Barak Fever
Barak Fever Daniels (Holon, Israel; 27 August 1981) is a Mexican sport journalist who works for the multinational sport chain ESPN. He began his professional career in TV Azteca in 1998 at the statistics department. He has covered different important sport events such like the Olympic Games from Beijing 2008 and the World Cup Germany 2006. He is also the founder of the Mexican sports blog "FutbolSapiens" [1]
Biography
Fever was born on 27 August 1981 in Holon, Israel, to his Chilean father and Mexican mother. He lived there until he was two years old and then moved to Mexico City where he began his journey into the world of soccer journalism writing for the magazine Tiro de Esquina in 1995. In 1998 he started working with TV Azteca[2] due to an invitation from David Faitelson and was introduced to the statistics department.
In 2000 he finished his role at statistics and began to work as a commentator and reporter for soccer matches at the Mexican league until 2007, reporting directly from Spain in 2004 and 2005 the performance of Mexican soccer stars such as Rafael Márquez and Maribel Domínguez. His next role in TV Azteca was being part of the creative department where he created two of the most famous sections from the main TV show "Los Protagonistas": "La Contracrónica" and "Valedores de Iztacalco". In 2009, Fever ends his professional relationship with TV Azteca and remains almost 5 months without working. This is the time where he creates the Mexican sport blog FutbolSapiens.
After a huge problem at the Sports department on TV Azteca, where the team was disintegrated in its totality [3], Fever started working for the multinational sport chain ESPN [4] and entered on the List of ESPN Latin America announcers in 2010.
Fever studied Communications at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and has reported for big sport events such as Euro 2004 in Portugal, Euro 2008 in Austria-Switzerland, Olympics 2008 in Beijing, World Cup Germany 2006, America's Cup 2007 in Venezuela and others less relevant.
Journalistic Style
Fever's journalistic style breaks with the serious and formal journalism, touching the reflexive, humorous, inquired, sarcastic and committed side from soccer and its fans. He tries to find a middle point between the formality and emotions experienced by the soccer fans. In order to show this, Fever has tried to show the real face of every sport star such as players, managers, coaches, fans and journalists.
La Contracrónica and Valedores de Iztacalco
La Contracrónica is a tracing on an specific person during a game or other sport event. It began in 2007 using the Mexican soccer star Cuauhtémoc Blanco as a camera objective. These kind of coverages, which are in the middle of humor and journalism, has traced several local and international sport stars such as Hugo Sánchez, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Landon Donovan, Jorge Campos, Carlos Salcido, Gennaro Gattuso, Diego Maradona and some others.
These coverages have caused a relevant impact that investigations have started from individual discoveries due to single TV footages. For example when La Contracrónica of the FMF president, Justino Compeán, was made, he was discovered cheering for a particular soccer team in a match from the Mexican first division. [5]. Legal investigations started in order to find the reason of the impartiality.
Valedores de Iztacalco is a tracing from Deportivo Iztacalco, the worst professional soccer team in Mexico, playing in the third division.