TV coverage of Montserrat’s World Cup qualifier on Sunday (6.00pm at the moment) will be on Rush 3, which most of us won’t have access to. Fortunately, El Salvador is a big country, and there will be a lot of stuff shared by the media online. We shouldn’t complain about the lack of live coverage too much. It is a price we have to pay.
The reason the Montserrat FA has the money to play competitive international football at this level is FIFA’s ability to maximise its income by selling TV rights and sponsorship. It sold the rights to the Concacaf World Cup qualifiers as a block to a single broadcaster and that broadcaster needs to maximise its income by selling them on or getting subscriptions. Antigua v Montserrat was not a priority. El Salvador v Montserrat, however, will be. As well as Rush 3, it will be on TV in El Salvador, and the CBS Sports Website says it will be on Paramount+. None of these are much good to most of us, but it does increase the possibility of an illegal steam if you are that way inclined. I won’t be posting a link to one.
There will be plenty of highlights around. I found this link from El Salvador’s 2-0 win against Granada, and I’m sure there will be others if we look hard enough: Mágico González Fans – YouTube. I do not know if this is a legal clip, but if it is still up when you click on it, it should be a good place to start on Monday. Someone else has posted seven minutes of highlights that he appears to have recorded himself: SM Fútbol Salvadoreño – YouTube. You can even find a recording of the whole game on YouTube, but whether you could sit through this presentation of it is a different matter. El papito Sv – YouTube . Keep a note of these channels. They may come in useful.
But what do you during the 90 minutes to avoid a retro Teletext experience? Firstly, you’ll need a live commentary. If you speak Spanish, you’ll find an audio one, but it will be a bit shouty. I found one here https://megavision.univtec.com/#!/live/radio
I also found a text commentary at El Salvador.com, which is very helpful. It’s here FINAL: El Salvador superó sin convencer a Granada por 2-0 en el reinicio de la Eliminatoria Mundialista | Noticias de El Salvador . They’ll be one for the Montserrat game, I have no doubt. If it doesn’t translate to English, just click refresh. It’s an interesting translation. “Korea does not execute the best of the punchlines and the ball ends up being captured” is an odd sentence out of context. Wasn’t that the start of a James Bond film once?
But that’s Google Chrome for you. If you are a non-Spanish speaker, you’ll also discover that El Salvador has a masculine pronoun (you can understand why). The ball is female.
Then you’ll need some highlights during the game. The following people were tweeting goals from El Salvador during Thursday’s game. Neto De La Cruz (@Ernesto77ESV) / Twitter ElSalvador1Chance (@jmurillo23771) / Twitter Fulbox (@fulboxOficial) / Twitter NEXpanama (@NexPanama) / Twitter. There is also the El Salvador FA who will tweet throughout the game. La Selecta (@LaSelecta_SLV) / Twitter
While you are playing with your devices, you can also watch Montserrat playing a world cup qualifier in Curaçao six years ago. The team isn’t vastly different from the current one, and Lyle Taylor is guaranteed to score. I have the full 90 minutes here: Football FIFA Elimination Games to Russia 2018 Curacao vs Montserrat 27.03.2015 “Patrick Kluivert” – YouTube .
Finally, you’ll want some pre-match reading. Here are my write-ups of the two Montserrat games against El Salvador in 2019.
November 2019: Defeat by an offside goal sets up the biggest day in Montserrat’s sporting history – Living on the Island of Montserrat (wordpress.com)
I think that’s everything. Enjoy the game.
Craig Brewin’s Blog 
I see no acceptable reason for a blackout in Antigua and Montserrat. So if CBS has the regional rights, there is not reason why Flow and Digicel could not work out an arrangement to show all the matches.
I imagine that Fifa and Concacaf want all of thier games recorded. So a little forward planning is what was required.
It appears as though the persons who could have made it happen either could not be bothered or made lazy assumptions.
Between the MFA and Digicel and Flow it should not happen again.
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I do remember an England game being streamed online once because the owner couldn’t get the sell-on price from the TV companies. There was nothing at stake at that point, so it was the equivalent of a friendly. There was a last-minute deal with ITV for the highlights, but they were almost not shown either.
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