Preparations for the 2014 Brazil World Cup are ongoing in Australia for the broadcasting of the games by the Australian public Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), which holds the exclusive radio and television rights for streaming and commenting on the football matches.
The matches played by Greece’s national squad will be streamed also on SBS’s Greek program, where female sportscaster Vaso Morali will be commenting on the games.
Morali is head of the Greek program at SBS and revealed to be the first female sportscaster in the world to have given commentaries on soccer games, as her comments on June 19, 1983 on a match between two Greek football clubs made international headlines and grabbed the attention of the British BBC and the Italian RAI.
Since then, the Greek sportscaster has worked for around 30 years as journalist, anchor woman, TV presenter, and editor-in-chief for many television channels, radio programs and the Greek press, while being mostly employed by Greece’s now-defunct public broadcaster ERT.
Morali says that she had always had a keen interest in sports, playing soccer, basketball and tennis from a very young age, while also having a strong memory and remembering the names of many players. During her school years, Morali used to pretend she was commenting on games, which gave her the nickname “speaker.”
Morali’s talent was discovered soon after beginning work at ERT, after which the female sportscaster was brought to the field.
“The male sportscasters who got to know me, like Nikos Katsaros and Stavros Tsochos, as well as others who were familiar with my knowledge and my capabilities, accepted me warmly,” Morali said, while acknowledging that some male colleagues were critical of a woman commenting on soccer games.
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