Three and in – not just another football blog

The rumblings started during the World Cup, continued when Alan Hansen chose entirely the wrong moment to criticise Theo Walcott, and reached fever pitch this weekend when Alan Shearer displayed his sheer ignorance of Newcastle’s newest signing.

Those who watch and follow the game of football have criticised Match of the Day, and its producers and pundits, as lazy, ill-informed and complacent. Pundits like Hansen, Lawrenson and Shearer believe their status as ex-footballers allows them unquestioned gravitas as football commentators, a belief shared by those who employ them for outrageously generous salaries.

The World Cup was a watermark – intelligent foreign pundits, such as Seedorf and Klinnsman, exposed the lack of knowledge and insight of the British crop. It’s not just the BBC, by the way, ITV’s football coverage is far worse. The online intelligencia, which does have a tendency to get up its own arse at times, let’s face it, have relentlessly exposed any further mistakes by those in the hot seats. This is, generally, a good thing. The more people realise they’re being short-changed by the coverage they’re being given the better.

Sky might like to think they’re better, they’re not. They’re slicker, more polished, but when they choose Jamie Redknapp as their main man it says it all. This is a man for whom English is his first language yet he can barely speak in the correct tense half the time. There’s a laziness that goes to the very heart of UK football coverage and if the growing public dissatisfaction brings about a change then I’m all for it.

However, expect some folks to try and take advantage. If there’s one thing TalkSport presenters have been taught it’s how to be populist. Knowing which side to take on any issue is important, it increases the listenership, the amount of callers, and, of course, it all helps the advertising revenue. So, it’s not at all surprising to witness Stan Collymore’s latest bit of shameless demagoguery. To be fair to Collymore he understands and embraces ‘new media’. He’s on Twitter, although by protecting his tweets he insists you follow him to be witness to his pearls of 140 character wisdom, and if there’s any current tool better with which to gauge the public mood then I don’t know what it is.

So he used his Twitter account to wax lyrical on Match of the Day, calling it ‘dinosaur football’ and saying that the pundits should be replaced. He says:

It’s a lazy show that doesn’t provoke debate in our game and just says, “We’ve been there and done it and we don’t have to do anything but sit here and dole out cliches”. Shake it up someone, please.

Reasonable sentiments, entirely cogged from the thousands of folks on Twitter who have been saying the same for months, but then what is his solution?

Put Lineker as lead pundit, get rid of Hansen and Shearer and revolve the pundits so that Andy Cole, Zola, Di Canio, Ian Wright, Sheringham, Cantona and plenty of players with ideas, opinions and passion all get us thinking about the game.

Ahh, because that’s what it’s all about. Ideas, passion, opinions. Which is pretty much what we’ve got at the moment. Their ideas and opinions might be ludicrous at times but who’s to say those of the players he mentioned won’t be the same? Anyone who’s read Ian Wright’s columns will hardly have had their breath taken away by the insightful commentary on the game – and let’s not forget he’s done his time as a BBC pundit before leaving in a strop to host a gameshow.

You can certainly accuse some of the MOTD pundits of lacking passion but that’s borne out of complacency. They know their jobs are safe as houses. The more interesting stuff comes from those who are newer to the media game, Lee Dixon sticks out but he’s in danger of being dragged down with the current crop. While there’s no reason for these guys to do the work, the research, the basic stuff for which Lawrenson was particularly guilty this week, there won’t be any change.

And simply suggesting we get a different crop of ex-footballers to do the work is more ignorance at work. It’s just more of the same. Why do the pundits have to be ex-footballers? What about using some of the great football journalists whose opinions people respect to do the job? What about James Richardson presenting with a panel that could include Raphael Honigstein, Paddy Barclay, Barry Glendenning, Philippe Auclair, Gabriele Marcotti, Jonathan Wilson, all of whom write and broadcast with intelligence and knowledge about the game. People who aren’t afraid to criticse players because they socialise with them, launch magazines with them, or simply because they’re English.

And in an era when football opinion isn’t just confined to the mainstream media, when some bloggers and podcasters are as well respected as any recognised journalists, isn’t there a case to try and include them along the way?

