Life inside the CBS Sports Champions League studio is hectic. There are games kicking off all across Europe, spanning countries and time zones. And the whole thing keeps ticking: more fixtures, more teams, a new format, more jeopardy early on. Covering the Champions League is not easy.
But at the center of it all, in America at least, is Kate Scott. The English broadcaster has become a familiar face in the soccer space in the U.S. over the years, promoting the global game on American television – an all-too-rare female voice leading the sport.
“I don’t think I even considered broadcasting as an option for me, because I never saw anybody that made me think, ‘Oh, yeah, that would be a cool job to do,’ ” Scott (formerly Abdo) tells GOAL. “Because I saw Des Lynam or older men who just didn’t look like me, and didn’t feel relatable to me growing up in the UK, watching Match of The Day.”
But she has established herself as a crucial part of the way the U.S. consumes the game abroad. These days, she is most often found in the CBS Sports studio, hosting the often-viral, always-intelligent Champions League coverage for Paramount+. Alongside Premier League legends Jamie Carragher, Thierry Henry and Micah Richards, Scott has helped piece together some of the most captivating football content out there – something that will continue this week as the group phase heads towards its second-to-last matchweek.
The show is known for its laughs, but Scott is quick to emphasize just how talented her panelists are.
“They’re all very good at what they do,” Scott says. “And they can read a football game very quickly. That’s one thing I’m always impressed by ex-pros, is just how quickly they kind of understand the flow of a game, and they don’t necessarily need to see all 90 minutes to to be able to tell a good story about it.”
And in the ever-growing beast that is U.S. soccer, her voice is vital. Scott has been here for a decade now, and has seen American soccer’s highs and lows. She knows that Americans abroad have often been ‘the butt of the joke’ but knows just how important a successful run at the 2026 World Cup could be in changing that.
“There’s just no tolerance for not being winners,” she said of the American sports mentality. “Whilst there’s huge excitement around, yes, this is our home World Cup, there’s also huge pressure. And I don’t know what would be seen as the minimum level of acceptable achievement.”
No one does. That’s part of the uncertainty of it all. But in Scott, U.S. soccer has a constant – someone who is always there to shape the message of the game. And she discussed the Champions League, U.S. soccer, her role in the American landscape and more in the latest edition of Mic’d Up, a recurring feature in which GOAL US taps into the perspective of broadcasters, analysts and other pundits on the state of soccer in the U.S. and abroad.
NOTE: This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.