Andrés Cantor is calling his eighth World Cup, and the voice many soccer viewers know by instinct is back on Telemundo as it rolls out more than 700 hours of FIFA World Cup programming from June 11 to July 19. The network is carrying all 104 matches live, with 92 on Telemundo and 12 on Universo.
That scale is part of why Cantor’s remarks land now. He has spent almost 40 years on television calling games, once averaging 200 matches a year in his early career, and he remains the same announcer who can stretch a goal call until it turns into a signature. He said the length depends on the play, the buildup, the importance of the goal and how much air he has left in his lungs.
Cantor also said he has no idea whether his 43-second call is the longest GOOOOOOOOAL he has ever produced, and he would shout it three times if the moment demanded it. He said the call comes naturally, not by design, which is why he has heard it described as part of the soundtrack of people’s lives when it comes to soccer. But he also knows that people who do not follow the sport closely may see it as a gimmick.
He pushed back on that view by saying he did not invent the style, only helped popularize it in Latin America. That matters because his voice sits in a long line of Spanish-language soccer calling, where the broadcast is part of the match and the call is part of the memory. Cantor’s place in that tradition is now being heard across Telemundo’s World Cup coverage in Spanish in the United States.
For this tournament, he said France and Argentina are the teams to beat. He expects France to reach a third consecutive final and likes Argentina’s chances to last into the final week. The one scenario he would most like to call remains simple: a World Cup final with Lionel Messi scoring the winning goal. Cantor said he has no idea whether that will happen, but if it does, he sounded ready to let it run.