Collymore’s outburst is welcome in as much as it continues to highlight the deficiencies in football coverage. It’s not just Match of the Day, it’s ITV’s Champions League stuff, it’s Sky’s run of the mill, hasn’t changed since the Premiership began, ‘Super Sunday’ stuff, all of it needs to change. Where it falls down is that it’s a transparent piece of populism which offers no real solution. It’s designed to increase the profile of Stan Collymore, not to make Match of the Day better.

That said, until people start voting with their remote controls and those in charge see how the public dissatisfaction affects viewing figures then it’s hard to see anything changing.

There’s also the suspicion that the general public don’t really care, that this issue is confined to an intelligent, articulate niche, but that’s probably an argument for another day.

Now that the show is well and truly over what will be the lasting impact of this World Cup?

Will it be in South Africa which has spent a fortune on hosting the tournment? Probably not. 355,000 unsold tickets, 450,000 unbooked hotel rooms and the problems the host nation have, masked as they were by the greatest show on earth, become ‘real life’ again.

From a footballing perspective is there much to take from it? Not a great deal. Spain are worthy champions and play a brand of football that has the aesthetes purring but it’s not a system that is likely to be copied by many. It requires a great many things. Players of exceptional technical quality, players who are extremely fit and motivated and players who are prepared to work harder without the ball than with it. Those qualities in one player are rare enough, to be able to find a whole team who can play like that is going to be beyond most nations.

What we’ll most likely to see is a continuation of systems which close the gap between the established football countries and the so-called lesser nations. Teams like Slovenia, New Zealand, Japan, Slovakia and South Korea showed teams like France, Italy, Denmark and Cameroon that there’s no automatic right to go far just because of history or reputation.

However, I think there’s one area in which this World Cup has had a real impact and that’s television. I don’t mean the coverage itself but the presentation and more specifically the punditry. As journalists and football fans use Twitter to interact in a way they have never been able to before the almost stone-age approach of the TV networks has been shown up for the lazy, outdated mess it is.

At the touch of a timeline are journalists with specific areas of expertise, blogs and bloggers who cover everything from the smallest leagues in the world to the largest, from systems to tactics as well as in-depth analysis of players and managers and teams. The wealth of football knowledge is quite extraordinary. So when these football fans turn on their TVs to hear ex-pros providing the same tired soundbites they’ve been spouting for years it’s in stark contract to the well-informed stuff they can get online, all day, every day.

"He's hit it and it's gone in the back of the net"

You don’t have to look far to find examples of their lack of knowledge and insight. Countless blogs have taken them to task and rightly so. If you’re going to work as an ‘expert’ then your knowledge of the game should reflect that. Not knowing anything about a team, its players, the manager or the way they play simply isn’t good enough. Mocking a fellow pundit because he namechecks a player from an ‘obscure’ country, the way Hansen did to Lee Dixon, isn’t just a display of ignorance but one of contempt to fans and viewers.

Jingoism should play no part in your analysis of the game. The ludicrous claim by BBC’s Guy Mowbray that ‘one, maybe two’ of Germany’s team would get into the England XI was typical of the kind of rubbish spouted by the English channels. A 1-0 win over Slovenia was, apparently, enough to convince nearly every single pundit and commentator on the BBC and ITV that England were ‘back’. Instead of the analytical view which most viewers took, that England’s performances were essentially abject, they eschewed their roles as analysts and became cheerleaders.

They’re not there to tub-thump, they’re there to give viewers an insight into the game. Having pride in one’s country is fine, and hoping they’ll win is also fine, but to ignore all the evidence in front of you just to do a bit of flag-waving is not.

Look at the viewing figures for the final. BBC’s viewing figures peaked at 17.9m, ITV’s at just 3.8m. The commercial network’s coverage has long been considered inferior to both the BBC and Sky and with pundits like Andy Townsend, Kevin Keegan and Gareth Soutgate (a man who writes a far better game than he speaks) doling out the usual platitudes it’s no wonder they were so far behind.

That’s not to say the BBC are much better. They’re just the least worst when compared with ITV. Yes, production, presentation and appearance is all much better and much more professional, but surely now it’s time to call a halt to the Shearer, Lawrenson, Hansen era. As long as we continue to persist with the delusion that ex-professionals know more about the game than anyone else and are better qualified to speak about it then things won’t improve.

