One early blessing for us terrestrial TV viewers in the BBC’s putative coverage of the World Cup is that we are spared the sanctimonious presence of its former moral-arbiter, the oh-so-Woke Gary Lineker.
Saint Gary is doing fine, mind. His Goalhanger production company is on-site in New York with a daily Netflix show, reviewing the tournament with co-hosts Alan Shearer and Micah Richards. Mr Lineker is laughing all the way to the bank – in a reputed £14million deal – and good luck to our Golden Boot winner of 1986.
And so the BBC coverage launched on Friday night without Gary or the inestimable Des – no surname required – for the first time since 1978, can you believe?, an umbilical cord cut from the only coverage many of us ‘youngsters’ have known.
Des is in contented retirement, while Lineker is enjoying the post-BBC life it seemed he was almost begging to be freed up to exploit. His half-baked apologies for stretching the outer limits of BBC impartiality ran out when he posted a social media clip entitled ‘Zionism explained in two minutes’, featuring a rat, an image historically portrayed in antisemitic propaganda.
There was no way back from that indiscretion, however innocently he claims it was intended.
Whatever else the BBC director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski, a former colleague of mine at the Daily Mail, may be blamed for as a lightning rod for the national broadcaster, he called that dismissal correctly, the defining decision of his career to date.
The BBC’s coverage from Salford lacks the punch of ITV’s offering, but that is largely down to the quality of the pundits
Gabby Logan is, however, an expert anchor and steered them through their first game well
A key issue assailing Kay-Jelski is his insistence on basing his World Cup presenting team in Salford, rather than Mexico, America, or Canada, for the longest-ever group stages of the most-bloated tournament in history, a slow-burner for us all behind the hoopla, half played out in the middle of the night, until England take to the pitch on Wednesday.
Kay-Jelski is accused of penny-pinching rather than promoting the BBC’s enshrined service to the sports-loving licence-fee payer. He contends he is doing us a service, saving on unneeded expenditure.
He argues that he has tens and tens of men on the ground, and that that is enough. His gist: ‘What a relief not to be wasting millions on sending lots more people to America.’
‘Ah,’ says Kay-Jelski, ‘look at our brilliant “state-of-the-art studio,”‘ a retort to Lineker’s taunt that he was in Times Square and the BBC were broadcasting in a ‘green box’ in the North West of England. His enterprising conceit, whether right or wrong, is to project his presenters in front of a digitally created backdrop of the host city of the 54 matches they are covering.
So to their first match, a day on from ITV’s coverage of Mexico’s win over South Africa, Canada’s Group B 1-1 draw with Bosnia. Gabby Logan was an exemplar of calm authority. Wayne Rooney, monosyllabic in his early days at Everton, was one of the pundits. Their ‘star’ turn was Olivier Giroud, a World Cup winner who wears his clothes as perfectly as a mannequin, but is he barely more loquacious than a stuffed shirt? Micah Richards, the third wheel who owned up to having never made it to the World Cup, guffawed as he does. He will be burning airmiles getting on Gary’s show.
It was an excellently solid start from the commentary duo, Steve Wilson and Stephen Warnock, who, as Kay-Jelski would be keen to point out, were live in the stadium. Yes, they did fine, even if they lacked the distinctive, old-school gravitas of a John Motson or Barry Davies, or from further back David ‘one-nil’ Coleman, the best of them all for spine-tingling cadence. Those days of stentorian voices seem to have vanished. It’s a different time.
One pass-the-smelling-salts moment came when Logan looked over her shoulder to tell us she was bringing us New York on that faux backdrop. Richards said: ‘Look over there, you can see Gary Lineker.’ Scuttle on, muttered Kay-Jelski in his own mind, no doubt.
As for the second of three opening ceremonies, Rooney seemed to have no idea who Michael Buble was. ‘So-so,’ rang his punditry of the crooner’s ability, but he is not there to be a music critic, in fairness.
Gary Lineker is finally off doing his own thing, and rather lucratively so, with Goalhanger
The first early-tournament rosette goes to Jon Champion, perhaps the best commentator of the time, post-Clive Tyldesley (jettisoned before the whistle blew), from the night before the BBC’s entry. Champion happily eschews prepared bon mots but it was a prepared line when he talked of Mexico City’s throbbing Azteca Stadium. ‘The bones are still here, a mixture of grubbiness and glamour,’ he declaimed.
And then he bantered in an intelligent way with Ally McCoist, whose jocularity he countered as the decibels rose. ‘We’ve got six weeks of this, so don’t go too soon,’ cautioned Champion, with a light touch.
As for ITV’s pundits, the cream of the terrestrial crop, namely Roy Keane, Gary Neville and the enthusiastic Ian Wright, a Beeb refugee like Champion, they are ready for battle. Their stridency will find their feet when England and Scotland compete and we all care more for their direct opinions. We are still in the phoney war territory of the World Cup.
PS Would the BBC do us a favour and not ram down our ears that this fandango unfolding in three countries is explicitly the ‘Men’s’ World Cup. Even most extreme knuckle-draggers are surely enlightened enough to value the women’s equivalent as a special event in its own right.
But to make this point smacks of pure Wokery rather than being helpfully explanatory for the listener.
Unless otherwise advised, we are happy to assume as the 7am wake-up sounds that this is the tournament made famous by Charlton and Moore, by Pele, Maradona and Messi.
