If the U.S. men's soccer national team was sluggish on Tuesday night, ESPN anchor Stuart Scott was worse.
The Americans competed in their first of three friendlies, leading up to the World Cup that starts in late June, upending Azerbaijan 2-0 on Tuesday.
The U.S. struggled through most of the evening at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, Soccer.SI.com reported, playing Azerbaijan to a scoreless tie for the first 75 minutes of the match until backups Mix Diskerud - wearing the No. 10 uniform worn previously by Landon Donovan - and Aron Johannsson to get the win.
But it was Scott, who put a nice bow on the night, when he began an ESPN telecast with Steve Levy. After Levy commented that the World Cup will start in 15 days, Scott wondered into no-man's land with his ad-libs.
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"In those 15 days, Team USA will play three warmup games, starting with tonight against Azerbaijan," he started, as a video posted on Deadspin depicted, before getting way off track. "Bob Ley has a passport. We have passports, too, but he used his to get to Azerbaijan. He joins us now from there."
The problem was that Ley obviously wasn't in Azerbaijan. He wasn't even in San Francisco, as another video revealed that Ley was in a different ESPN studio near the SportsCenter desk.
As for the U.S., Soccer.SI.com reported that the Americans were without captain Clint Dempsey, who was a late scratch with groin soreness and that the team did seem to miss Donovan.
The team has two more exhibitions to show that it can thrive without its most popular player. Hopefully someone will let Scott know ahead of time that the World Cup will be played in Brazil, rather than whichever opponent the U.S. faces.
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