As the BBC pays Hansen £1m a year to call the Dutch ‘thugs’ for the treatment of the Spanish – while defending the same rigorous style of play when Premier League teams get ‘stuck in’ to opponents who try to play football – then what hope is there? When Mark Lawrenson spends most of his time co-commentating in a game by complaining about what a chore it is then isn’t it time to give the job to somebody with some passion and enthusiasm who can make it interesting?

There are articulate, knowledgeable football journalists who could, if given the opportunity, improve television coverage a great deal. People who can speak English properly and use the correct tenses. Call me a snob but my toes curl every time I hear a Jamie Redknapp style mangling of the English language. There were pundits for whom English was not their first language who spoke better than some of the ‘natives’. Why shouldn’t we expect high standards, especially when they’re being paid so much money?

So, if there’s anything to be taken from the World Cup in South Africa it’s that fans want, and deserve, better from those who are given the platform to talk about the game for a living. As our knowledge of the game increases, as we learn from each other and from those with real expertise, it’s not acceptable that we get the same old schtick from guys who are too lazy and too comfortable to accept they need to keep up with the times.

As France Football’s Philippe Auclair famously commented on Arseblog’s podcast:

In Britain almost every analyst is a former player – it’s as though ‘if you were a horse you could be a jockey.’

If the World Cup in South Africa has taught us anything, it’s that it’s time to send some of these horses to the glue factory.

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Bonus reading: Two Hundred Percent has a great piece about much the same thing.

It tickled me yesterday to hear the US television guy interviewing Landon Donovan after their last-gasp win over Algeria. Straight as you like he pointed the microphone and said “Mr Donovan …” before lauching into his question.

For us, on this side of the Atlantic, it sounds hilariously formal. It’s impossible to imagine Sky’s sycophant-in-chief Geoff Shreeves in the tunnel after a game looking for a response from Mr Rooney or Mr Terry. It just wouldn’t happen and in a way it’s a shame.

There ought to be more distance between those in the media and those who play the game. There’s an almost pathological desire from those in the media, and with many journalists too, to be seen as friends of the players, particularly England’s big names. The constant references on-air and in print to ‘Wazza’ or ‘JT’ or ‘Stevie G’ are toe-curling at the best of times and in the end it colours the analysis of the game.

In the Guardian Barry Glendenning brilliantly deconstructs Oliver Holt’s defence of John Terry after his, frankly indefensible, press conference outburst. How can Holt expect anyone to take what he says about Terry seriously when he’s the author of his biography? Where is the journalistic integrity? How can you legitimately critique someone you like to consider a ‘mate’.

In recent years the punditry on Irish television has become increasing popular on YouTube as the likes of John Giles, Eamon Dunphy, Liam Brady and even Graeme Souness, so staid and forumlaic when on Sky, look at the Premier League and even England in big tournaments. They have distance, not just geographically, from the players and managers they’re analysing and while not always perfect, they have provided a much more balanced, intelligent and scrutinous view of the football on show.

What the BBC, ITV, Sky and 95% of the print journalists do is not analysis, it’s grandstanding and cheerleading, borne out of a genuine fear of upsetting the subjects. We know what has happened, we can see it with our own eyes, tell us why it happened, what went wrong, what was done well. When the best television stations employ people who seem unable to talk in any other tense than the present perhaps we’re expecting too much anyway.

It’s clear that foreign players and managers are subjected to far more opprobrium than the darlings of the FA and as long as the chummy-chummy mindset is cultivated, where personal relationships with stars of the game are valued more than an honest reading of it, this will continue.

So “Mr Donovan” might sound formal to us but it’s a damn sight better than “Wazza” or “JT”.

WINNERS

Switzerland – despite losing 1-0 to Chile yesterday they set a new World Cup record for time without conceding a goal. They surpassed Italy’s old record of 550 minutes by making it to 551 minutes. At which point they promptly went one down to Chile. Timing.

Portugal – Having spent all their energy making life difficult for Brazil, North Korea had nothing left against Portugal who took full advantage to spank the dear leader’s men 7-0. With six different goalscorers the Portuguese will be brimming with confidence and goal difference could be vital as they head for a massive game against Brazil.

