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clive whittingham: the world cup on tv

Chiles & co’s crisp World Cup debut fails to mask ITV’s ineptitude

Posted: June 13th 2010
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Bizarrely, as the 19th World Cup got underway in South Africa on Friday I was reminded of a theory put forward by The Simpsons’ Professor Frink that by this point in time computers would be so enormous and powerful that only the five richest kings of Europe would be able to afford one. I presume that those kings were the only ones able to enjoy ITV’s online coverage of the opening ceremony and game between South Africa and Mexico.

I love an international football tournament, and in the past have prided myself on being able to see every single match played. I was the one who got up at six in the morning to watch Costa Rica v China at the 2002 World Cup – although I do confess to sleeping through the last 20 minutes of the first half. With this tournament being staged in South Africa I was hopeful that, as they are on roughly the same time as us being almost directly to the south, I may not miss too much of the action due to work. The sensible thing, I would have thought, would be matches at 4pm, 6pm and 8pm. Obviously that’s not proved to be the case, and so every day at the moment two games, including the opening fixture, are being played while I am stuck in the office.

Fear not though, I thought, as a search of the ITV and BBC websites last week confirmed there would indeed be full coverage of all the matches online. Weeks of nagging the company about slow operating systems hindering work flow ensured the delivery of five shiny new  computers with widescreens and high speed processors just in time for the tournament and so on Friday we fired up one of the spare ones in the hope of seeing South Africa open up against the Mexicans. Sadly though there is no option on the ITV website to just see the game. That’s all we wanted, just the match, on the screen, just like you get when you turn the television on. But oh no, if you’re watching online you have to get a stat pack, and a group table, and a bloody chat box, and the latest from Twitter, and a Facebook application, and all manner of interactive crap that media companies and channels absolutely swoon over. Interaction, user generated content, making the viewer an integral part of the viewing experience – absolute fucking bollocks, I just want to watch the game and because of all these bloody add ons and, presumably, the sheer weight of numbers trying to watch it online we had to give up 15 minutes into the game when it refused to load on our brand spanking new computer. “Your computer may not be powerful enough” said the troubleshooting advice, I do hope the five kings had fun tweeting at each other and watching the World’s largest dung beetle officially open the tournament.

And so we settled for the first game via radio, which meant the thick end of an hour listening to Five Live’s Alan Green talk about how cold he was, how awful the game was, how dire the atmosphere was, how everybody hates him and his life is terrible. He’s a swine is Green, capable of turning even the most absorbing and thrilling contest into an absolute snoozefest. He’s never happier than when abusing a referee, and several times during the opening game he set sail on the man in the middle only to be stopped in his tracks by a replay that confirmed the decision was correct all along - the refereeing has been excellent thus far by the way. He hacked, because with that voice that’s the only way it can be described, on about how awful South Africa were for a good hour until they opened the scoring at which point his tone switched to astonishment that such an awful team could ever actually score a goal. The word miracle was mentioned at one point, and believe me as somebody who saw Sammy Koejoe score three times for QPR, South Africa taking the lead against a Mexican side that showed against England in one of their warm up games that they are incapable of defending against even the most basic move or set play was far from miraculous. Perhaps Green might liked to have considered at some point that his criticism of South Africa was actually exaggerated and over the top and therefore it wasn’t such a surprise that they had taken the lead, or that Mexico weren’t “seven or eight goals” ahead as he suggested they should have been. The evening highlights show painted a very different picture from the one he’d offered.

Another well known miserable bastard on the BBC is Alan Hansen, but in fairness he remains a thoroughly excellent, insightful and knowledgeable pundit as long as Liverpool aren’t involved anywhere along the line. He’s willing to give praise when it’s due so whereas Green’s constant moaning and groaning about how awful it is to be sitting there covering a football match (which he always seems to forget is broadcast to people stuck in mundane office, factory or motorway based jobs who would kill to be sitting where he is) grates, when Hansen is miserable about something you know he’s probably right. After sitting through 45 minutes of turgid Algeria v Slovenia he exclaimed that he shouldn’t be forced to sit and watch such dross. He was right, nobody should, at least when the Germans and Austrians contrived to play like that in 1982 they did it deliberately. The team that suffered from that horrendous fix was, ironically, Algeria, so maybe Sunday’s dirge was their payback to the world all these years later.

