Meet the Host of the American Soccer Show That Europeans Love

Kate Abdo: Courtesy of CBS/Mary Kouw; Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte

A strange thing happened after CBS (and Paramount+) began broadcasting the Champions League in 2020: an American-produced soccer program became the show of record for European fans. The studio panel of Micah Richards, Jamie Carragher, and Thierry Henry all played at the highest level on that side of the Atlantic, where they’ve also had major television careers for years now. They’ve got the credentials, they know how the game is played at the top, and also they crack jokes on each other. It’s a raucous atmosphere at times on set, where everyone has a turn getting roasted, and ditching the staid conventions of sports broadcasting has made all of them legitimate stars in football media.

But Richards says “the glue” that “holds it all together” is Kate Abdo, the Manchester-born presenter who’s become a star in her own right playing a role with similarities to the one Ernie Johnson has on Inside the NBA, stitching the production together amid the occasional chaos. She can also dish it, tossing barbs across the studio desk at Richards or Carragher, and take a joke, too. “She’s not sensitive,” says Henry. “You can’t be if you’re on that show.”

Abdo studied in Spain and France and started her broadcasting career in Germany before she eventually made her way—via Sky Sports in the U.K.—to the United States, where she’s lived since 2017. She covered the Champions League for TNT until, at the height of the pandemic, the network exited the contract early. She was out of a job for eight months. Then CBS called, and now she hosts a phenomenon. Beyond the broadcast itself, the show is continually generating massive moments on social platforms, and crowds will chant “Golazo!”—for the CBS handle—when they walk in a stadium. The biggest players at the biggest clubs are jockeying to make an appearance: Jude Bellingham, Real Madrid’s 20-year-old English superstar, walked by their pitchside table recently looking for a chat.

And Abdo is at the heart of all of it: gluing things together, reminding everyone that Richards is the only panelist who’s never won the Champions League, and using her four languages to translate interviews on the fly from all across Europe. Pete Radovich, senior creative director at CBS Sports, said he told his boss two things when he heard the network had secured the Champions League rights in the USA: he wanted to run the coverage, “and we’ve got to go get Kate Abdo.” She was the first hire, before the ex-pro superstars, and now she’s got another gig hosting Kickin’ It, a long-form interview series on Paramount+ where she and a panel of ex-U.S. men’s national teamers chat with a rotating cast of guests. It’s something like The Shop for soccerheads.

Abdo spoke to GQ about all that, the controversy over her new American accent, and getting recognized more in the U.K. now than when she was on television there.

On Champions League Today, you guys share a lot about yourselves with the audience. How do you decide how much?

I don't know that there are many boundaries. It feels like that locker room environment translated onto television, where you'll joke about things that happened off-air or whatever. We’re a good team. We crack jokes on each other, and I know that Micah will often be the butt of that joke, but at the same time, we're a team that want to protect each other. Nobody wants to make the other one look bad. Would I have wanted to share who my first kiss was with? And did I think it was a good idea, in hindsight, that I used both of his names? No. But I've asked that question to them, so I can't not share the same information.

So I don't know that there are many boundaries, and I think that's why the show is popular. Jamie and Micah were hugely well known in the UK prior to this, but seeing this side of them was new to that audience. And that's why the show is so popular internationally and in the UK, particularly, because they want to see that version of Jamie and Micah, not the version that they get on UK television. We've never had a conversation about boundaries, but it's live TV, and it's hard to rewind in a moment. If someone asks you a question, the question's out.

It's not the easiest job, I would say, hosting that show. As fun as it is, it's sort of a controlled chaos. Do you have North Star principles as far as managing that dynamic on-set? Or is it just about getting to a commercial break when you need to?

There's always a plan, there's a rundown going into every show. But I was very used to heavily scripted sports shows, which is what they had tended to be, specifically in America. So going in knowing, Okay, we have a concept for this segment, but I'm not sure exactly how we're filling those minutes is scary, initially. I've learned to embrace chaos. I enjoy it. I think it's why I enjoy live television. Most people who do live TV will tell you there's a buzz associated with it that's unique. It's never panic, but I can have that nervousness inside—not quite sure where I'm going next, what's happening next. And that's often because the people in the control room aren't sure.

