The booming voice of play-by-play broadcaster Mario McGregor is well-known by football fans in Costa Rica who enjoy listening to live matches on the radio. When Mr. McGregor, who is an Afro Costa Rican from the Caribbean province of Limon, takes the microphone of Radio Columbia 98.7 FM, he gives it to you with as much love and emotion as he can muster.

 

While broadcasting from Brazil during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, local fans from the spiritual home of football paid close attention to the Men’s National Team of Costa Rica (La Sele) and their Cinderella run. Brazilian football fans were particularly fond of watching YouTube clips of Mr. McGregor as he narrated from the media booths at the World Cup stadiums. Football fans in Brazil know about the passion and emotion that the sport evokes, and so on a recent survey by Globo Esporte from the national media conglomerate O Globo, McGregor was selected as the most historic and emblematic narration of the World Cup.

 

Mr. McGregor was deemed more emotional, passionate and ecstatic than radio broadcasters from Spain, Colombia and Germany. The video clip below was recorded as Michael Umana scored the winning penalty kick against Greece during the knock-off round; thereby advancing Costa Rica to the quarter finals of the World Cup.

 

Watch as Mr. McGregor goes into a séance-like mode and tries to keep it together. Speaking to national newspaper La Nacion, Mr. McGregor confessed that he was quite nervous, but that a surge of adrenaline electrified him and then found himself unable to stop narrating and peppering his broadcast with songs and even referencing ancient deities fr0m Greek mythology. This, for lack of more emphatic words, is what football is about: