Nico Cantor On The CBS Golazo Show And Researching Before Broadcasts

The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, and nobody knows that better than Nico Cantor.

Born and raised in Miami, Nico was raised by a Honduran mother – Liliana Williams – and an Argentine father – Andrés Cantor. As the son of one of the greatest football commentators of all time, Cantor had no doubts whatsoever about following in his father’s path.

Whilst he played volleyball and football in high school, excelling at the goalkeeper position, winning the district championship as a freshman, and earning All-County honors, he never considered playing at the professional level; it was all about becoming a broadcaster.

Cantor left South Florida for New York City and graduated from New York University with degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Romance Languages, before heading back to the 305 and working for his father’s Fútbol de Primera radio station.

He then decided to join Univision Deportes (now TUDN) – the rival network of his father’s Telemundo – serving as a studio analyst and U.S. Men’s National Team reporter, offering English and Spanish commentary for Univision’s coverage of Major League Soccer and Liga MX, and plying his trade on the assignment desk and the station’s flagship program ‘República Deportiva.’

However, it was his work with the live whip-around soccer program ‘Zona Fútbol’ that caught the eye of executives and producers at CBS, who became the English-language TV broadcaster of UEFA matches ahead of schedule after Turner Sports pulled out following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two weeks after undergoing a Zoom interview with Peter Radovich, Jr., as well as another CBS employee, Cantor was on a plane to London.

Just as Danny Higginbotham was making the inverse move across the Atlantic and starting a new life for himself in Philadelphia, Cantor would spend the next three years bouncing around from Miami to London before making the move to Connecticut in 2023 following the launch of the CBS Sports Golazo Network, the first U.S.-based digital network with 24-hour, direct-to-consumer soccer coverage.

He would last just one year in the Nutmeg State before returning to the Big Apple, only this time, he made the move to Queens rather than Manhattan.

“We were broadcasting the Golazo Show out of London from 2020 to 2023,” Cantor tells WFi. “I spent three years going back and forth between Miami and London during Champions League match days. Depending on the season, sometimes the Champions League match days were back-to-back, but if not, I would stay for 2 weeks or a week and a half and fly back.

“I did this for the 2020/2021 season, the 2021/22 season, and the first half of the 2022/23 season, almost 3 complete seasons.

“It’s less travel – I lost my frequent flyer status, but it’s okay. I was king of all the airports back then, but now, it’s less strain on my body, so it’s a little bit better in that sense.

“Ever since we started the Golazo Network, everything that I was doing in London, the Golazo Show and Morning Footy and whatnot, I now do in Stamford, CT, I do the Golazo Show from Stanford, but it’s still produced from England, crazily enough – the people that I hear in my ear are in the control room in England with the Champions League Today Show with Kate Scott and everybody.

“It’s still done in London, with an entirely English control room save for the couple of people from CBS like Pete Radovich Jr., who’s kind of the head of it all. It’s an English production with an American twist – an American driving force.

It’s a mid-November afternoon in Queens as Cantor, fresh off a week-long trip to Argentina, which saw him reunite with family and friends and watch his beloved Boca Juniors beat eternal rivals River Plate 2-0 at the Bombonera, reflects on what has been a dream start to the 2020s for his professional career.

Cantor has emerged as one of the top rising pundits in the game, thanks to his superb control and diction in UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League matches with The Golazo Show, where he keeps his viewers up to date with all of the key facts and intriguing details, like how Pafos have qualified for the Champions League for the first time ever.

Whilst Cantor has served as a reporter for CBS Sports’ Concacaf and UEFA Champions League coverage and as an analyst for CBS Sports Golazo Network’s flagship morning show Morning Footy, it goes without saying that he’s truly made his name as the host of The Golazo Show.

It is here with the Golazo Show where he has been able to transmit his overwhelming passion for the beautiful game as well as his love of history, culture, and geography, earning praise from the likes of Kevin Egan and Rod Underwood for his rich storytelling.

“This year, we’ve taken a step back from the UEFA Conference League, it’s a little bit more Champions League, and Europa League focused, so we’ve got to be dialled in on all of those leagues from around the world. I made a really good friend in college who’s Turkish and who’s a huge Galatasaray fan, and the world of Turkish football was opened via this friend of mine.

“I think in the last 10 years, the team that I have watched play the most after Boca is probably Galatasaray. They’ve produced these crazy upsets, beating Manchester United and Liverpool…I was ready for that upset, and I knew exactly what was going on. I understood the context, because I’ve been following this team for so long. But similarly, when I see a team picking up, and I’m calling either journalists or friends just so I understand what’s going on locally.

“I think that the brilliant part of the Golazo Show is the research that we’re doing, from my own research to the production that’s helping me out all across the board. I want to make people understand what it means for Ferencváros or Pafos to get their first three points, their first victory in the history of Champions League competition.

“There is crazy history with Pafos about their owner, the face of their logo, who was this revolutionary figure. Some people see him as a hero, and then, the other half of Cyprus probably doesn’t see him as a hero at all. I don’t want to get into the semantics of it, but it’s controversial nonetheless…what happens if they draw Galatasaray in the next round?  You’ve got to be prepared for those moments so that if they ever come up, you’re ready to go.

“With all of these things, it’s almost like, I don’t care about Liverpool, I don’t care about Milan, I don’t care about Real Madrid, I know these narratives like the back of my hand, I listen to English radio, I listen to Spanish radio, I’m reading L’Èquipe, but what’s on my my mind is why it’s important to sell you the Pafos or Olympiacos story. You need to be able to sell a lot of teams that, especially on Thursdays, honestly, I would say nobody cares about. How do you make Thursday interesting for diehards, and for your average soccer fan at the same time?”