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.

Winners

Ghana – anyone who has had to listen to ITV’s consistently patronising commentary about the plucky little Africans will have uncurled their toes at some stage and thought about various ways in which they might kill Peter Drury. Nevertheless, for the tournament itself it’s good that we still have an African represenstative.

It might be different for us watching from afar but for those on the ground it’s clear that it means a lot to the South Africans, and I’m sure many others, that Africa maintain a footballing interest in the tournament.

Asamoah Gyan – he looks like he could kill you with his patented death stare, but the Rennes striker is really making a mark at this World Cup. He showed pace, power and expert finishing to score the winner against the USA last night, and his stock will continue to rise as he gets another chance to show his stuff in the quarter finals. It would be no surprise to see him make a move to a bigger club after the tournament is over.

As well as that he becomes the first African to score four goals in a tournament since Roger Milla in 1990.

Luis Suarez – The Ajax striker scored a remarkable 49 goals in all competitions for his club last season. He has three so far at this World Cup, including a late, great winner against South Korea yesterday. Again he’s one the scouts from all the big clubs in Europe will be looking at, trying to figure out if he’s the real deal or if, when you take him out of Holland, he becomes the bastard child of Kezman and Alfonso Alves.

Losers

Bob Bradley – It’s a bit harsh but the US coach got his team selection wrong yesterday. To be fair to him he recognised it very quickly, hauling off the hapless Richard Clark after just half an hour, but at that stage the USA were already 1-0 down, conceding yet another early goal to Kevin Prince Boateng.

They conceded after 4 minutes to England, 5 to Ghana, 13 to Slovenia and after just a few minutes of extra time last night. There’s a mental weakness there which doesn’t quite add up when you think about the character the Americans have shown to get back into games. Ultimately you have to look at the coach and the way his team are prepared.

Peter Drury – as spoken about above. His verbal pats on the head to the continent of Africa are stomach churning, patronising and frankly unacceptable. Somebody make him stop. Or somebody stop him. I’m good with either.

Sven-Göran Eriksson – he might be a very nice chap, happy to talk to journalists and so forth, but resigning from the Ivory Coast job, and taking with him a €3m payoff does little to change the perception that the Swede is football management’s greatest and most effective mercenary.

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Agree or disagree with any of those? Got one or two of your own to add? Feel free to comment. We don’t bite.

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.

As you might expect, one nation dominates today. But let’s get the rest out of the way first.

WINNERS

Celebrations
After a muted start, yesterday’s goalscorers delighted Coca-Cola executives everywhere by embracing the spirit of Roger Milla and getting entertainingly over-excited. First Liverpool-bound Milan Jovanovic dove over a hoarding and in to a moat, then Slovenia produced a strange collective pan-pipe mime. More weirdness please.

The Bradley family
Manager Bob masterminded a comeback from two goals down in which his son Michael scored the vital equaliser. Mrs Bradley must have been dead proud.

LOSERS

Alberto Undiano Mallenco
The Spanish referee looked like a man who’d just discovered post-its as he handed out nine yellow cards, two of which saw Miroslav Klose unjustly sent off.

Lukasz Podolski
Recovered his FC Köln form with a string of misses, including a penalty. I knew he wasn’t really German.

Samir Handanovič
As an international goalkeeper, it is an advantage to not be afraid of the ball.

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And now, it’s what you’ve all been waiting for:

Wayne Rooney
As Rooney lambasted the fans for booing a dreadful English display, his fleet of PR-people must have been banging their heads against the wall.  You can’t question the commitment of ordinary folk who save up to journey halfway round the world to cheer on their country’s team.  Especially when, in spite of being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to be there, you’re turning in such poor performances.  To be clear: I have never and would never boo my own team, club or country, but Rooney’s reaction was unprofessional and ill-judged.

Steven Gerrard
Called this “Algeria’s World Cup Final”.  Patronising in the extreme, and symptomatic of the attitude problems that dog this England side.  Algeria, as things stand, have about as good a chance of England as reaching the actual World Cup Final.  Chew on that, Stevie.

Jamie Carragher
135 minutes played, two yellow cards accumulated.  He’s now out of the game with Slovenia, and with any luck won’t be back.  If an opposition attacker breaks in to a light jog, Carragher struggles.  Full-on sprints leave him heaving.  Experience doesn’t count for much when you’re just not very good anymore.

Joe Cole
Being behind Shaun Wright-Phillips in the pecking order would be devastating for Cole, had he not spent much of the season rehearsing by playing back-up to Salomon Kalou.

