Today’s football pundit must drive engagement, stir debate and emotions – never mind nuance, ambiguity or ebb and flow
It’s thrilling, visceral television. The sort of raw, unbridled authenticity that makes Roy Keane one of the most compelling pundits not just in football, but in any sport. “I’m fuming here,” he says at half-time, with Tottenham 1-0 up against Manchester United and Keane sitting in the Sky Sports studio. And in those words lie a sort of mission statement, a definitive affirmation of an irrefutable truth: football is back, and how we’ve missed it.
No, that doesn’t really work. Let’s try it this way. It was unhinged, unsettling, shocking for all the wrong reasons. As he tore apart Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw, rounded on David de Gea for his failure to make a routine save, Keane again displayed the sort of indiscriminate rage that has made him one of the most toxic out-of-work coaches in the game. “I would be fighting him at half-time, swinging punches at that guy,” he spat, a sentiment that Sky seems perfectly happy to broadcast to a primetime family audience. The sooner this petty man with his unresolved anger issues is off our screens, the better.
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