If you want to do live sports, it's the best position to be put into. Because you can get lulled into this pre-formatted [style]—which can be really smooth television and a great watch—but it doesn't really challenge you, and you don't get to have, I think, those really great moments of TV that come up on a show like Inside the NBA, where there is space for the unexpected to happen.

Do you draw inspiration from Inside the NBA? You and Ernie Johnson are very different people from different places, but did you take anything from how he does things?

When I was at TNT doing the Champions League, we would cross paths with them. And there was one day they asked me, “Hey, would you like to have a conversation with Ernie?” Because he's such a respected broadcaster in the business, and I jumped at that. I asked if I could see his version of the script, and all that he had in the [tele]prompter was anything that was a read that he really needed to nail—leading into a feature, or the intro welcoming everybody in. And the rest was just empty.

We didn't function like that on the Champions League show at TNT. But when it came to doing CBS, and looking at all these empty lines in the rundown where there was no script, I felt much more comfortable, because I'd seen how that worked for them.

And listening—[Ernie] is brilliant at that. He's so in the moment, and he helps you as a viewer just be in the moment with him.

The show has become huge in Europe. Was there a moment that you realized you had a really significant foothold back home, particularly for an American show?

It's still wild to think about as a European, because we’re traditionally so snobby around football, particularly around Americans and soccer. That concept still carries. That's why something like Ted Lasso hits so well, right? So for it to be an American-produced project that everybody in Europe talks about as the best soccer show is wild. That's unimaginable to me.

And these moments just happen. I’ve been in France a lot recently, so I'm on the Eurostar, and I will always have people ask me, ‘You're that girl who does that Champions League show, right?” And it's just so weird, because you know that nobody in France can see that show. But it comes up in people's feeds and Instagram and they end up clicking on something. And I've had that a lot. I get more recognized now in the UK than when I worked in the UK. And that makes no sense, because I was on Sky, which is a big broadcaster with a huge footprint in football, in a country where football is king. And I get more recognized now, because they get to see clips on social media of a CBS show that they have never watched in its entirety. It's nuts.

Speaking of the American element, Jamie Carragher is not the only one to accuse you of changing your accent. Do you deny this?

I deny that it's intentional! I get killed for it on social media, only ever by British people. Americans always tend to think I sound British. But British people will tell me I have a fake American accent and they hate me for it.

I've lived more of my life outside of England than I did in it. I've spent decades of my life in places where I didn't speak English. I spoke in German or in French. So if my accent is messed up, it's because my life has been varied in that way. If my accent's mixed, it's because my life's been mixed.

I also think it's a language gift, where I pick up languages really easy, and you can't necessarily tell I'm English when I'm speaking French or German. They'll be like, ‘Oh, wow, you sound native.’ It's because I have a good ear for that. That's the gift that God gave me, which people love when they watch the Champions League show and see me translating multiple languages at once. But they don't realize that carries over into my normal life. If I’m around a bunch of people from Manchester, at home with my family, I’m a Manc. If I'm around a bunch of Americans, I can end up having a Southern twang like Clint [Dempsey], because I just pick things up. And so I feel like people love me for that ability in some way, but they will crush me for that ability in other ways.

Growing up back in Manchester, your dad was a Man United fan. Are those your memories of getting into football as a fan?

To me, it's home life. My dad still goes to every match, every home game. He’s a season ticket holder. My mom watches every game from home. They watch Match of the Day every Saturday night. Football was always kind of central to life. Saturdays or Sundays, we watch football, or I told I have to go watch my brother play football, which bored me.

It wasn't that I ever thought, “Oh, I want to work in football.” It was just that when the opportunity came around and I was offered that, it didn't feel like it was out of my comfort zone.

Has it changed your relationship to the game to do it for work?

