One month from now, millions of American soccer fans will be tasked with a seemingly impossible task: which UEFA Champions League match to watch? From Inter-Arsenal, Real Madrid-Monaco, Tottenham-Dortmund, and Sporting-PSG, there will be quite a few enthralling clashes scheduled at the same exact time on January 20. For viewers who are looking to stay up to date with all of these simultaneous matches, there is simply only one option: the CBS Sports Golazo Show hosted by Nico Cantor.

Born and raised in Miami, Nico is the product of a Honduran mother – Liliana Williams – and an Argentine father – Andrés Cantor. As the son of one of the greatest soccer announcers ever, Cantor had no doubts about following in his father’s footsteps. Whilst he played volleyball and soccer in high school, excelling between the sticks and leading his team to a district championship as a freshman, earning the captain’s armband in his junior year, and picking up All-County honors as a senior, he never took playing seriously as a career path. Instead, he headed north and graduated from New York University with degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Romance Languages, before returning to the 305.

Cantor started working for his father’s Fútbol de Primera radio station before taking his talents to Univision Deportes (now TUDN) – the rival network of his father’s Telemundo – where he worked as a studio analyst and U.S. Men’s National Team reporter, in addition to offering English and Spanish commentary for Univision’s coverage of Major League Soccer and Liga MX. It was here where he learned from soccer legends like Iván Zamorano, and Hristo Stoichkov and cut his teeth on the assignment desk and the station’s flagship program ‘República Deportiva,’ as well as its live whip-around soccer program ‘Zona Fútbol.’

These performances grabbed the attention of CBS Sports, who were looking to do the same exact thing as Zona Fútbol, but in English. Shortly after being hired by CBS in October 2020, Cantor was on the move to London, where he helped anchor their UEFA competition coverage; just as Danny Higginbotham was making the opposite move across the Atlantic, Cantor was making his presence felt in Europe. After bouncing around from Miami to London, he moved to Connecticut in 2023 after the launch of the CBS Sports Golazo Network, the first U.S.-based digital network with 24-hour, direct-to-consumer soccer coverage. However, he would spend just one year there before making the move to Queens, where he has remained since.

“I grew up in Miami, I went to college in New York, and then I went back to Miami, where I started working for my dad's radio company for a couple of months, before working for Univision for 3 years. I started working for CBS while I was still living in Miami, and I made the move to the Northeast in 2023. I lived the first year in Connecticut, and now I live in New York,” stated Cantor in an exclusive Protagonist Soccer interview. “I actually loved Connecticut, but because my wife moved north too, after a year, I kind of wanted to give our social lives a little bit more of dynamism, and we kind of found that in New York; I'm loving it.”

“Connecticut is a massively underrated state, by the way, I would have stayed there. I knew nothing about Connecticut before I moved there, and it is beautiful, but I also love Queens. It’s the best borough in New York City by a country mile; I will die on that hill. Culturally, food-wise, culturally, gastronomically, and the mix of nations is the quintessential ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere’ symbolism of New York. I feel like in Manhattan, we kind of lost that, but Queens still has that beautiful immigrant mix, where you get the most impressive melting pot in the world that has produced some of the finest cuisine in the world within one single borough. It’s super dynamic, that's what it is. You go from one borough to another, and it feels like you're in another country – you keep on discovering new things.”.

It hasn’t been easy for Cantor to make his own name and branch out from the ‘nepobaby’ tag, but he’s done just that, masterfully weaving between a number of topics like Pafos’ maiden Champions League qualification to how Thomas Grønnemark revolutionized Liverpool’s set-piece strategy. Whilst Cantor has worked as a reporter for CBS Sports’ Concacaf and UEFA Champions League coverage and as an analyst for CBS Sports Golazo Network’s flagship morning show Morning Footy, it’s undeniable that he’s made his name as the host of the live whip-around program, “The Golazo Show.” Unlike many of his CBS colleagues like Clint Dempsey, Charlie Davies, and Nigel Reo-Coker, Cantor doesn’t have any professional playing experience whatsoever, but that hasn’t stopped him from carving out a name for himself as one of the game’s top soccer analysts and pundits. After all, you don’t have to be a horse in order to become a jockey.

“I’m constantly under question in that space, especially because this is quite a unique role that I've been given at CBS, which is kind of really only reserved in the American sports space for former players. But I grew up in broadcast school where that's not necessarily the case, where there are journalists that are very well educated in the sport that are able to sit at a desk with some of the greatest players that have ever played this game, and enter into a debate, and not feel any sort of embarrassment or shame, or that they're not up to the task because of their lack of playing credentials. I know I bring something else to the table when I'm sitting on a desk with these guys, with these privileged people. I know that I'm mortal compared to them. We all wanted to be them growing up.”

“My strength is that I'm very well informed, I know what's going on, I have a good journalistic network, I speak multiple languages, I consume soccer in four different languages, and I'm schooled in broadcasting. There are also a lot of people that end up on a desk who are former players, and my guess is that the vast majority didn't go to journalism school. So I try to use that to my advantage, and because of that, I'm able to have that malleability, flexibility, versatility, whatever you want to call it, where I can be the play-by-play guy, I can be a host, I can be an analyst, I can be on a desk, I can be a field reporter. Whatever it is you need me to do, in whatever language you want me to do it, I can do it.”

- by Zach Lowy