Jenny Taft Heads to Sixth World Cup for Fox Sports
Jenny Taft is heading into her sixth World Cup for fox sports, and this summer she will do it while embedded with the U.S. men’s squad. The Fox Sports reporter and host said the tournament’s daily uncertainty keeps pulling her back, and her assignment gives her a front-row role in how the U.S. men are covered.
“I think the biggest thing about a World Cup, which I love, is this feeling that you don’t exactly know what’s going to happen,” Taft said. “There’s always a player or two, or a story, or a goal, or a save, or a team that has a Cinderella story, that’s what excites me.”
Taft’s U.S. men access
This tournament will be different from her previous World Cup trips because Taft is following the U.S. men’s squad day by day. She described the work as “a marathon of every day, wake up, go to training, film interviews, live report from training,” followed by a player interview at the team hotel and another interview for the match at night.
She also said, “I mirror where they are, so if they’re flying to Seattle for that second match against Australia, I’ll be flying to Seattle around that same time, so just kind of a part of it in a weird way.” That makes her coverage more tightly tied to the team’s routine than a standard tournament assignment.
Mauricio Pochettino and US Soccer
Taft said coach Mauricio Pochettino has given her a lot of access to stay at training, and she added that she has earned that access and is grateful for the trust from U.S. Soccer. That matters because her reporting will come from inside the team’s rhythm, not from the outside edge of the event.
This will be her third men’s World Cup tournament. Her first came in 2018 in Russia, a year when the United States did not qualify. Even so, that trip produced one of the defining moments of her career when she interviewed France and Kylian Mbappé in French.
French lessons and Boston University
Taft said she studied French from kindergarten through fifth grade in elementary school in Edina, Minnesota, then spent a month in France on an exchange program in middle school. “My parents were convinced it was the best thing,” she said, and later added, “I complained about it. I was like, ‘Mom, Dad, when am I ever going to use this?’ And I’ve now interviewed Mbappé in French. I guess they were right, and my mom loves to remind me of that.”
Her path to this assignment also runs through Boston University, where she graduated in 2010, played lacrosse, and met her husband, Matt Gilroy. After college, she landed with Fox Sports North in Minnesota, was offered the Bruins reporter job for NESN in 2013, and later flew to Los Angeles for an audition with Fox when Fox was on the verge of launching FS1.
For this World Cup, the practical takeaway is simple: Taft will be where the U.S. men are, from training ground to hotel to match night, and viewers will see the tournament through that access. Her sixth World Cup comes with the kind of inside route that can shape which stories rise first.