If anything, I appreciate it more, probably because of the time I have spent with pros in just gaining an understanding for that kind of the inside workings of the game that I never had. I've gotten to live so many cool moments in football through work, like multiple World Cup finals, Champions League finals, those kind of moments that you just think, “I would never have got this as a fan.” Now, if it's a big football event and I'm not working it, I feel like I'm missing out.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you have eased up a little bit on Micah. Do you think it’s the same as last season?

I think if we had enough jokes, it would be. But there’s only so much material! I did suggest to Pete [Radovich] at the beginning of the season, “Hey, let's switch. Let's do it on Jamie. Let's make every intro about Jamie, and just kill him.” But he said, “No. Let’s stick with Micah. We've still got more.”

But I think that one thing we never want to do is become predictable. Maybe we've eased off a little bit, but we just need to find some more [jokes].

And then [PSG manager] Luis Enrique is telling Micah he's his favorite pundit.

That's insane to me. That, again, shows you the reach. We had another moment like that when Pep Guardiola came on, and that blew my mind. What time does he have to be on Twitter? What time does he have to watch an American show's content?

I know Kickin’ It is a passion project for you. How did it come together, and what drew you to this format?

We’d started doing the U.S. Men’s National Team games together for CBS, and I just really enjoyed their company. We ended up spending a lot of time [together] around the games. That's not always a given. I think people assume it is—“Oh, you must hang out all the time.” They were former teammates, so they wanted to hang around together, and they just took me in. So I got adopted into the family. This [show] was something that the group kind of pitched together.

It doesn't feel like there's anything in this space—certainly not in America, but actually, I don't really think globally—that’s this long format with this kind of range. It's a soccer-people show, but it's just about life through the lens of people who are into soccer. So often, doing what we do in live sports, everything's so short format. Everybody gets a minute, two minutes to speak. Here, people dedicate an hour of their time to just sitting down and talking to [us], wherever that might go. That's exciting to me. Because I think football is interesting, but people are always more interesting, right?

You guys are really unafraid to get into it. You had Landon Donovan on and you’re like, ‘You and Clint…it wasn’t a good relationship.’ Do you prepare for those moments, in terms of how you’ll broach the subject? Do people come in knowing things are going to get real?

The show is so new, I don't think anybody has really come here knowing necessarily what to expect. I think people saw the Thierry episode and that maybe set the tone. I would never want to ask somebody a question that they feel is just trying to get a very personal answer for clickbait, a headline. In any conversation, whether there's a camera there or not, you get a sense of how far you can go with a person.

I was taken aback by the Thierry episode, I remember that. I thought this was going to be, like, a jokey show. That was my expectation, because we’re always cracking jokes on each other [elsewhere], and I just thought that was what this would be. And somehow it came up—Charlie sharing about his father and drug issues in the family, and his mother attempting suicide. And Thierry then sharing about his problematic relationship with his father. I didn't expect that.

I think as long as somebody feels safe—it sounds dramatic. But just that they can share something in this group, and nobody's trying to use it for their benefit. This isn't a gotcha moment, and they can trust CBS. Let's say something was discussed and people changed their mind. I believe CBS would say, “Okay, no problem. We'll cut it out.”

I've heard you talk about being the kind of representation on television that maybe wasn't there when you were growing up. What did TV look like when you were a kid? Did you look up at the screen and say, “I want to be there?”

Sports looked masculine when I was growing up, that’s for sure. There must have been [some], but I don't remember there being female broadcasters in sport, where I really felt like it was a job I considered. It just helps if you've seen somebody you can relate to in that role, to make it feel like, “Oh, this is a path that could potentially be open to me.” I don't remember that.

I don't want to take credit for having this incredible vision of, “Oh, I knew what I wanted to be and I knew where I wanted to go, and I wanted to create this path for other young girls.” That’s not at all what it was. Timing just worked out well for me. God was good to me. I found it hard to know what to want to do. I didn't really know what jobs were out there, so I felt lost and directionless as a teenager. I worked in nightclubs and bars and cafes and clothes shops and bakeries. I just didn't really know. I followed a gifting that I thought I had.

But I do hope, turning that on its head, that there can be young girls that could look at me and think of this as an open door now.

Originally Appeared on GQ