Ask anyone my age to name the greatest ever football commentator and they will hark back to the 'Golden Age' of football commentators. The names they mention will include Brian Moore, John Motson and of course the legendary Kenneth Woolstenhome who exclaimed "They think it's all over, it is now" as Geoff Hurst completed his hatrick and England won the World cup in 1966. There are plenty of others, perhaps not held in such high esteem, but loved none the less, such as David Coleman, who's mistakes prompted his own column in Private Eye called "Colemanballs". One feature all of these shared was that they were not footballers, they were media professionals. No one has ever stated that they were rubbish at their job because they had not played professional football at a high level.
Then we have the pundits. My first recollection of "Expert pundits" was Jimmy Hill on match of the day. Hill had been a player, manager, chair of the PFA and was an excellent pundit. He would cast a professional eye over the weekends football and give informed views. His experience was second to none and he always had something interesting to say. I'd love to hear his views on VAR. Football punditry started to change with the Saint and Greavsie show. Both Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves had been top level footballers, but the show was as much about the banter and chemistry of the pair as it was about their expert views. They were both great on TV and the show was a classic.
When Sky TV became a player, we had Richard Keys and Andy Gray. In some ways the Morecombe and Wise of football punditry. Keys, the professional broadcaster, was the straight man. Gray, a top level footballer, but also great on TV and an informative pundit. As Satellite and online coverage grew, more and more pundits were called upon. Sadly, the quality control did not really improve. Match Of the Day had Gary Lineker as lead. Lineker was a brilliant player, Englands second highest ever goal scorer when he retired. He comes across as an affable and pleasant presenter and adapted to broadcasting as easily as he'd scored goals. He has had a conveyor belt of pundits, until recently retired male footballers tow ork with. Some have been brilliant. The chemistry between Roy Keane and Micah Richards perhaps the best modern example. Some have been rather boring and uninformative, such as Paul Scholes, Alan Shearer, Michael Owen etc.
With the advent of Twitter, we started to see a new trend. Footballing demagogues, who decide that a career kicking a football around qualifies them as social commentators. It's a free world, I'm a self appointed social commentator, so I have no problem with an ex footballer doing the same. What perhaps I do find a tad galling, is the sense of self importance that they develop. What is a tad strange is that the two biggest proponents of the art are players that I used to like in their playing days. Matthew Le Tissier was a brilliant player, one who I loved watching and one who should have been a guaranteed pick for England. His tweeting, is rather 'interesting'. Matt has carved out a career on Twitter as a bit of conspiracy theorist. He is one of the leading voices of the anti vax movement and has over half a million followers. Sky dispensed with his services after 15 years as a result of his tweeting. Le Tissier challenged the company and was told his tweeting risked bringing the brand into disrepute. Le Tissier countered asking why they still employed Jordan Henderson, who had been suspended for spitting at a young girl. He clearly felt aggrieved that he felt his activities were held to a different standard that certain other well known pundits. For me, the issue is a difficult one. I believe that Le Tissier is wrong and his tweets are dangerous, as vaccination has clearly worked in ridding the world of terrible diseases such as smallpox and diptheria (which nearly killed my mum in 1937). But if he's not spouting this on Sky, should he be allowed to hold and tweet about controversial views, if it is not illegal? The BBC is more tolerant of Gary Linaker's tweeting and I can understand why Le Tissier feels he has not been equitably treated. Then again, Sky was set up by the Murdoch empire and when has The Sun or The News of The World ever treated anyone fairly. They are a private company, unlike the BBC, so if they decide that Le Tissier is bad for the brand, then that is up to them. Matt really should have thought about who he was getting into bed with, when he started collecting the pay cheques.
The second of our fledging football demagogues is Joey Barton. Joey was a product of the Manchester City academy. At a time when the team was rubbish, I rather liked Joey. He always wore his heart on his sleeve. He would put a shift in. He had a poor disciplinary record, but from my own days playing pub football badly, I took the view that a player that never got booked or sent off was a player that didn't really care enough to get stuck in. I recall one rather dodgy manager berating me, after I got sent off, saying "If you are going to get sent off, at least do the b@st@rd properly!". Joey took that to heart. When Manchester City beat QPR with the last minute Aguero winner, Barton (who by now was at QPR) was sent off. As he went off he started punching and picking fights with City players, in an attempt to take a City player with him. Joey rather amused his many admirers during a loan spell at Marseille with a TV interview, where he spoke to French TV in English, but put on a fake French accident.
