Angel Fernandez, 80, Sportscaster In Mexico Known for ‘Gooooooool!’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Sportscaster Angel Fernandez, one of the best-known voices in the history of Mexican radio and television, died Tuesday in Mexico’s capital after a prolonged illness. He was 80.
Fernandez called baseball games and boxing but was best known for his work in soccer, where he began broadcasts with the famous phrase: “For all those who love and cherish and soccer …”
He is also known for being one of the first to yell “Goooooooool!” when teams scored during soccer matches. That tradition was not only copied by a generation of Mexican broadcasters but was well-known throughout the soccer world and even became a phenomenon in the United States when it host ed the World Cup in 1994.
Born Aug. 2, 1925, in Mexico City, Fernandez became a Mexican institution with his soccer broadcasts throughout the 1970s and still worked for Mexico City’s W radio.
Fernandez was “without a doubt a poet of a sports commentator who was one of the most-recognized voices on a national scale,” Mexico’s largest television network, Televisa, wrote in an obituary posted on its Web site Tuesday. “They say he made a bad soccer game something incredible with his broadcasts.”
His son Ali is a former Mexican League player.
