just Letterman, but it's also Family Guy, The Simpsons.

Of all of those things, is there one above all others that you'd put at the very top of looking around and being like, how did I arrive here?

Do you own my better Argentinian self?

Southwest Sessions.

That's not true at all.

That's nice of you to say, but I don't believe you for a moment.

That's why I said you are my Argentinian self.

You're just totally false.

That's fraudulent, what you're saying right there.

It's not 100% fraudulent.

It's an honor.

I told you it's an honor to meet you to be here.

Probably the biggest repercussion is The Simpsons, because it was a cameo with my name and likeness.

There's a character saying, hey, Andre Scantor.

And then, you know, it's my voice in the episode.

And,

you know, I watched The Simpsons, but I wasn't like a super, super big fan, and I know what it means.

But just as much as people recognize me by the go-call and by the video that made everyone cry,

the other point of recognition is, oh my, if you made it on The Simpsons, you're big.

And that is like a common denominator of when people talk about The Simpsons.

If you're in The Simpsons, you made it.

I guess.

I don't know.

You already feel like you've made it though, right?

Because there's something interesting about arriving but also trying to remain hungry that you have to always feel if you're competitive, like people are chasing you, like somebody wants to take your job.

Obviously, nowadays, I mean, before there was only one job, now there's many play-by-play jobs around, you know, with many other networks.

But obviously, I have the best one because I am the main play-by-play announcer now for Telemundo going into 26 years, and I get to call the best games.

But obviously,

I always

am very, very

appreciative of where I am.

and it's been obviously amazing to be able to be the number one voice of soccer in America for the last 40 years.

40 years, four decades.

That is, I look back and it's it, I know that is going to be part of my legacy for sure.

I was, you know, I get emotional when people tell me you were the soundtrack of my infancy.

Of, you know, I grew up listening to you every weekend.

I love the game because of you.

I've been doing this 40 years.

That is a long time, and I cherish every moment that happened.

And I'm looking forward to the next, you know, 20 perhaps.

And I know that there are going to be

very, very good years ahead of us.

What were the dreams, though, looking like?

You must have exceeding them.

You've exceeded your dreams.

Every single one of them.

First and foremost, I never thought I was going to end up doing either radio or TV, and I do both.

I own my own radio company that owns the Spanish language radio rights to the FIFA World Cup.

So I have a big production

hat that I wear because I gotta put on the production of the World Cups, and I have a daily show, just like you do every day in Spanish.

And I have lots of fun.

My company is 36 years in the make,

old.

And then, you know,

it's super nice to be calling the World Cup in 2026.

And I'm looking ahead of

two things that are going to happen down the road.

But it's obviously very, very challenging in today's world.

Can you tell me about the entrepreneurial side of what it is that you do, the production, how many employees you have, why you're doing that, what's the reason for that?

We started my, the founding partner of my company called Football de Primera started the company 36 years ago in the Bay Area with a daily show on Sunday nights just to give out the results of soccer matches.

Then he says one day, let's go after rights because content is king.

I said,

well, you know, what chance do we have?

Well, let's see.

We enter the tender for the FIFA World Cup rights of 2002 and 6, which were sold together and won them.

We put a very high bid.

I was going to say, that's expensive.

To win that bid sounds risky.

It sounds scary.

It's super risky.

We're very young

and have good bankers that lend us.

What's the amount of money?

Can you say?

Is it too secret?

Like,

how scary was it?

Let me ask it a different way.

I didn't sleep until we sold, we made the money back by selling advertising.

I can't tell you the, you know, the confidentiality class.

Understood.

I'm not, I didn't mean to be trying.

I mean, I wanted to place in front of the audience the size of the risk.

A lot of millions of dollars that we didn't have

that

we obviously knew we were going to sell in advertising.

But then we bought this in August of 2000, 9-11 happens.

The world is

paralyzed for a long time.

We had two advertising contracts fall out of our hands.

They were ready for signature, and two big top 10 companies pulled out.

So it was very, very scary for a long time.

And then

now come 2026, this will be our seventh consecutive.

We are the longest FIFA media MRL media rights licensee in the US regardless of language or medium because ESPN lost it to Fox Univision lost it to Telemundo in audio in radio football the premiere remained the longest so we invested a lot of money this one is the most expensive expensive of all obviously because it's here

Canada and Mexico, but obviously most of the games in the US.

