Watching ITV’s half-time studio discussion yesterday between football pundits Roy Keane, Peter Reid and Gareth Southgate for the City vs Utd FA Cup match, I felt like I was being subjected to lowbrow torture. I don’t expect to be intellectually challenged when tuning into a game of football, but the level of their chat was so mindnumbingly inane I almost felt like booting the TV in.
Of course it didn’t help my frame of mind that I was undergoing cold turkey at the time after coming off the opiate tramadol for back pain, but I think I’d have reached my punditry breaking point regardless. It was quite simply years and years of moronic football commentary coming to a head.
In a 10-minute discussion about the first half which saw Utd go 3-0 up, all the pundits kept going on and on about was how Vincent Kompany’s two-footed challenge on Nani wasn’t a sending off. Have they not being watching English football during the past five years? A two-footed tackle always results in a red card these days. Those are the rules. Rules that are there for a reason – to stop players picking up horrific injuries – and which have been applied consistently for several seasons now.
Yes, the rules weren’t so strict when Keane, Reid and Southgate were playing but the game has moved on, unlike their punditry. So why do we still have to be subjected to their misinformed gibberish? Would it have been too much to ask for some insightful half-time analysis which highlighted the tactics and play that resulted in one team`s superiority over the other? After all, top-level football is like chess nowadays. Not that you`d know it of course listening to the rubbish on offer from these supposed experts.*
The standard of punditry on the BBC’s flagship football programme Match of the Day is just as bad. After ten pints of snakebite and black I could come up with more meaningful analysis than Alan Shearer. How hard is it, after all, to state that “the boy done good” after Rooney scores a hat-trick or “Tottenham were sensational” after a 5-0 win? What annoys me the most, though, is how black and white the MOTD boys are in their views. One week Blackburn are, according to Alan Hansen, “bad, just soooo bad!” after they narrowly lose 2-1, but “brilliant...brilliant!” when Rovers scrape a 2-1 win the following week.
There are never any grey areas with TV football punditry; each team’s performance is judged only on a week-by-week basis in complete isolation. Thus a first defeat for a side who’d previously won three on the bounce makes them rubbish overnight. What a load of shallow nonsense.
It’s not like the alternative on the radio is that much better either. 5Live football commentary is undoubtedly a step up from its TV counterpart, but you’re still subjected to the same old hackneyed views from people like Alan Green who habitually declares everything on and off the pitch as either “Absolutely disgraceful!” or “Absolutely shocking!” and nothing else in between. Once you move onto TalkSport and other less well-known radio stations you might as well check in to the looney bin. In fact, you need to be certifiably mad to agree with anything they say.
Compare this all to genuinely insightful pundits in other sports like John McEnroe in tennis or Phil Liggett in cycling – people who actually teach you things you don’t know about their sports – and you realise football is horribly short-changing its viewers and has been for some time. I know I`m not the only one who thinks this. The question is what can be done?
All football pundits are morons. I dare you to disagree.
Hahahaha, first of all I'm glad you were on tramadol for a reason rather than just taking it!
I tend to agree with you for all the reasons above. You're lucky you don't have to deal with the scottish football pundits! Even more shameful than those south of the border!
Very much agree, insulting most of time. Although the a large proportion who watch MOTD etc have very few brain cells so it caters for them well, I'm sure we'll all the agree the average football fan is not the brightest spark.
Know how you feel regarding Tramadol, had trouble coming off that stuff after a bad accident, even worse than Liquid Morphine, and my god that sh*t was good.
The Sky punditry is much better, and the person who's really surprised me so far is Gary Neville. When I first saw that he'd become a pundit, I was flabbergasted, because I'd always assumed he was just an idiot. Having watched him though, I think he's insightful and has a good tv manner, as well as seeming like a good natured and nice guy.
Completely agree with the broader point re pundits, but I think that there could be a question mark against Kompany's sending off, if I'm understanding the rules correctly.
According to the FIFA laws of the game, "a two footed tackle that takes down the opponent" is serious foul play and therefore a red card. Clearly that doesn't apply to Kompany's tackle. The more recent addition appears to be the inclusion of "Any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force and endangering the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play." I can't find anywhere in the rules where it actually states that a two footed is, per se, a red card offence. Clearly the vast majority of two footed tackles will fall into one or both of these definitions, and be deemed a red card offence; but I'd argue that Kompany's is possible a rare occasion when this isn't the case. Happy to be proved wrong if someone can point me to the part about two footed tackles being banned outright.
@rob - that fella is a tool. An amusing tool sometimes, but still a tool. Basically Roy Keane's lapdog for most of the 90s.
@TG - I like the sound of liquid morphine!
@sea - agreed, Gary (one half of the "busy c*nts", according to Jaap Stam) is watchable.
@Lucky - you are a pedantic moron
Someone pointed out to me last night that Martin Brundle deserves a mention as a top pundit. I second that. I'm not a massive F1 fan, but I could listen to that guy all day as he's so knowledgeable about motor racing and more importantly he always makes an effort to explain the technicalities of the sport to viewers. David Coulthard ain't bad either.
Martin Brundle is excellent, I agree. He has such passion for the sport and he's able to pass that on to the audience in a way that is still accessible to the people who watch that aren't massive fans. I enjoy listening to him whenever I happen to watch F1. He's always genuinely excited about the race.
I wonder if the BBC MOTD pundits are jaded by having to get excited about a highlights reel rather than a live match. I may be wrong, but their performance and analysis does improve a bit when there are major tournaments on. Even Adebayor was quite good at the World Cup!
I was also pleasantly suprised by Jake Humphries. The best f1 punditary came from Antony Davidson during the practice sessions. It seemed to be aimed at fans with a working knowledge of the sport and despite the best efforts of his co-commentator occasionally explaining what Davidson was talking about was often quite technical. All in all it was hugely +ev and really interesting.
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