Mustoe’s moment
Settled in Lexington, Mass., former Premier League standout — and one-time BC assistant coach — ready for key role with NBC Sports
Originally published in the August 2013 issue of New England Soccer Journal.
August 1, 2013
By Eric Beato
When Robbie Mustoe moved to Massachusetts after a lengthy pro soccer career in England, he was unsure how closely he’d be able to follow his beloved Premier League.
“I remember moving to this country. When we first landed, our furniture was on a ship,” Mustoe said. “We knew this was going to be the place we wanted to settle. We found a house. I remember sitting there one late August day. I put on my TV. The sun is beaming through the window, and I’m watching the Premier League. I remember thinking, ‘This is the life. I’m in the U.S. I’m in this great country, this great region, this great town, and I’m sitting here with my feet up watching the Premier League live on a Saturday morning.’”
Life — and access to the Premier League — has only gotten better for Mustoe in the seven years since he relocated his family from his native England to Lexington, Mass.
This month, Mustoe begins a dream job for a former EPL player who’s settled in New England. Rather than watching games on Saturday mornings, he’ll be on air, commenting on them. Mustoe will serve as one of the studio analysts for NBC Sports as part of the network’s landmark, quarter-billion-dollar deal to deliver the Premier League to a U.S. audience in an ambitious and unprecedented way.
Mustoe will be at the center of the coverage, offering analysis and commentary from NBC’s new sports broadcasting center in Stamford, Conn., beginning Aug. 17.
Mustoe sat down with New England Soccer Journal last month for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview on his playing career, settling in the Bay State and embarking on a new, high-profile broadcasting assignment.
There’s no doubt that Mustoe knows the Premier League. He was there at its inception, playing the inaugural 1992–93 season, and he played eight seasons in the Premiership.
Over his 18-year career in England, Mustoe appeared in nearly 600 professional games in all competitions. After playing for his hometown side, Oxford United, he spent a dozen years with Middlesbrough, helping spur a revival in the club and igniting its most successful period. Boro played in three cup finals at legendary Wembley Stadium. In 1997, they advanced to the finals of both the league cup and FA Cup — a rare double feat — but lost both, including the FA Cup final to Chelsea, when Mustoe blew out his knee 20 minutes in.
“These occasions are huge, and I’m so proud that I played in an FA Cup final, because that’s what I dreamed as a kid, and I spent every May watching the FA Cup final with my father and brother,” Mustoe said. “Playing in the FA Cup final was pretty special, even though it was a bad day for me personally with the injury but also losing the game.”
Mustoe played in many special victories — beating Manchester United at Old Trafford and beating Liverpool at Anfield — but his most memorable game carried special significance.
After two seasons outside the Premiership, Middlesbrough had earned promotion back to the top flight for the 1995–96 season and christened a glistening, brand-new ground, Riverside Stadium.
“Our first home game was Chelsea — in the new stadium, opening day of the Premier League season, Chelsea, big guns coming to the town, and we beat them, 2-nil,” he said. “And Elliot, my oldest son, was born that night. So it was a very, very special day for me and our family. We’re actually going to celebrate 18 years at the Riverside on Elliot’s 18th birthday, which is August 26. So that was a special day.”
Mustoe would spend 12 years at Middlesbrough before playing his last season in the Premier League with Charlton Athletic in 2002–03.
“It’s just nice to be at one club for a long time,” said Mustoe, who was granted a testimonial game in 2000 to mark a decade with Middlesbrough. “That was a highlight of my career — having 10 years at the club.”
Mustoe finished his pro career with one season at Sheffield Wednesday in the third tier of English soccer.
“I was done,” he said. “I played near enough 600 first-team games over 18 years, and I’d done my shift. It certainly was time for me to retire. I had a problem with my hip. I was just tired.”
After his last professional game in 2004, Mustoe and his wife, Caroline, pondered where they wanted to settle with their two young boys at the time. Elliot, who turns 18 this month, will be a freshman soccer player at Northeastern, and Lewis, 15, will be a sophomore player at Lexington High School.
“We just felt for the boys’ sake, it might be better bringing them up somewhere else than the northeast of England, just for their future opportunities in life,” Mustoe said. “We either could go down south (of England), where our family’s from and whom we’ve been missing for 15 years up in the northeast. Or we try something different.”
They opted for different and focused on the United States. Mustoe emailed a few soccer contacts about opportunities, and heard back from John Kerr, the Harvard men’s soccer coach who had played professionally in England and recognized Mustoe’s name. Kerr brought Mustoe over to help coach his soccer camp.
