MANY YEARS ago, Sky Sports had a recurring feature called FanZone.
The premise was simple. Two football fans were selected, presumably at random, to commentate on a match between the respective sides they supported and viewers had the option of availing of this service.
It was an unapologetically biased analysis of football matches, with the stand-in commentators often wearing the jerseys of the teams they followed.
Quite why this idea ultimately came to a halt has never been made entirely clear, but an uncharitable interpretation might be that it would now be difficult to distinguish from the professional analysts.
As long as former and current footballers are solely being employed as pundits, an association with a certain team(s) will be inevitable.
And that should not necessarily be a problem. The most skilled experts are capable of objective analysis whether or not they have affiliations with certain clubs.
Nowadays though, it often seems as if pundits essentially serving as club representatives is not just commonplace but invariably encouraged by their studio bosses.
Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville are excellent analysts for the most part, but their brilliant, in-depth tactical breakdowns of Premier League matches on Monday Night Football are sometimes undermined by the tiresome ‘my club is better than your club’ Liverpool-Man United ‘banter’.
They are far from the worst offenders, however.
Occasionally, literal club ambassadors such as Micah Richards are expected (at least theoretically) to share dispassionate views on the team to whom they are so closely connected.
At one point, during the BBC’s live coverage of Saturday’s FA Cup final, presenter Gary Lineker jokingly compared Richards to a “fanboy” while there were references to the former City player “itching” to join in with the winners’ post-match celebrations.
It would be unfair to purely single out Richards, however, as you could make similar criticisms of Alan Shearer with Newcastle, Rio Ferdinand with Man United and numerous others.
It doesn’t have to be this way, of course.
At the height of their RTÉ popularity for instance, you could hardly accuse Eamon Dunphy, John Giles and Liam Brady of being too kind or fanboy-esque in their analysis of certain teams.
In fact, as numerous Ireland managers will attest, an ostensible closeness to a certain side meant their assessments were often even more harsh and exacting than usual.
And if there was even the merest hint that any of their judgements were coloured by an allegiance to a specific team, they were called out on it (recall Dunphy’s memorable line about Brady having “jumped the fence” when he was perceived to be going too easy on Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger).
The Irish trio in their pomp, whether you agreed with them or not, had a certain fearlessness and amazing ability to simply say what they felt without fear of the consequences.
Compare it to the BBC’s coverage of the cup final yesterday.
Amid all the hyperbole and praise of Man City, there was an additional context that was sorely absent from the discussion.
The fact that the Etihad outfit have benefited hugely by being a nation-state club was not mentioned, nor was there any attempt to delve into them being remarkably charged with 115 alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules last February.
Naysayers will inevitably complain that football and politics should be kept separate, but then choosing to ignore two hugely significant talking points in relation to City is in itself a political decision by the BBC and every other English broadcaster all too happy to overlook these inconvenient truths.
Instead, football discourse among the English broadcasters often tends to be dominated by trivial, boring, essentially unanswerable questions like ‘did Arsenal bottle it,’ or ‘who would make it into a combined XI of City and the ’99 United team’. At times, it feels like these discussion points are intended to distract from matters of substance, such as why Guardiola’s side winning five titles in six years is a hugely worrying development for the long-term health of the Premier League and the sport in general.
Yet the idea of the City coach being grilled by the BBC team on Saturday, rather than the softball questions that actually were asked post-match, was never a realistic prospect when again, one of the people on the panel was a club ambassador — it’s a point worth repeating.
It is disappointing though, especially when you consider that Lineker has gained a reputation for bravely speaking up on other political matters, from Qatar’s controversial hosting of the World Cup to Britain’s similarly divisive migration policy.
And to revert to another Irish example, back in August 2020, when Richie Sadlier spoke on RTÉ about PSG being “run by a regime with traces of torturing journalists to imprisoning gay people and a host of other human rights abuses,” his comments went viral. It wasn’t because the point he was making was especially new or insightful, but that it was such a rare example of an English-speaking pundit actually addressing these issues in a frank way that would be almost unthinkable across the water.
On the other hand, there is a cosiness in the English game that exists between the clubs and the broadcasters that is undeniable.
But perhaps this Trumpian, Fox News-esque approach is what most football-supporting viewers want. It is not a far-fetched theory or difficult to understand why they would rather indulge in a kind of fantasy world of combined XIs rather than be regularly reminded of the unfortunate compromises that have made their clubs’ success possible.
Maybe they want cheerleaders for the various teams as opposed to journalistic rigour.
It must also be said that there are certainly no shortage of print journalists across the water willing to look at the rise of entities like Man City and Newcastle with a far more sceptical eye, but English football is big business and so it is perhaps not surprising that the TV companies, given the many millions they have ploughed into the game, are decidedly less eager to rock the boat by seriously questioning their success.
