Moises Munoz joins Fox Sports broadcast team for World Cup

Fox Sports has added former Mexican national team goalkeeper Moises Munoz to its broadcast team as a studio analyst for this summer’s World Cup in Russia.

Munoz, 38, has 19 international caps for Mexico and made the preliminary roster for the 2006 World Cup, then played in World Cup qualifying four years ago. But he did not make the final cut for either World Cup tournament.

In his 20^th professional season, he is the starting keeper for Puebla of the Liga MX, where he is in the final year of his contract.

“This is something I’m really excited about and something that I really want to do,” Munoz, who was born in the Mexican state of Michoacan but attended school in Redwood City, said of broadcasting.

Fox will air all 64 games from Russia live with a record 38 airing on broadcast television. The other 26 will be carried on cable channel FS1.

“It’s really an unprecedented number,” said David Neal, Fox Sports’ executive producer for the World Cup. “We’re going big.”

With the U.S. absent from the 2018 World Cup field, Fox will be focusing some of its attention on Mexico this summer. And adding Munoz, who will make his English-language broadcasting debut during the tournament, will give the network an expert with insider knowledge of the team, its players and coach Juan Carlos Osorio.

“I know Juan Carlos Osorio. I know the way he thinks. I know the way he acts in the locker room, in every training, in every game,” Munoz said by phone from Mexico. “I know all of the players that are going to be there. I’ve been teammates with them for a lot of years. Most of them I know very well.”

Munoz, who has done some broadcast work covering the Mexican national team in Spanish, will serve as an analyst for the Fox studio shows “World Cup Today” and “World Cup Tonight,” which will originate from a standalone set in Moscow’s Red Square. And though Munoz is fluent in both languages, he said there are some soccer terms in English he still needs to brush up on.

“I’ve been doing a little bit of practicing broadcasting in English,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that I have to learn. Lots of things are so different from Spanish. So I’m going to have to learn all of that stuff.

“But it’s part of what I’m really excited that I’m going to get to do.”