“He and his assistant at the time, Bruce Murray, were very important to me in coming over and making me feel welcome and showing me the city,” Mustoe said. “Particularly Bruce — he invited me back over with the family. We stayed at his place, and he showed me the town.”
Robbie and Caroline Mustoe fell in love with Greater Boston.
“I thought, this ticks a lot of boxes for us. It’s close to go back to London from Boston. The whole feel is kind of European, a little bit,” Robbie Mustoe said. “From that point, I said to Caroline and we mulled it over, ‘This could be a real nice place for us.’ Education is great; health care is great. There’s good opportunities in football here.”
So, they moved even though Mustoe didn’t have a job — only a passion for the game and a desire to contribute to the sport he loves.
“Absolutely. That was all I knew, and I wanted to do that, but I didn’t know what direction I was going to go in,” he said. “I totally wanted to work in the game. Love the game. I’ve been kind of a student of the game when I played it. Always thoughtful about the game and why things are happening. I used to watch loads of games and make stupid amounts of silly notes and statistical references in games for hours.”
That combination of passion and obsession made him perfectly suited for two things: coaching and broadcasting.
Opportunity in the States first knocked on the day Mustoe arrived in Massachusetts in August 2006. When he reached his hotel that first day, Pete Simonini, the men’s soccer coach at Bentley University, was waiting in the lobby to offer him a coaching job. He accepted and spent that fall as an assistant coach with the Falcons.
A chance meeting that winter led to an introduction to Ed Kelly, the longtime Boston College soccer coach who offered him a chance to coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference. With Mustoe as an assistant in 2007, the Eagles soared to the ACC regular-season and tournament titles before falling in the NCAA tournament.
“We won everything apart from the national championship,” Mustoe said. “For a program that was always mid-level in the ACC, I really enjoyed it. It’s good to see your ideas and thinking in a group of players that are keen to learn, to listen.”
As much as he enjoyed coaching, broadcasting also was beckoning. Mustoe always was a media-friendly player, comfortable in front of cameras and microphones, and a good interview. He also had a friend from Middlesbrough, Dave Roberts, who was working at ESPN and suggested that he might enjoy some on-air broadcasting. After the BC season, Mustoe began calling games for ESPN.
“They wanted me to do more and more stuff, and I got to the crossroads around 2008,” Mustoe said. “ESPN wanted me on more of a full-time deal; Ed Kelly was desperate for me to be a full-time assistant because Kevin (Anderson) was moving on to Columbia. … And it was a tough decision, because Ed’s a great guy. The benefits would have been huge for my boys; they would have gone to BC. But I just felt at that time that ESPN and that world could open up a lot of great opportunities and travel, and it really did.
“It was a big decision because of a lot of things, but I went for the broadcasting. … The ideal fit for me was — and maybe still is — a professional club. That’s my life. That’s what I did. But I wanted the family to stay put. I love this town. The school system is great. We’ve got this nice house that we renovated. So we’re totally all set here.”
Free from the fear of having to uproot the family while chasing a coaching career, Mustoe threw himself into broadcasting. He has spent the past five years with ESPN, calling the World Cup in South Africa, the Champions League finals in Munich and Wembley, the Euros in Poland and the Ukraine, a game at Barcelona’s Camp Nou and the Liverpool-Roma match at Fenway Park.
He proved himself as a knowledgeable, insightful commentator on the beautiful game. So when NBC announced last October that it would spend $250 million over three years for the U.S. broadcast rights to the Premier League, Mustoe was intrigued. Especially when he found out the studio would be a mere three hours away in Stamford, Conn.
Sure enough, before too long, his agent got a call, inquiring about his interest and availability. It took some doing, but he managed to get out of his ESPN contract and he’s thankful to them for the opportunity to return to the league he knows and loves.
From England to New England, Mustoe now finds himself back in the Premier League with an opportunity to once again make loads of silly notes and analyze teams and games the way he did as a kid.
“It’s a brilliant job for me,” Mustoe said. “I can commute very easily. It’s the Premier League that I watched, that I played in. I think my strengths are the breakdown of a game. I’m very interested in the tactical aspects of the game, so NBC is going to give me that license and that opportunity to really break down some plays, which is going to be great.
“But I’m still conscious that we’ve got to do a good job. We haven’t started yet; we have no minutes on air just yet.”
That changes this month. Kickoff for the Premier League, for NBC and for Mustoe, is Aug. 17.
Eric Beato is the Managing Editor of New England Soccer Journal.
