Mike Francesa Is Very Annoyed That Sports Illustrated Put Lionel Messi On Its Cover

If Mike Francesa’s visceral disdain for soccer didn’t come through clear enough when he stumbled his way through a simple MLS ad read last week, today’s rant aimed at SI for their decision to dedicate the mag’s cover to Lionel Messi and a big portion of its coverage (specifically, as Mike discovers: “Eleven pages! You’ve got to be kidding me!”) to the Copa América (which, as Mike describes it, is “a buncha soccah matchups” that “no one’s eva heard of this event!”) should erase all doubt about how he really feels. I mean, he basically says it all right at the beginning:

Now, I know I get accused of knowing nothing about soccer, ‘cause I don’t. I know absolutely ZERO about soccer. And, that’s more than I wana know about soccer. I have no interest.

That is just the start of an eight minute rant about how nobody knows or cares who Lionel Messi is, nobody knows or cares what the Copa América is, and SI’s obliviousness to these facts is evidence of why a magazine he once held in the highest esteem now “is just a sad reminder of a different world.” A different world indeed.

[ Vice Sports]