Ray Hudson’s magical broadcasting ride ends

For American fans of Lionel Messi, Ray Hudson was a magisterial hype man, a verbal ninja who, in the promotional manner of Flavor Flav, once famously said: “They tell me that all men are equal in God’s eyes, this player (Messi) makes you seriously think about those words.”

His verbal flourishes on the mic made him a cult figure among soccer watchers. A “Vocal Acrobat Mixes Soccer Calls With Awe” is how The New York Times described him in a 2013 profile. He regaled soccer watchers as an analyst for GolTV and Bein Sports, a host for SiriusXM’s soccer coverage, and more recently, for CBS Sports’s coverage of the Champions League. He would treat bursts of genius from Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo as if he were watching Michelangelo sculpt or Leonardo da Vinci paint.

This all came after arriving in America in 1977 as a 21-year-old professional soccer player on loan from Newcastle United. He played six seasons in the North American Soccer League, where his teammates in Fort Lauderdale included all-timers George Best, Gerd Müller and Teófilo Cubillas. That was followed by MLS coaching stops with the now-defunct Miami Fusion, and then with D.C. United before broadcasting and cult fame took hold.

The ride ends this week. Hudson told The Athletic that he is stepping away from broadcasting at age 70. He made the announcement this morning on the SiriusXM FC channel, where he has been a host since 2012.

“It is the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my professional life,” Hudson said, his voice shaky. “This was really hard, and there are private reasons for it in some ways that I’d rather not talk about. Walking away from something that you love so much it’s heartbreaking. But I know this is the right thing for Joan (his wife) and I. The time to step away is now, but I will say I did change my mind so many times over the last few months.”

Hudson did not want to go into detail about why now was the right time outside of what he said above and wanting to spend more time with family. His final television games with CBS Sports were the thrilling Barcelona-Inter Milan Champions League semifinal for the ages. Some of our writers have suggested Inter’s dramatic 7-6 aggregate win was the greatest Champions League semi-final of all time.

“Walking away from the game after those two unbearable classic games and everything they encompassed, I thought, how can you leave this?” Hudson said. “But then I thought, what better time to close the curtains, because nothing is going to beat those games in my eyes. They compassed everything, the tension, the drama, the theater, the dazzling skills, the cruelty of the game, everything. I told [his partner] Chris Wittyngham in the booth after the second semi-final crescendo that I’m definitely done now.”

Hudson was with GolTV until 2012 and then switched to beIN Sports, which obtained the rights to La Liga and hired Hudson to lead its coverage. He called Inter Miami games in 2020 for their local broadcast crew. He said it was a “divine sending” that his broadcasting career coincided with Messi’s time in the game.

“He was my absolute muse,” Hudson said of Messi. “There were so many other fabulous players in this time span, especially around the time when Spain won their World Cup and the Euros. Spain destroyed the world like a colossus then. Leo was just coming out of his egg shell, fluffing his football and feathers. [Pep] Guardiola’s Messi teams would show us things you’d see once in a 10-year period and it was every week. This was part of the whole challenge of trying to stretch the English language to describe the magic that you were seeing. I couldn’t do it with just “that was brilliant.” It just came out and people made the connection with me through this ridiculous type of verbose expressionism. Messi was just bewildering and you had to try to verbalize pure magic.”

For those who did not get to hear Hudson, here are just a sliver of examples of his verbal flourishes, all from one Borussia Dortmund-Paris Saint-Germain Champions League game in 2024:

“He tries to hit the spiders in the corner (with a shot) but he’s still adjusting his gyroscope”

“Dembele a gazelle being tracked down by a cheetah”

“Maatsen slippery as an eel covered in Vaseline”

Hudson said that was just him. No artifice. Just passion. One of my personal favorites? (“Cristiano awakens his sleeping sword of destruction — and it is Excalibur!”)

“Every step of this journey has been humbling and I’m not saying that with false modesty,” Hudson said. “It wasn’t a shtick. There was no rehearsed methodology. It was just me. Being isolated in that booth is strange. You don’t realize the multitude of people that are tuning in and getting such enjoyment from so much of it. For whatever time is left for me, I want it to be just a fan now. It’s always been working at it to get better in football as a player, as a coach, and then a broadcaster. So it’ll be fun to just not have that calendar now.”

As we concluded our conversation, Hudson read me a card he got recently from a fan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was touched by the sentiment. It concluded with, “Surely you realize you make the lives of your listeners more bearable. Thank you for being awesome.”

A magisterial epitaph if there ever was one.

(Photo: Jeff Gross / Getty Images)

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