But we're looking forward to it because everyone is excited.

But why do it?

Why not just keep doing what you were doing?

Why the need to expand into something that is so far outside of the realm of what you're great at?

Well,

we wanted to, first we started syndicating our show before buying rights.

So we started in that business.

It became very,

started to become lucrative.

It was kind of hard to...

you know, to

the it was hard to to get the affiliates on board.

But then when we bought the rights understanding that content was king that it was going to be very hard to make a good living off just a show and then we pegged it and tied it with the FIFA World Cup rights that changed the the equation so now we have a very robust network of 170 stations that carry my show and that carry the the World Cup and you know we wanted to venture into radio.

I love doing radio as well and we did.

And

you know, at the same same time that I was doing my television,

I always say that I wear all hats because

I am the play-by-play announcer.

I'm the sports personality for the networks.

But then I am the owner of my company that has all this investment behind it.

Do you

partake in the silliness when I'm sure daily someone comes up to you and says, do the gold call for me personally?

Like, do how what percentage of time will you actually do that for somebody?

Because they must think you're a jukebox and you must get it daily.

Every day, and I stop and I explain to them why I won't do it, because if I do it to everyone that asks, I will have no voice on the weekend to call the games, but I do stop and talk with them and say, hey, but nobody gets it, though.

You will not allow anyone to cheapen it by taking it out in the wild and

selling it.

It's a pure thing meant to be around the games where they pay you a great deal of money for it.

No one gets that for free.

Um, I sold bottle openers with my GoCo.

You did like this, and it went, oh,

back in the day when ringtones were a thing, we sold ringtones with my voice.

I did alarm clocks that every hour, I had to turn it off because it was annoying like hell.

But every hour went, oh,

it was you knew that was, you know, have you trademarked it?

Do you have it?

Is it no, we couldn't trademarked it because the trademark office said, What's the word?

How many O's?

How many A's?

How many, you know, how many L's, like,

Buffer has, you know, a phrase.

That's right.

Yes.

Buffer.

This is just a word.

You don't even say the phrase because you're well aware if you say the phrase anywhere, he charges you for it, Michael Buffer.

He's calling me, you know, within five minutes, of course.

I know how it goes.

So, yeah, I mean, I tell everybody, just wait for the weekend.

It's happening on the weekend.

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Does any one of your nine Emmys mean more to you than the others?

The 2022 obviously meant a lot.

Everyone means a lot.

I mean, but I really wanted to win the 2022 because of the FIFA World Cup.

I thought it was like a, you know, full circle, Argentina winning the World Cup and me winning the Emmy because of my work in

the World Cup itself.

And actually, I don't know if you or your audience remembers when Messi came back to Argentina, he posted a picture of him drinking mate in his bed with the World Cup trophy.

And I did exactly the same photo with my Emmy drinking mate in my bed after I won four or five months after the final.

Can you explain to people just how far soccer has come in this country from what it is that you saw at the beginning versus what it is that you see now?

Well, now at the beginning there was no professional league.

It started two years after the World Cup in 1994, 1996.

Now we have a very robust league of 30 professional teams.

There was

a stat that surprised me.

I did not know.

MLS contributed 206 players in this last international windows to their national teams.

So we have players that are good, that represent their country playing here in the US.

I wish the U.S.

men's national team would be doing better

because we're less than a year away.

We have to, you know, get everyone excited about this team because the World Cup is here, and everyone and their mother will know that the World Cup is being played in our country come next year.

Whoever doesn't know, they will find out, believe me.

And it will be a big deal.

We need the U.S.

to do good, to do well next year, to get everyone more excited about the game if they're not already.

So from when I started way back in 1987, no professional league, just friendly games,

no name recognition on national team players, etc.,

to today, you know, it has changed tremendously for the good.

Now the teams need to up the ante and play better and make an impact on the field because a winning team is always more likable than a losing team.

Forgive me for reading here, but I just wanted to get right all of the campaigns for global brands that you've had a part in.

The Super Bowl ads,

what do you remember about the stories involving the Super Bowl ads that you did?

Just the idea of you doing Super Bowl ads as a symbol for the American dream on coming to America as an immigrant, learning the language, and getting into Super Bowl ads is an achievement.