When Joey finished playing, he had a couple of stints as a rather bad manager at Fleetwood Town and Bristol Rovers. His last job ended in October 2023. Joey has clearly been looking for a new outlet for his many talents. Sadly, it seems that the job offers have not rolled in. He has launched a campaign against female football commentators. Barton feels that as they have not played football at a proper standard, they are not qualified to be commentators or pundits. Barton feels that they spoil the whole thing and even called Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward as "the Fred and Rose West of football commentary" after they appeared as pundit and co-commentator on an ITV match broadcast.
I went up to the Etihad to watch Manchester City play Huddersfield on Sunday with my millennial son. On such trips, we spend a lot of time discussing football and the issues that surround it. The subject of Joey Bartons comments came up. I watch a lot of football with my son. One of the biggest gripes we have is that the commentary and punditry is rubbish. We refer to the talking head discussions at the end of the game as "the old b@ll@cks" and he refuses to watch it. He has a special dislike of BT sports commentary, which is invariably awful (now TNT Sports). Football is not science, almost every controversial issue in a game is to some degree subjective (apart from goal line technology). The number of times there is a red card, that an ex player will say "If ever you've played the game, you'd never give that". Oddly though, there are no ex players acting as refs of advising VAR. It is a long time since I played any sort of game with a manager, but they'd always tell me to "get stuck in". If you took out an opponent, in the act of winning a ball, that was always seen as a benefit, not something terrible. I've no idea whether this is now out of fashion, but I simply refuse to believe that managers like Revie, Clough, Shankly, Ferguson etc would not think along those lines. The likes Norman Hunter, Stuart Pearce, Roy Keane etc did not take care of opponents wellbeing in a tackle. Oddly no pundits ever really mention this in the modern game. As the rules have tightened, to prevent injuries, so the pundits have become less honest about what is expected of players by their managers.
When we discussed Bartons comments, there were three main reasons we disagreed with him. The first and most obvious is that most pundits are as dull as dishwater. If dull female pundits were replacing sparkling experts, who astound us with their wit and knowledge, he'd have a point. But they don't, they either have nothing of interest to say, or are opinionated, biased and rather uninteresting (Robbie Savage is a fine example of this genre). The second is that, as mentioned at the start of this blog, some of the greatest commenators were not even footballers, they were excellent broadcasters, on top of their brief. Third, the level that a player played at has no correlation with their ability to commentate. Take for example Roy Keane and Micah Richards. Much as I loathe Keane as a Man City fan, I concede he is a far better player than Micah Richards. Not only that, he is far more knowledgeable about football. However Richards is far better TV. When he works with Keane, he elevates Keane's punditry. Often he does this by talking rubbish, which riles Keane and gets something interesting that he wouldn't say otherwise. Sometimes he flatters Keane to get a golden nugget. The bottom line is that Richards is a great TV performer, despite being a fairly average footballer. If you take Joey Bartons theory as to who should commentate to its logical conclusion, only Champions League winners should commentate on Champions League finals. I don't think a team of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes would do much for my enjoyment. As to the World Cup? We'd be stuck completely there.
As far as I am concerned, Barton hasn't really thought this comments through. As female pundits are a fairly new phenomena, many are finding their feet as media professionals. As far as commercial broadcasters such as Sky are concerned, they act purely in their own commercial interests. When Sky started broadcasting football, the audience was largely male. With the rise of Womens football, this has changed and the female pundits help grow the audience. My daughters never watched football when they were small. The England womens team has changed that. The advertisers and subscribers, who ultimately pay the wages of the pundits and commentators, want as wide an audience as possible. They see female pundits as key to accessing their audience.
It may be a useful experiment in socialogical research, given the red button technology, to give a Joey Barton option on Sky, where you have a commentary team picked by Joey Barton as an alternative option. I suspect that there would be an audience for it, but I'd be surprised if too many people under 40 years old would bother with it.
The bottom line in all of this, is that as far as I am concerned, football punditry is pretty much the art of talking b@ll@x about football and no sane person would want to watch too much of it, except when they want to see replays of their chosen teams goal. I don't much care who is spouting it, so long as they are entertaining. I suspect that where Joey is going wrong is that he's taking the whole issue too seriously. Who would have thought that someone who puts on a fake French accent to do a TV interview in France,would fall into such a trap.
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