Derek Rae (Photo by SNS Group)
The penultimate matchday of the 2024/25 Bundesliga season drew to a conclusion on Sunday as Stuttgart thrashed 10-man Augsburg 4-0 via goals from Atakan Karazor, Nick Woltemade, Enzo Millot, and Ermedin Demirović. On paper, it seemed a lackluster fixture between two sides who had nothing to play for, both unable to suffer relegation or qualify for Europe. But for Derek Rae, it may as well have been the World Cup Final.
After the Bundesliga intro music faded out, Rae wasted no time in explaining what was at stake for both teams, going over their recent form and setting the stage for the event, before introducing his co-commentator, ex-Germany international Arne Friedrich. With every passing minute and each perfectly enunciated German phrase, it became more clear that Rae was no ordinary pundit, but someone who had spent a half-century fine-tuning his commentary style, absorbing the German language, and emerging as one of the most recognizable voices in the footballing world. Like every masterful communicator, be that Walter Cronkite or Ernest Hemingway, Rae knows how to straddle the line between painting the clearest picture for the audience without making himself the main character.
“A good commentator shouldn’t get in the way of the game, but enhance your enjoyment…I want the person who’s watching a Bundesliga match to feel as though they are in Dortmund or Frankfurt or Stuttgart,” stated Rae in an exclusive RG interview. “There’s no right or wrong way to commentate; it’s an art, not a science. But at the same time, there are certain parameters you have to adhere to – it needs to be conversational but disciplined. Part of football commentary is understanding the culture you’re in because the footballing experience in Germany is distinct from the experience in Italy or Argentina, or Nigeria, and I try to bring the knowledge of having been to every city and stadium in the Bundesliga.”
Pursuing Broadcasting Dreams in Scotland
Born on April 9, 1967, Rae was five when he attended his first Aberdeen match with his father. In contrast to other Scottish boys who dreamed of lacing up their boots for the Tartan Army, Rae’s ambitions were in the broadcaster booth, not the pitch. He started bringing a portable tape recorder to matches of Aberdeen’s first team and reserves, practicing his commentary skills and watching from the stands as Aberdeen went from a middle-of-the-road side to a powerhouse that won three of their four league titles in the 1980s and beat Real Madrid in the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final.
“Commentary was my dream job, but I didn’t even know if there was a proper job being a commentator.
In those days, there were only a handful of commentators on TV and radio…I’d listen to their every word and try to come up with my own style. I looked up to all of these broadcasting legends in the UK, like David Francey: he was my ultimate hero, a real Scottish voice who provided so much passion and did these games tremendous justice. I wrote to Francey, thinking he’d never see it, and enclosed my tape…. A few weeks later, I got this beautiful handwritten letter back saying he had listened to my tape and applauded my ambition. He liked what he heard, and he gave me a few tips which I still use to this day as warm-up tips before doing commentary.”
One of those tips was to get into hospital radio. At 15 years old, Rae decided to start working on a volunteer basis and commentating Aberdeen matches to Grampian Hospital Radio, which broadcast directly to the inpatients at Aberdeen’s various hospitals. He believed he was just having fun and helping out less fortunate Aberdonians…in reality, he was constructing a repertoire that would come in handy. Whilst studying international relations and German at the University of Aberdeen, Rae decided to commentate on a Rangers match before sending the tape to Francey. This time, he got a letter not from Francey, but BBC producer Charles Runcie, who invited him to come down to Glasgow and have a chat.
Impressed with what he had heard, Runcie gave him the chance to provide updates for a match between Aberdeen and Celtic, although it wasn’t chosen as the main commentary game on radio that day. Shortly after, he received a phone call from Runcie: Francey couldn’t cover the Kilmarnock-Dumbarton match after suffering a knee injury, whilst another pundit, Roddy Forsyth, was recovering from his immunizations in preparation for his trip to Mexico for the 1986 FIFA World Cup. At 19 years of age, Rae got the chance to make his broadcasting debut alongside former Rangers captain John Greig. Whilst he initially believed it was a one-off experience, he was quickly proven wrong. After returning home that night, Rae learned he was getting his next assignment – none other than the oldest international match in the world at one of the most glamorous stadiums in the world – as England defeated Scotland 2-1 at Wembley Stadium. One year after making his broadcasting debut, Rae was voted the British Sports Broadcaster of 1987.