Clive Tyldesley & Andy Townsend
In the ocean of awfulness that was England’s display, these two were great icebergs of idiocy, perilously unavoidable to all stuck with ITV’s coverage.  Their obsession with Gerrard being played out of position overrode any deeper analysis of the other ten players on the pitch.  It took until the 91st minute for Townsend to point out that Rooney ‘wasn’t having his best game’.  Perhaps the most painful part of Tyldesley’s repertoire is his attempt at cod psychoanalysis of the England players, reading childhood trauma in to every misplaced pass or furrowed brow.  Infuriating.

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.

WINNERS

Maicon
My pick for Player of the Tournament broke The Dear Leader’s heart with a goal of ferocious power and skill, swerving a shot in to the near post from the most unlikely of angles.  And yes: he meant it.

Robinho
Looks fitter, happier, and better than at any point in his time with Man City. A loan spell at Santos has revitalised him; a good World Cup could be the making of him.

Jong Tae-Se
His tears before the game left us wondering if he’d crumble under the expectation, but ‘The People’s Rooney’ delivered a performance that will have had European scouts furiously scribbling in their metaphorical notebooks (they’ve all got iPads these days).  Pace, strength, and a great first touch – the only surprise about his trial at Premier League Blackburn is that it didn’t end in a permanent move.

Winston Reid
A crucial block at one end, then a vital goal at the other. Not a bad World Cup debut for the FC Midtjylland centre-back.

Jose Mourinho
Although absent in person, the tactics at the World Cup thus far have the grubby mark of Mourinho all over them.  There’ve been more parked buses than at Alton Towers.  Here’s hoping it opens up in the next round of fixtures.

LOSERS

Cristiano Ronaldo
Aside from one thirty yard effort which crashed against the post, the man with the world’s largest Adam’s apple could only offer a dive over Didier Zokora and a spat with Guy Demel.

Kaka
Overweight and out of form, Kaka’s frustrated showing against North Korea was sadly typical of his annus horribilis.

Robbie Earle
Sacked for passing on complimentary tickets. It came as a big surprise to me – if he was going to get sacked, I always assumed it’d be for being a rubbish pundit.

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Is Sven a winner for hammering the Ivory Coast into a cohesive unit?  Does Danny’s woeful performance for Portugal mean he should be among out losers?  Contest my picks, add your own, and generally make merry.

It is with a heavy heart that we have to announce the sudden closure of  Bobby’s Box Office Ltd.

Md, CEO and Marketing Officer Bobby ‘Golden Seats’ Earle was unavailable for comment when our reporter pushed his way past Serious Fraud Squad Officers and knocked at his caravan office door earlier this afternoon.

“Following claims by FIFA that official 2010 World Cup tickets may have been used for ambush marketing, ITV has reviewed its entire ticket allocation for the tournament.

“Immediate investigations indicated that a block of ITV tickets would appear to have been used for unauthorised purposes during the Holland v Denmark match.

“Further enquiries have revealed that a substantial number of tickets allocated to Robbie Earle for family and friends have been passed to a third party in breach of FIFA rules.

“As a result, Robbie Earle’s contract with ITV has been terminated with immediate effect.”

WINNERS

Vincent Enyeama
The Nigerian goalkeeper provided the tournament’s first outstanding individual performance against Argentina, winning his duel with Lionel Messi and keeping the scoreline at a respectable 1-0.  Despite being only 5’9″ tall, he lived up to his nickname ‘The Cat’ with a string of extraordinary reflex saves.

Diego Maradona
Yes, his cheap suit made him look like the world’s least trustworthy car salesman, but the World Cup’s most mental manager was on good form.  His touchline antics were as entertaining as his 3-4-3 formation, and whilst his disjointed team might struggle against better sides they’ve started with the positive momentum Maradona will have craved.

LOSERS

Rob Green
Emerged from the cocoon of speculation over who’d start between the sticks as a true England goalkeeper.  Move to Arsenal looks all the more probable.

Fabio Capello
Capello had two difficult calls to make, and he picked Green and James Milner, who was withdrawn after a torrid half-an-hour in which he picked up a booking and struggled to contain Hannover right-back Steve Cherundolo.  In his place, Capello brought on Shaun Wright-Phillips as a left-winger.  Bemusing, to say the least.

Greece
Greece’s game plan relies on keeping a clean sheet, and scoring a solitary winning goal, probably from a set piece.  Fall behind, as yesterday, and they’re tactically inert.  A side so boring and inflexible do not deserve to go through.  Fortunately, they won’t.

ITV
I think the kids call this an “epic fail”.