[ntaso]

I'm used to the visual design of ARD/ZDF in Germany. Thoughts:

* One team is "above" the other. This implies ranking between the teams. Who decides who's on top of the other? Imho a bad idea.

* The clock is unnecessarily bloated. I find the added visual markers distracting. The stoppage time is misleading, because additional play time is not a stopwatch or a timer. It is merely a suggestion and while most judges adhere to it, there are some games where additional play time is exceeded. It's not strict as a stopwatch implies.

* Ball possession: While being an interesting statistics, they are usually shown only once during an entire game. This kind of stuff is now easily retrievable during the game on a tablet or smartphone ("second screen"). Some people find the statistics completely unnecessary, because the only relevant statistic is goals, which is always shown anyways. I also don't see how extensive animation in the interface is not distracting.

* Formation screen: Just a different flavor. Nothing worse or better than the current one.

To summarize: Well, it's a suggestion, but I can't see that this is BETTER than the current layout, which the final paragraph implies about this design.

[girvo]

Having a team above one another doesn't stop Rugby League in Australia from doing that[0], so that I'll disagree with. The rest of it, I don't know enough about football to have much of an opinion :)

[0] http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hjHYB-oUH90/0.jpg

[iaskwhy]

I thought it was a funny comment because there's always one team before the other, either above or first on a line. That's why there's a raffle for games which are not played at either teams' home. For example, next Wednesday it's Netherlands v Argentina and not the inverse.

[bigd]

A left right organization also give you clue of which side of the field the teams are playing.

[surreal]

Nope, it tells you which team is playing at its home stadium (or in the case of games played on neutral ground, the team that is designated the 'home' team by e.g. a raffle).

At half time the teams swap sides, the order of teams on screen doesn't

[wting]

In American sports, the home team is always on the bottom. "New York playing at Dallas."

If what @surreal says in a sister comment is true, then they could do the same thing for FIFA.

[PM_Tech]

Why would they adopt a US-centric practice?

In all likelihood it would be more suitable for the USA to adopt FIFA conventions. FIFA tournaments are astronomically more popular worldwide than any US sports. Even the USA-Portugal game had higher viewing figures in the USA than the World Series and the NBA finals.

Skipping the World Cup for a second...in 2011 the Premier League was broadcast in 212 territories around the world, working with 80 different broadcasters. The TV audience for Premier League games is 4.7 BILLION , and the number of homes reached last season increased 11 per cent to 643m.

It's a bit arrogant to assume some of the best UX designers in the world have not been hired to design and test the experience for a global audience. TV has forgotten more than the Web knows about user experience.