From Sky Sports frotting to TNT boredom: The week in football TV
The most entertaining league in the world came to a climax on Friday with Napoli and Inter fighting for the title. Adam Summerton has been in the comms seat for most of the season, lucky boy. And he forms a dream team with Don Hutchison. I like that both are voluble about loving it and really get behind the drama.
It’s Napoli v Cagliari and it’s superb as Inter took the lead and topped the table while Napoli were drawing. It was an intense, direct, open, attacking game. A brilliantly executed goal from Scott McTominay, who has been bloody great week after week and is hailed as a hero all across Naples. He even has a pizza named after him – the McFratm (McBro). It has a white base, fior di latte cheese from Agerola, baked potatoes (on a pizza!), lightly spiced Scottish Lorne sausage and flakes of melted aged cheddar.
“The tomatoes are working for him,” says Don of his love of the fruit. That’d never have happened at Old Trafford. They should all leave for Italy. A superb move. That they couldn’t work out where to play him, even when Steve Clark showed them, says a lot.
It’s a commentating masterclass of reflecting the tension and the excitement. There’s also a brilliant goal from Romelu Lukaku, powering his way through from the halfway line. It was his 12th season in double figures but he was never properly appreciated here for some reason. On came Philip Billing, another who escaped the Premier League mediocrity; he has gone from Huddersfield and Bournemouth to become an Italian champion.
On Saturday I had two screens divided between the Scottish Cup final and the play-off final. The Brexit Bulldog was souring milk as usual sounding like a phone-in caller who declares he has ’strong opinions’ but doesn’t know any facts at all or which information he’s used to derive them. He just really annoys me, so I turned off and concentrated on the cup final.
The Scottish Cup final is a chance for someone who isn’t Celtic to win. The league isn’t a fair fight but the cups offer a chance for others. Aberdeen defended well despite only having the ball 19% of the time! In a strong performance all round, BBC Scotland deployed almost all its football team, minus Michael Stewart and with Shaun Maloney. Scott Brown looked radioactive; he didnae get that tan in Ayr. Him and Rachel Corsie did a good half-time breakdown, better than usual. It went to penalties, Celtic missed two and Aberdeen won with four great strikes. Their first trophy in 35 years. It’s the year of the underdog in the cups and achieved with a captain who suffers from the awful Crohn’s disease. Inspiring.
I caught the second half of the women’s Champions League final. A superb game. Barcelona looked likely to score with every attack but Arsenal took the lead. Ellen Ellard was a good commentator on TNT, not overly intrusive and gimmicky. Arsenal were incredibly resolute and found space really well. And they bloody won. It didn’t even cost £714million or involve eating a gold steak. Which is probably why they beat the best side in the world. They played 15 games to get to the final and became the first to go right through from the qualifying rounds to the final.
Fara Williams, surely the only England footballer to ever live on the streets for seven years, resplendent all in pink, spoke so passionately afterwards in her magnificent distinctive accent. Everyone’s emotion afterwards was very affecting and so positive. Tremendous and surely generationally inspirational.
A delighted Wrighty came on the pitch dressed like an African mercenary in an army jacket and shades. David Dein was there, so was Alex Scott, but where was Captain Black? The occasion was better without him, in truth. It wasn’t an occasion for scammers who are paid a fortune to sell failure as success. If anyone doubts the popularity of women’s football, the crowd here was big and with a febrile 4,500 back at the Emirates.
The last Premier League game day on Sky Sports was, by contrast, a bit lame, and saw them frotting themselves desperately about ‘the race for the Champions League’ to try and invest some interest in the day but everything was, in the end, rather predictable, finishing with Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea as the top four and Spurs winning the Europa League – five of the old ‘Big Six’. Plus ça change.
And unless you’re a supporter and even if you are, how much do you really care if Villa or Newcastle finish fifth? Fifth! Christ. It seemed appropriate that Newcastle did by losing. Losing in order to succeed. The joy of making the Champions League shows you how much money matters more than anything else now or what else are they celebrating? Yay! We finished 18 points off winning the league. The glory, eh. If you can buy this, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
The Liverpool game was inevitably on Super Sunday but the commentary was especially unlistenable and wilfully performative. Almost self-parody.
Remember when pro-VAR people used to paint apocalyptic scenarios such as a goal being wrongly disallowed that costs the club millions? Remember they said VAR would stop that happening? Oops. We said it would make everything, including referees, worse and we told you why. We were right. Everyone, even the die-hards, must see that now. But here we are. Like Brexit, there is a good version, honest, it just goes to a different school. You can admit you were wrong, you know. You’ve let the ghouls in and now they won’t leave.
I watched it all on Soccer Saturday to avoid any actual football. I mean, trying to make out the Forest v Chelsea game was in any way tense where the worst outcome was qualifying for the Conference League took us for idiots. At least Spurs can be relied on to be embarrassingly dreadful, losing 4-1 at home, with the most defeats for a side not relegated.
When did players start celebrating by pogoing? I need answers.
Gary Lineker’s last MOTD comment that “rather like my football career, everyone else did the hard work and I got the plaudits” was perfectly judged and spoke volumes of the man. It reflects the awful state of our largely right-wing, intolerant media and public affairs that such an obviously decent man and an excellent broadcaster should have become such a hate figure above and beyond other more rancid, contemptible targets.
A reasoned, mild fella has been treated as if a radical revolutionary by that section of the population who have to lay off their vile self-loathing on someone and chose one of the least appropriate. Yes, it is utterly mad and completely ridiculous, especially as he’s criticised by the ‘you can’t say anything these days’ mob who, ironically, never bloody shut up talking about the things you supposedly can’t talk about.
Ross County v Livingston in the play-off second leg was brilliant, the away side winning 4-2 after being 2-0 down, 1-1 after the first leg and getting promoted. Superb goal by Robbie Muirhead. Great exciting comms from Ian Crocker and Chris Sutton, both great servants to Scottish football.
Even if you didn’t see it, believe me, you already know what TNT’s coverage of the Conference final was like. It’d be nice to have a break from the standard formula. Worth avoiding until kick-off, though the Antony package looked nice. How many times can you keep saying “the tension is building”? The answer, when you’re Emma Dodds, Joe Cole and Steve Sidwell and you’ve been tasked with filling for 90 minutes, is a sodding lot. Everyone says it again and again.
Lucy Ward did almost casually say during commentary “of course, they have a massive financial advantage”, and that set the win into proper context. They had a couple of hours to mention this but, as is traditional, they ignored the gulf of resources between the teams and that just is dishonest and shamefully so. Don’t harsh the buzz, man.