John Strong and Stu Holden enjoy ‘wonderfully chaotic’ experience as Fox’ lead World Cup broadcasters

By their own calculations and tallies, John Strong and Stu Holden have each flown 20 times during the World Cup, covering nearly 30,000 miles.

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As Fox’ lead broadcast team during the tournament, they have called 21 matches in five weeks, wrapping it up with Sunday’s Argentina-Spain final at 3 p.m., the third time Strong and Holden will be the English-language voices of a men’s World Cup final.

It would be understandable, then, if they were weary, or at least trying to shake off some jet lag.

But in conversation with reporters Friday in advance and anticipation of the capper to a wildly enjoyable World Cup, their main theme was gratitude.

“I feel fortunate to be sharing this once again with one of my best friends in life,” said Holden, the color analyst and former US national team standout.

“It’s sort of surreal to think we’re at the end of this,” said Strong, the play-by-play voice. “If we’ve learned with the three World Cups [that we’ve called together], it’s that every time we think we’ve seen it all, the next game happens, and something even better happens. So I’m super excited to see how we how we cap off this one. This tournament has been everything we could have hoped it would be. It was wonderful, and it was chaotic, and it was wonderfully chaotic.”

Strong and Holden are matter-of-fact regarding their appreciation of the opportunity their jobs provide, which included calling all of the USMNT’s matches through its loss to Belgium in the round of 16.

Holden acknowledges he makes a conscious effort to stay in the moment, sometimes taking off his headset during a match so he can gauge the involvement of the crowd and soak in the atmosphere.

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“One moment that sticks out for me was after US and Bosnia-Herzegovina‚“ said Holden. “There was a really dramatic finish to that game, the red card [to Folarin Balogun in the Americans’ 2-0 victory in the round of 32], the Malik Tillman goal. ‘Country Roads’ is playing when it’s over, I’m taking a selfie video, panning to the crowd. I have this wave of emotion and goosebumps, and I look over, and John was emotional. He was crying.”

“Oh, I cried multiple times during US games in this tournament,” interjected Strong.

“That moment we take off our headsets after these big games, we exhale, because we love what we do and we get wrapped up in it,” continued Holden. “He was overcome with emotion in that moment, and as a friend and broadcast partner, I understand what it means to him. I understand completely. I represented my country on the field, and I got to live out my dream. He’s living his dream in real time, and it’s never lost on me that this is what John has wanted to do from a very young age. It was cool to see him take a moment for himself, because these are the moments you want to remember.”

Holden didn’t outright make a prediction for Sunday, saying he’s hoping for a match that provides “a fitting end performance” to a consistently compelling tournament.

“I love the contrasting styles of play,” he said. “You have the Spanish control versus the Argentine spirit, and the greatest player of all time [Lionel Messi], and a player on the other side in Lamine Yamal that grew up idolizing Messi and could become the third teenager to win a World Cup final.

“As much as we all expect Spain to have the ball and have this harmonious type of rhythm, there is no better team in the world to disrupt that type of flow and insert the chaos and insert all the emotion that they play with constantly and play on the edge in a way than Argentina can.”

With each subsequent change to WEEI’s afternoon drive program, it further confirms that the station and parent company Audacy made a silly mistake by removing Meghan Ottolini from the time slot in August 2024. When Ottolini, Christian Fauria, and Lou Merloni were broken up in December 2022 — Ottolini remained in the 2-6 p.m. role while Merloni left the station and Fauria moved to middays — they were coming off a fall 2022 ratings book with a second-place 9.2 share. The “Rich Shertenlieb Show,” as currently constructed, will never get near that number … If WEEI was serious about challenging The Sports Hub’s “Felger & Mazz” in afternoon drive — and it’s clear it is not, but humor me — it would be wise to emphasize informed Celtics conversation. I’d rather listen to Michael Felger do a six-hour podcast on the 1983 Milwaukee Bucks than talk about the Jaylen Brown trade one more time.

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