What do you remember about those?

I remember my phone exploding with WhatsApp messages.

I was on a plane during the Super Bowl, and the Super Bowl ad came out, and

I knew

what was happening.

So it's obviously to have my name,

my face on a Super Bowl commercial, knowing that I'm being watched by whatever it is, 140 million people.

It's super nice.

And the list of sponsors, luckily throughout the years, it's quite

Budweiser, O'Reilly Auto Parts, ATT, Pepsi, Geico, Snickers, Gatorade, Dove, Adidas, Nike, Volkswagen, Chevrolet.

Am I missing anything giant there?

Like, you couldn't have imagined.

Pepsi.

Coke.

Yeah, I said Pepsi.

I didn't say Coke.

I didn't realize Coke.

You did both of them.

I mean, it's amazing that I did.

I did phone companies cars.

I was very, very fortunate.

I did Geico.

Geico was a super cool commercial way back in the day.

Yeah, the

brands are kind of impressive.

What are the

dreams when you were a sports writer at USC?

What was the highest it went?

You were going to be what?

I had this fantasy of going back to Argentina, believe it or not, and becoming the editor of El Gráfico magazine, which was the equivalent of Sports Illustrated in its heyday.

So I wanted to be the editor of the Argentinian Sports Illustrated.

of Argentina.

And now you're just as American as you are Argentinian, no?

Or is that fair to say?

It's fair to say, yes.

I lived here more than I've lived ever in Argentina.

You know, my life has been made here.

My kids were born here in Miami.

I'm I'm I I brew I breathe 305.

I love it.

So which are you most?

Argentinian, Miamian or American?

If you had to if you had to choose one.

Good question.

Well, American in the global arena, but I am very

miamense.

I love the 305.

I publicize the fact, you know, on my socials every time I'm on the water or I see something that you know we live, or at least I live in the best city in the US.

The other cities hate me for that, but I don't think there's a better city to live than Miami.

And how did you become more of a Miamian than an Angelino?

I had a tough first year when I moved,

but then I started liking Miami a lot.

I mean, it has changed dramatically.

It's still, you know, very beautiful.

I loved LA, but I mean, LA, it's a different animal.

It's too big.

To get, you know, go have a cafecito with a friend, you have to drive an hour.

Now in Miami, you almost have to drive an hour to go.

Yes, now with the traffic, you do have to do it the same.

But

your original broadcasting influence was Chick Hearn of the Lakers, correct?

Yes.

Well, I listened.

I liked the way he simulcasted the games.

I liked basketball.

I watched the Lakers on KCAL Channel 9.

He was the voice of both radio and TV for the Lakers for many, many years.

And he was the closest thing.

to an Argentine play-by-play soccer announcer that I could find both on radio or television.

Because of how fast it was, because of phrases and the way he kept people engaged.

And, you know, it was a pleasure listening to him as much as it was listening to Vin to Vin Scully.

I mean it was poetry emotion you know it was you get you know I say that my style perhaps is eclectic even though it's a different language.

I remember how Chick Hearn used to have you know his catchphrases, how he changed rhythms within you know the play-by-play,

how he gave the insights about the game, even though he had a color man, color analyst, and here the roles are a little bit more defined.

He was very opinionated on the game himself.

And then Vince Coley was just in a very slow-paced game.

Not only did he give you the insights of what was going on, but it was just poetry and

the control of the language that he had was absolutely amazing.

Do you remember the first time that you did your first goal call?

Do you remember roughly how long it was?

And did you know immediately this is something I'm going to keep I'm going to have to keep doing doing this I knew I was going to do it that way because that's the way I grew up listening to

people calling golf the broadcasters calling golf I remember vividly the first day they called me for an audition they said that we were going to tape two games that were going to air on the network I mean they didn't tell me that until I got there I was talking about being nervous and frightened and insecure never had been in a TV studio in my life they put me to do color commentary commentary in the first game.

Then we break for lunch.

The guy that ended up hiring me says, I can tell that you know a lot about soccer, but when he says, but I'm about to shake his hand and say thank you for everything and that, you know, go home.

He says, can you call the second game?

And I did.

And then, you know, when I call the goal,

I see his reaction.