David Villa - Barcelona’s new striker scored both Spain’s goals as they beat Honduras 2-0. He might have had a bit of luck on the second but there’s no denying the quality of his first. Even a missed penalty, his 5th in his last 7 for Spain, couldn’t blight his evening. If a couple of more Spaniards can find their shooting boots the pre-tournament favourites could well start to scare people.

LOSERS

Play actors -  Chile’s Arturo Vidal was the first offender yesterday. Sure, Behrami’s arms were flailing about the place but his overreaction and exaggeration of the slightest of contact ensured the Swiss player saw red. This seemed to make this Swiss think ‘Anything you can do’ and centre-half Steve Von Bergen held his face as if punched by Mike Tyson as players jostled at a set-piece.

Added to Kader Keita’s histrionics last night it’s a shame this is creeping into games more and more as the stakes get higher.

Pundits and commentators – ITV’s Peter Drury has been guilty before of poor commentary. Referring to Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas as a Barcelona player is typical of his sneering style.

Meanwhile, during the BBC’s coverage of the Chile/Switzerland game, Mark Bright appeared to watching an entirely different game from everyone else, condemning Behrami for his ‘aggressive play’ when it was anything but. His nadir came as he bleated ‘He’s clearly pulled him back there!!’ as slow motion replays showed a Chilean player taking a dive, under no contact whatsoever, to win a free kick. How he is paid actual money to provide this kind of analysis is anyone’s guess.

Khalid Al Ghamdi – The Saudi Arabian schoolteacher/referee handed out a whopping 9 yellows and 1 red in the game between Chile and Switzerland. There was hardly a tackle worth speaking about either. He and his officials fell for Vidal’s Oscar winning performance and his whistle happy approach is one I hope we don’t see much more of in this tournament.

John Terry (again) – two days running for the former England captain. After his ill-judged press conference on Sunday, Terry was put firmly in his place by Fabio Capello:

When you speak, you have to speak privately, not with the media. This is the big mistake. This is very big mistake.

And to ensure Terry’s perfect isolation, Capello continued:

I spoke with some players, and only John Terry said this.

The Italian will be using it to try and draw a decent performance from his most senior centre-half, which would be something neither he nor Carlo Ancelotti has managed for the best part of 6 months now.

Eren Derdiyok – The Swiss striker had a golden chance to equalise in the 92nd minute against Chile. With only the keeper to beat and just 8 yards out he scuffed his shot wide. If he ever sleeps again I’ll be amazed.

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As always your thoughts on these selections are more than welcome, if you have any to add please just comment.

At half time in the France v Mexico game last night the BBC interviewed some players about superstitions they might have. Most of them were the usual run of the mill stuff (pray, jump up and down three times, sacrifice an orphan before smearing the blood all over one’s nipples), but Slovakian striker Stanislav Sestak’s superstition caught my attention. Video below.

He says “I hide it in what you might call a ‘secret place’ …”.

Now, I have to admit the first thing I thought of was Papillon. Those of you who don’t know what I mean, the second paragraph of the synopsis here, and the description of the charger, should put you right.

It’s hard to imagine that’s what he really does but why didn’t he just say ‘I put it in my locker’ or ‘I hide in my shoe’. Referring to a ‘special place’ makes the mind tick over and go to places it probably shouldn’t – but I suppose if he’s happy with that then we can’t really complain.

I mean, who are we to come between a man and his ring peace?

No insight from us this time other than to point you in the direction of a brilliant article by Tom English for The Scotsman. He deals with BBC and ITV’s coverage of the World Cup thus far.

Adrian Chiles is flavour of the month on ITV, but his popularity is not what it was. His introduction to England’s game against the Americans was mortifying. Wielding a baseball bat and sending a message to America, he said, “Just stick to your sports, why don’t you?” Chiles was also seen patting a burger, adding: “We really love Americans, just wouldn’t eat a whole one.” He made himself look like a clown.

