Today’s football pundit must drive engagement, stir debate and emotions – never mind nuance, ambiguity or ebb and flowIt’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...
Desperation to keep games off pay-TV is holding up £300m CVC deal and there is a danger rugby union could be left behindWhen an advisory panel reviewed in 2009 the list of sporting events that had to be broadcast on terrestrial television, the Welsh Assembly submitted a proposal that the Group A list, made up of matches or tournaments that could not be sold to pay TV for live coverage, should include Wales’s home matches in the Six Nations.It argued that as the television audience for those games amounted to 65% of the population, the national interest demanded that they be kept free for all. The panel agreed and amended the Group A list accordingly in their report for the...
Raheem Sterling, Lewis Hamilton and Ben Stokes have used social media to fight back against a hostile pressLet’s begin with Bob Nudd. Now, this may seem a strange place to start an article about the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards when the show has come up with its strongest shortlist since the 2012 Olympics and, in all honesty, even Bob himself seemed a bit surprised when I called him up this past week to talk about it. “You can probably guess why I’m calling,” I started. “No,” he stopped. “Is it something to do with the election?” Not the election Bob, but the other big vote. The one you should have won, back in 1991 when Nudd, four‑times...
The BBC has reprimanded its cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew after a foul-mouthed rant against journalist Jonathan LiewOh, stop it Aggers. The news that Jonathan Agnew MBE, the BBC’s voice of cricket, has been reprimanded by the corporation for repeatedly calling a journalist at the Independent “a cunt” might come as a bit of shock to those who follow Agnew’s sunny broadcast presence.Everyone loves a high-profile tiff. But this isn’t really a tiff, just a bad judgment call on one side. Agnew has since apologised to Jonathan Liew after the abusive direct messages came to light. Continue reading...
Gary Lineker has led a largely stellar cast of voices while on the other side Eni Aluko has shone and Patrice Evra was a disasterMain host: Gary Lineker Continue reading...