Like,

you know, he looked at me kind of like in surprise that I was, even though, you know, in Mexico, I don't know if way back then, because he was a Jorge Veri.

I love him.

He passed away recently.

I always remember him very fondly because he's the man that gave me my first job and the reason I'm sitting here talking with you.

He went like this, and then, you know, I guess he liked it.

He called me within the week and offered me a full-time job.

And then you knew that it had hit?

Because it looks from the reaction that he wasn't sure that it worked or not.

He got caught by surprise, I think, because I did yell a lot.

I don't know how long it was, but it was a lengthy goal.

It was actually, it was shorter.

It was more goals.

There were shorter goals with the goal.

Goal, goal, goal, goal, goal.

I didn't know.

I mean, that's the way I knew, and that was the music in my ears of my infancy, and the way I grew up listening and watching games on TV.

So I had

no other way of calling the goals.

And I did not know that this was going to catch everyone's attention the way it did first in the World Cup in 1990, which we broadcasted back then on Univision.

Then, of course,

I had no clue what was going to happen in 94.

My career just exploded.

beyond control in 94.

Have you had a player move you because that particular player told you you have no idea how much it moved that player to have you call your goal the way you call your goal?

I am hoping to meet Gonzalo Montiel, the guy that scored the winning penalty kick in 2000.

He started following me on Instagram.

He didn't text me.

I did meet a couple of the Argentine national team players.

Actually,

the coach moved me.

The coach, I moved the coach.

FIFA invites me in February, this two months after Argentina wins the World Cup, to be a presenter at the FIFA Best Awards.

And Scaloni was going to win Coach of the Year, obviously, and he was there.

So I go up to him for a picture.

And the minute he sees me, he says, oh my God, oh my God, the way you made me cry and my family cry.

I only kept your video on my phone when he was there with his kids.

My kids told me that's him, that's him when they saw you come in and I say gringo because we they call him gringo scaloni gringo

I was so humbled I couldn't believe what the guy was saying are you freaking kidding me you made the whole country cry you messy the the the your team no no no no no no no I want no no I want the picture with you he said no no come on

boy It was like the most bizarre moment.

Well, tell me, take me, take me through, if you would, in your own words, the articulation of where it is you connected with a country, with a community, with your past, with your dreams, with your gratitude.

Because there's no way that you don't break into tears like that in broadcasting if what you're feeling is not an overwhelming sense of gratitude of feeling touched by God because you're allowed to experience any of that.

First and foremost, I would say was

a sense of pride of who I am as an Argentinian.

Even though I am an Argentinian-American, as we discussed, this is Argentina is my blood.

And it transported me

back to Argentina.

I felt part of them, of them, the team winning and of all Argentinians.

I felt I was representing all Argentinians living in this country.

And I know how much every immigrant suffered.

Nobody Nobody has had an easy path in this country.

That was the first thing that I was super proud that I was able to call my country with what it means to me from a soccer standpoint to win the World Cup.

This was the pinnacle of the athlete's career and the broadcasting career of Andres Cantor.

I mean, I've called 12 World Cups.

I saw Argentina as a teenager win the 78 in the stance.

I saw Argentina win as a writer in 86, but you know, 40 years detached from those moments, I am who I am in the world of broadcasting in the world, in the U.S., whatever.

And this moment was their moment, but it was my moment.

I had been waiting for this dance for 38 years, and I felt that Argentine pride in myself.

Were you surprised at all at what came over you?

Were you surprised at

the size of it?

I was surprised that I was able to speak, that I was able to compose myself.

I was crying like a baby.

I was like trying to put words together without sobbing because I knew people were watching the final of the World Cup, which broke all ratings record.

I mean,

the responsibility that you have at that moment is huge.

And yet here I'm sobbing,

trying to,

utter words that have meaning.

Because I put,

if you remember, it's Argentina, Campión del Mundo, champions of the world, but then I start mentioning the past world champions that had died.

There was a song that accompanied the Argentine national team, mucha Chos.

I mean, it became super, super popular that mentioned that Maradona was

rooting from the sky for Messi and for Argentina.

So I paraphrased the song, you know, Desier lo Luiso Diego, but then I added several names of past Argentine world champions that, you know, passed away.

And then I referenced Messi and the coach.

