Portland Timbers announcer apologizes over awkward MLS broadcast hot mic blunder — overshadowed by hilarious raccoon incident

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Get that raccoon signed up.

Raccoon running away from men on a soccer field
(Image credit: Apple)

MLS Season Pass users on Apple TV were this week treated to not one but two broadcast bloopers, only one of which was anyone's fault. 

The first came as Portland took on San Jose while the second involved Philadelphia and New York City. Both were funny but for very different reasons.

That Philadelphia game? Well, that saw a raccoon make its way onto the field of play and give grown the runaround for longer than you might expect. The second took in Portand's win, but only after the commentary team caused a stir with an unfortunate hot-mic moment.

Getting the runaround

We'll start with the raccoon because it's less cringeworthy. You don't need much preamble for this one really. There's a raccoon and a collection of men who were trying their best to catch it. They did, too. Eventually.

You can watch the fun for yourself below.

But far and away from the fun and games in Philly we saw Portland go on two goals down at half-time, leading to a hot-mic moment that left one announcer with egg on their face. You can take it all in via the embedded X post below, and bear in mind that this came before Portland came from two down to win the game 4-2 with four goals in the final 26-or-so minutes.

Maybe someone was listening in.

For his part, Portland announcer Adam Susman has issued an apology, not least to Portland coach and the man famous for being Gary Neville's brother, Phil Neville.

What a week!

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Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
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Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.