“I assumed that I was getting this because it was a novelty that I was this young commentator, but the head of the judging panel said to me afterwards, ‘Well done. I honestly didn’t know you were so young, we just went by what we heard,” recalls Rae. “It all came together for me in a way that I think might be impossible today, because I hadn’t even finished university and knew nothing about the wider world. Nowadays, I couldn’t imagine a 19-year-old getting those opportunities on air, but I’m a big believer that you have to believe in yourself and take the chance when it’s there. I took that chance because, while it wasn’t the job I thought I’d end up doing, it was my dream job.”
Making the Move to the United States
After building up a reputation as one of the UK’s most effervescent newscasters with his coverage of Scottish Premiership and Scotland national team matches, Rae decided to interrupt his career with the BBC and move to the USA ahead of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Whilst working as a press officer for FIFA at the matches held at Foxboro Stadium, he met Beth Powers—the two would end up marrying in 1996 and settling in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Following the World Cup, Rae began a new adventure with ESPN and started calling Eredivisie and Brasileirão matches, whilst he also started calling MLS matches for the New England Revolution, the MetroStars (now the New York Red Bulls), and the Los Angeles Galaxy. Eventually, Rae was announcing over 150 games a year, hosting a weekly studio-based footballing discussion show, PressPass, and writing a regular column for ESPN’s website. From 2002 to 2009, Rae paired up with Tommy Smyth as ESPN2’s lead broadcast team for the UEFA Champions League, in addition to commentating the final on location. After being hired by ESPN UK as their lead play-by-play commentator for Scottish Premiership matches in 2009, Rae bounced around from Scotland and the USA before traveling to South Africa to cover the FIFA World Cup, after which he moved back to London to commentate for ESPN on a wider basis.
Whilst Rae has occasionally dabbled in other sports like rugby and American football, his bread and butter has remained football. In 2013, he began working with BT Sport (now TNT Sports), commentating Scottish Premiership, Ligue 1, Bundesliga and Europa League fixtures, before returning to the States in 2017 to work for ESPN. In 2020, he was named as ESPN’s lead Bundesliga commentator as well as a contributor to the daily talk show ESPN FC and a columnist on ESPN.com, in addition to doing the world feed of the Bundesliga and commentary for ESPN’s LaLiga coverage. That same year, as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the world, Rae took it upon himself to record videos for his Twitter followers and analyze Bundesliga players and upcoming Bundesliga matches from his backyard garden. Today, Rae is solely focused on commentating Bundesliga matches for ESPN+, stoking the flames of a passion that has been simmering for over 50 years.
“The first World Cup I watched was in 1974 (where East Germany beat hosts and eventual champions West Germany in the group stage). I was completely transfixed by that World Cup, and it spawned an interest in wanting to take it further with the German language. The language really spoke to me, I started taking German classes, and like commentary, I became obsessed with it. We had this signal that we could pick up from across the North Sea in Hamburg, so I could listen to German radio and Bundesliga matches in the house every night, and I ended up studying in Hessen as an exchange student.”
“I never got to cover the Bundesliga until 15 years ago when I moved back to the UK, but then ESPN asked me, ‘Would you like to do some Bundesliga?’ I said ‘Would I like to? Of course I would love to.’ Maybe I’ve saved the best for last. That’s the pinnacle of everything, and I’m a great believer that you should do what speaks to you. I’m at the stage of my career where I can pick and choose what I want to do rather than saying, ‘The money has to be the best for me to take on something.’ I don’t operate that way: I do what I want to do, and what I really love doing is German football. The Bundesliga is real, raw passion, there’s nothing fake about it: What you see is what you get. It’s a league for everyone, not just the privileged few.”
Leaving his Mark as a Commentator
From ESPN to Fox Sports to Amazon to NBC, Rae has commentated for just about every major sports broadcaster in the game. And in 2018, he became the lead English commentator for FIFA (now called EA FC), the most popular sports video game of all time, with over 325 million copies sold. Whilst he had previously been forced to travel to London to the EA studio and complete three daily sessions of recording per month at the start of the year, the pandemic has enabled him to start recording from home.