And

honestly,

as I said, I had nothing planned because not only am I super competitive with myself, I'm extremely superstitious, extremely superstitious.

So I did not want to have anything prepared in case of, because I know I was going to jinx.

How superstitious are you?

Explain to me the length that your superstitions go.

Minute 74 of the final of the World Cup.

I'm with Manolo Sol, with Claudio Borghi, former Argentine winner in 86, Maradona's teammate.

Argentina was having the game of their lives.

France wasn't touching the ball.

Minute 74, I tell Vici Borghi.

Borghi,

is what we're seeing real?

And the minute I said that, I said,

why did I say that?

It haunted me because you don't do that.

You're going to, you know, I jinxed the freaking final within two minutes and Bappé scored two goals.

And I was tied to two.

And then I couldn't get that shit out of my head.

I said, why in the f ⁇ ?

Why did I say that?

You want to know how superstitious I was?

Game one, Argentina loses to Saudi Arabia.

Unheard of.

The upset of the entire history of the World Cup.

Argentina with a

36th match unbeaten streak.

I put on a brown suit.

We lose.

I'll never

wear that thing again.

Second game.

I knew exactly what I had, what I wore.

Blue suit, blue shirt, the underwear, the socks, and my shoes.

Argentina wins against Mexico 2-0.

I keep the same suit all the way to the final.

I have the suit at home.

I have my underwear at home.

I have the socks at home.

I have framed on the wall.

I have the picture.

I should frame it.

Frame your underwear.

Frame your underwear.

Put it over the television.

That is exactly why Messi won the World Cup because I wore.

And game day,

I went through the same ritual.

You know, I sat in the same table at the restaurant in the hotel.

The lady, we had to have the same server, and I ate exactly the same thing every time Argentina played.

The last question, the toughest question, the toughest question for last.

You said earlier that your wife and the kids say that that shouldn't have been the happiest moment of your life.

It should have been with them.

I give you one and only one that you can do.

You only get to choose one.

I'm the asshole here in asking the question.

You get to call the Argentinian goal that wins the World Cup, or you get to broadcast the game with Nico, your son.

Which one do you choose?

No,

I'll double up.

I already called the World Cup goal the Argentina winning goal.

So if it comes to 2026.

No, no, no, no.

I'm saying I give you the only, you've done these two things.

Don't try and sneak out of this question.

I know I've pinned you down here.

You only get to choose one, the experience that you had with your son that made you weep like a baby in the hotel room afterward, or the experience you had with your country where you wept in front of all

the world?

Oh,

that's right.

I'm trying to pinned you down.

Nico, you're going to lose.

Yeah, you're going to lose, Nico.

You're going to lose.

You're going to lose.

He's forgiving me because he's feeling the same way.

That's right.

You'll get more chances.

And actually, you know what?

You know what, Dan?

I want the Nico to be an engineer, just like you now.

I wanted you to be an engineer.

What is he in this profession?

Forget it.

Unca, Senor

I'm honored that you would come in here and spend this time with us.

It's been a pleasure to hear your voice for 40 years.

Thank you, and I hope you get to listen to me cry again in 2026 with Argentina.

You're a big, blubbering fool, is all you are.

I think Nico might not forgive you, though.

I think he's going to be, he's going to understand.

He's going to understand.

Before we go, I have to say something on record because you

viralized a moment of my career.

I don't know if you remember this, but you viralized a moment of my career before social media.

After I called the Landon Donovan goal in South Africa for my radio company and within an hour of the match, I guess

somebody had heard it and you called me on air on your show and replayed the moment that had happened with the U.S.

making it to the national to the next round with London Donovan's goal in extra time.

I think it's the biggest goal in American history, isn't it?

It's in the conversation anyway.

It might be.

It might be.

But you took

the time to call me to South Africa, even though I wasn't doing the games on TV.

You were, you know, you, your production, were listening to the game in the radio, and it was super, super nice to be on your show way back then.

Well, I thank you.

You were with that viral moment.

I love what Spanish radio has been allowed to be in South Florida for a long time.

I don't think there's much like it anywhere in the United States.

It is the Wild, Wild West.

Spanish, as you know, Spanish radio gets away with more than any other radio gets away with.

FCC doesn't speak our

monitoring it because no one speaks the language.

Gracias, señor, un placed.

El Place de Mio.

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