There was a goal scored eventually, thankfully, and the BBC showed it clearly as it happened, as you would expect of a competent World Cup broadcaster, but not ITV who contrived to cut away from the first England match and show a car advert on their HD channel just as Steven Gerrard slotted in the opening goal. Now the BBC do have a bit of form for this themselves, you may recall the first ever airing of the Football League Show was interrupted briefly by footage of Kate Bosworth on the toilet, but on that occasion all we missed was a Torquay goal from earlier in the day. Twice this season now ITV have missed live goals by hitting the wrong button and running an advert instead – Gerrard’s strike at the weekend and Dan Gosling’s winner in the Merseyside FA Cup derby back in January. Perhaps they just don’t like Scousers.

Personally, after the ITV Digital fiasco where a business plan drawn up by a demented wanker after a heavy drinking session predictably crashed, burned and almost took half the Football League with it I would have enforced a blanket ten year ban on ITV ever getting any sporting coverage of any sort. Failing that I would certainly have taken the FA Cup off them after January’s fiasco. But after this latest cock up surely to Christ action must be taken. I escaped it, Sheffield being a student city meant that some scally had nicked the Sky dish off the side of the pub the night before the game forcing us to watch a fuzzy terrestrial picture for the game – at least we got to see the goal though, sort of, through the haze.

It’s a shame really because ITV’s coverage, fronted by Adrian Chiles, has been unusually crisp and decent so far. Matt Smith has resisted the urge to delve into his chunky knitwear collection and provides decent understudy cover for Chiles, and the studio guests aren’t too bad either;  Keegan provides passion, and Southgate talks a lot of sense – boring sense, but sense all the same. Sadly though while Clive Tyldesley remains in the commentary box their coverage always will remain a total joke, even when they do manage to show an entire game uninterrupted.

I like to play a little game when Tyldesley is at the mic where I take a drink every time he mentions Manchester United. With only Nemanja Vidic on show in Serbia v Ghana on Sunday I thought I was safe to take my car up to the pub but, ridiculously, it’s still parked there as I write this thanks to his unswerving bias and ability to crowbar mentions of the team that 95% of the country detests into every third sentence which saw me downing more Becks than I ever thought would be necessary. As Serbian defender Lukovic was shown a second yellow and subsequent red Tydlesley exclaimed that he honestly couldn’t remember him getting his first booking and the referee had possibly made a mistake. What had actually happened was while Lukovic was being booked just after half time Tyldesley was too busy babbling on about a rumour that Vidic may be about to leave Man Utd for Man City and therefore he’d missed a crucial detail in the match he was meant to be commentating on.

That’s nothing compared to the first half gem though. Stay with me on this, remember with Tyldesley you’re only ever five steps away from Manchester United. Did you know that Ghana’s Anthony Annan has something of a bad boy reputation in Norway where he plays for Rosenborg after falling foul of a number of refereeing decisions this year? Apparently one of hi run ins was with the Lillestrom coach (I set off for the bar at this point) former Man Utd defender Henning Berg. It would be funny if it wasn’t so abjectly embarrassing.

Embarrassing brings me neatly onto James Corden’s World Cup Live which ITV have trailered to death in the hope of producing some sort of Baddiel and Skinner style evening, prime time, football related ratings hit. It’s so awful that it deserves a separate blog, which I shall provide later in the tournament when I’ve summoned the coverage to watch one all the way through. That is, of course, assuming James Corden is well enough to continue with his ‘fat = funny’ routine for the rest of the tournament as he spent much of his post England programme fiddling with his nose. Maybe he’s got a cold coming on? “The ultimate summer long party” said ITV in the promotion material. Hmmmmm.