He covers the BBC, Adebayor’s phone, the commentary sidekicks and much more, and it’s all just spot on. The expert punditry is anything but. The belief from English television producers that a high profile former player is enough to satisfy the viewers is misplaced. It’s worth listening to French journalist Philippe Auclair speak to Arseblog about this very subject in a podcast published after the injury to Aaron Ramsey (interview starts at 14’41)

In Britain, almost every single pundit or analyst of the game, is a former player. As if, having been a horse you can be a jockey.

And we’ve had to deal with nothing but the banal, trite and downright ignorant since this tournament began. It’s particularly interesting as the interest in football blogs like Zonal Marking, which deal with the tactical side of the game, grow in popularity.

It’s no longer acceptable to provide the ‘He’s hit it and it’s gone in the back of the net’ analysis of the game, if you can even call it that. Viewers are more intelligent and expect better. They want more. Drawing a few circles here and pointing a few arrows there is simply not good enough.

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And for a fun look at football coverage, with an Irish slant, check out Danger Here and follow their Twitter for live updates of the kind of commentary that makes our toes curl.

The message from the players at the World Cup has become familiar.  In one voice, they are saying: the time for talking is over.  How wrong they are.

Tomorrow, the real battle begins. Far from the pitch, behind the glass windows of their insulated media booths, the punishing punditry schedule kicks off.  The Beeb and ITV have named their squads – now it’s all down to the individuals.  The World Cup is where pundits can become legends – I have a sneaking suspicion that Martin O’Neill is still making a career as a manager largely of the back of a particularly perceptive spell at the BBC.

For readers not based in the UK, the following could get quite boring quite quickly.  However, I do promise to make at least one disparaging remark about Mark Lawrenson, and if that can’t unite a global audience then I don’t know what can.

The big talking point is the last-minute defection of Adrian Chiles from BBC to ITV. Not only has he consigned the satanically-faced Jim Rosenthal back to whatever Hell he came from, but he’s due to provide the Beeb’s Gary Lineker with some genuine competition in the critical ‘anchor’ role. It’s Gary’s smarm versus Chiles’ charm. I have to say I have a particular fondness for Lineker’s combination of polish and puns, rather than the much-lauded ‘everyman’ quality that Chiles possesses. Also, I find the fact that Chiles is half-Croatian so surprising that it makes me question everything else about him.

There were some nailed-on picks. Guys who were on the plane before the qualifying campaign even began. BBC have the dour miserable trio of Hansen, Lawrenson and Shearer, whilst ITV will lean precariously on the duo of Robbie Earle and Andy Townsend.  Townsend and Lawrenson will both infuriate any viewer with a memory as they attempt to erase history by talking about England as if they didn’t defect to the Republic of Ireland during their playing careers.

Hansen and Lawrenson will be delighted by the arrival on the couch of another self-confessed Liverpool fan: highlights presenter Colin Murray.  The BBC will be hoping his jaunty demeanour and regional accent will make up for Chiles’ absence.  For ITV, the eloquent Matt Smith takes up supporting duties, denied a central role by the badger-faced Croat’s surprise switch.

These pundits represent the spine of each respective teams.  But the flair comes with the surprise appointments.  Here, the two sides have matched each other almost pundit for pundit.  ITV appointed an English manager known to have built his limited success upon some exorbitant transfer spending: Kevin Keegan.  The BBC answered with Harry Redknapp.  BBC plumped for the energetic but often incomprehensible Emmanuel Adebayor.  “Touché”, responded the ITV execs, hiring their own excitable but occasionally unintelligible African, Marcel Desailly.  Both sides have a former dreadlocked Dutch international: Edgar Davids is with ITV, whilst Clarence Seedorf is with BBC.

The commercial station have gone with the most surprising pick: former rugby player Francois Pienaar.  Yes, that’s right, the man recently portrayed by Matt Damon will be taking his place alongside Townsend and Southgate.  You can see what they were thinking: “It’s a World Cup, it’s in South Africa, and it’s football.  He knows about two out of three, so it’ll be fine”.

My tip for Pundit of the Tournament?  The BBC’s Roy Hodgson.  Yes, he sounds like a North London cab driver, but he is an intelligent, articulate man who knows global football inside out.  I’m actually looking forward to hearing his analysis, which is more than I can say for most of these folk.  I’ll be popping out for half-time cups of tea and flicking over to Wimbledon.