“It’s been a great thrill to be involved with it,” says Rae of his work with EA.
“These sessions are quite long and vocally challenging. The production team might give me a scenario and force me to come up with 20 different ways of saying ‘good challenge’, which tests the cognitive skills, but it’s great fun. I come out of every session exhilarated but also tired, and flop onto the couch afterwards. It has opened up my work to people who previously wouldn’t have been exposed to it. Most days on social media, I’ll get messages from people chiding me for being too harsh on them during the game they played yesterday with their dad. I recently bumped into a few Bayer Leverkusen players, and it was funny to see their reaction when they recognized my voice from playing the video game.”
Today, Rae spends his time bouncing around from his base in Massachusetts to London, Aberdeen, and Cologne. He will typically begin each season in Germany before returning to Germany for the closing weeks of the Bundesliga campaign, and whilst he typically only commentates two matches per week, he pours countless hours each day into completing hand-written and color-coded notes about the teams he’ll be covering, watching their previous games and scribbling down even the most trivial minutiae like a player’s hairstyle or boot color. He’s had to make countless sacrifices from missing family reunions and weddings to not having any children, but for the most part, these have all paid off for Rae, who has worked on just about every single major club or international competition on the planet since covering the 1990 FIFA World Cup for the BBC. However, there is one thing that Rae would like to scratch off his bucket list before it’s all said and done: commentating a World Cup Final or European Championship Final.
“I’m freelance – I’m not exclusive to one broadcaster. It’s understandable that the networks have someone in-house who is chosen to be the lead voice, and I’m not in that category, so it might take something very special for me to get that opportunity. I’ve been extremely fortunate with the opportunities that have come my way, but if there’s one thing I’d love to do before I finally hang up the microphone, it would be to commentate on a World Cup or Euro Final. It would perhaps mean a different situation, and I’m not sure it’s one I’d willingly make because I like my life so much, I like being able to, more or less, make my own schedule.”
Still Plenty of Life in the Old Dog Yet
When Rae was growing up in Aberdeen, becoming a football commentator seemed about as realistic as becoming a Minotaur. And yet, he has carved out his own unique path and staked his claim as one of the greatest announcers in football history thanks to his seamless command of language, his relentless preparation for matches, and his cathartic goal celebrations. Without ever making himself the center of attention, he has a way of transporting you to the front seat of the action and enabling you to live the match vicariously through him. And even if he never does manage to commentate a European Championship or World Cup Final, he will go down as one of the most recognized voices for a generation of video game users and football lovers.
As he approaches four decades in the industry, Derek Rae acknowledges that there will come a time when he will be forced to give up his microphone and headset and call it quits on a legendary broadcasting career. But don’t let his grey hair and avuncular demeanor fool you: that moment isn’t anytime soon.
“After 40 years, I still have that rush of adrenaline before every match.
Once you get started, the nerves kind of go away, but in the few seconds before a broadcast, I’m always slightly on edge until the first word comes out, and then you’re off and running. I do love the job, but I’m conscious that once you get to a certain age, it’s only fair to let the next generation come through. I see it with American broadcasting, you have a lot of commentators that go on and do the same jobs into their 80s… I don’t want to be that sort of person, but 58 is still relatively young.”
“As I get older, I’d like to stay involved in football, but perhaps in a different role, like working in tandem with a club. I don’t like to box myself into any sort of corner, but there may come a point when I just decide I want to have more free time, and I think we all hit that point. But I’m a long way from that at this stage.”
Zach Lowy is a freelance football journalist who has written for leading outlets like FotMob, BetUS, Apuestas Deportivas, and who has appeared as a radio and television guest for BBC, SiriusXMFC, and various other platforms. After pursuing a global sports journalism degree at George Washington University, Zach has been able to tap into his multilingual background and interview major footballing figures in Spanish and Portuguese as well as operate the weekly podcast 'Zach Lowy's European Football Show' on BET Central.
