Ian Wright (and TV pundits in general)

[razor]

The best thing about the BBC so far is that you can switch off the commentary. Especially when you have a particularly annoying combination of commentator/co-commentator.

Agree, switch on BBC, go interactive and put on the FiveLive commentary. Happy Days.

[Stuttgart88]

Oh yeah John Motson is a Racist as well, anyone catching him saying during a hand to ball incident in the England V Paraguay "Is that another one of those South American Paws".. Lawros lazy commentry last nite during the early stages of Brazilian Croatian match was embarassing..basic extolling the virtues of the Brazilians Oh they don't need to chase down the ball they'll get it back anyway attitude, it was insulting to the Croats who thankfully outplayed the Brazilians for large parts of game..

Agree 100%. I'm glad the racist angle has been picked up by someone else. I think because he's old & cuddly people don't pick up on these undertones. Shame on the BBC for keeping him employed, and also for trying to "compete" with ITV's dumbed-down tabloidesque coverage by hiring Ian Wright.

Italy vs Angola. Sammi Kuffour gives a woefully underhit backpass. Italy score.

Motty: "Another example of Ghanain gullibility?"

No, you ****ing ****. It was a sh1t backpass from a very experienced footballer. Nothing to do with any national tendencies.

Poor old Barry Davies. A legend of a commentator in my opinion. Fair, intelligent, articulate, knowledgable, impartial and anything but patronising and smug. No wonder he despaired so much he resigned.

[Stuttgart88]

On the racist angle: London Evening Standard referring to Paraguay as "those Paraguayan Nazi Harbourers" was one of the worst recently. OK, so it's an extreme example, but some in this country have such a warped view of the rest of the world it makes me want to puke.

[stojkovic]

Agree about Motty and always listen to him for his OTT xenophobia. He nearly had an orgasm the other night "look at the ITALIANS surrounding the referee" he exclaimed in shock. Come on Trinidad, how many times will he mention Brian Lara end Viv Richards.

Shame Desailly and Leonardo aren't on RTE.

Did you notice how Lineker trys to talk slowly to Leonardo. The man speaks about six languages and English better than Ian Wright Wright Wright.

[LeixlipRed]

RTE's coverage is by far the best. No debate about that anyway. I turned over to ITV today during a break on RTE before the Spain game to catch Ruud, Ally and the gang talking about why Spain dont gel as a team. He started by saying something about the Basque/Catalan thing (McCoist was just "aye,aye-ing" having no idea where Spain was never mind posessing knowledge of its internal strife) and when he could see that noone had a clue what he was talking about he just said something to the affect of "Spain are like the US in the Ryder Cup" and this prompted jubilant cries of "aye" from Ally who instantly understood this so called "analogy". Hilarious stuff. I was expecting Gazza to fall thru the ceiling with a Sombrero on his head. Never happened though....

[gustavo]

Motson doesnt have a clue , H e was going on about how Nesta and Cannavaro had a great club partnership for years the other night

[OwlsFan]

Souness is a breath of fresh air on RTE to break up the grusome threesome of Drunkphy, Giles and Laughing Bill. He likes to nettle G & D (or should that be G & T ) by talking about the modern game. He was interesting last night when he said that in the modern game, only the full backs have any time on the ball when G&D were bemoaning the poor German midfield. Hence it is very important to have good ball players or even converted wingers as full backs. Giles tried to counter by saying that a good midfielder makes time but Souness once again spoke the "modern game" saying that it was much more difficult, putting the two old timers in their place.

What irritates me about RTE is that it attempts to go the opposite of the Sky hype and put a negative aspect to most things. Laughing Bill does not play the fool well - he is a fool when it comes to football and does not have the nous to contradict G & D when they go off on one of their theories. Giles even spoke about the Sky hype last night as if to say, well we're going to have none of that. The game between Poland and Germany was enjoyable. Sure it wasn't free flowing samba football but there was real competition and local/historic rivalry in it with a typical last minute German goal. The latter have 6 points out of 6 but there was not one shred of praise from either G or D - in fact the opposite.

Cunningham and Irwin have been good.

Ian Wright is a buffoon but then we have one on our panel as well.

The most irritating thing about Motson is the chuckles at his own jokes.

The RTE commentators (Hamilton aside) have been good but they're now falling into the Andy Gray "attack the referee" style as well.

ITV have Gabby Yorath - that makes up for a multitude of sins

[Stuttgart88]

Gary Lineker ***ed me right off last night!

The Germans were celebrating their win and their almost certain passage to the last 16.

Lineker in a tone that exceeded his own very high standards of patronisation told the Germans to calm down, it's only the group stages.

I can't wait to see his reaction if England win tonight. Calm down Gary, it's only the group stages (and 2 small cricket playing caribbean islands!).

[Roadend]

Giles even spoke about the Sky hype last night as if to say, well we're going to have none of that. The game between Poland and Germany was enjoyable.

He was right as far as I could see, that game last night wasn't overly enjoyable at all and as Giles pointed out, it was like a poor pl match, Poland going forward were absolutely atrocious. Sometimes they are negative just for the sake of it, but to be honest I prefer that to the english stations talking up something that you know is bad.

[Roadend]

Would you mind explaining to me what that situation was about Roadend? I have a work colleague here who is a Rangers man and was mouthing off to me yesterday about how MON was bang out of order and a pr!ck etc over that. I hadn't seen it so couldn't offer my opinion but he is (my colleague) a little bitter and twisted so I assumed he was looking through blue tinted glasses...

It was something along the lines of Desailly making out France to have played a whole lot better than they had done, deserved the victory against the Swiss and that, to which O'Neill came out and said that he didn't care how many medals WC,CL euros that he'd won, his opinion was biased and that he didn't think they did.

[superfrank]

Agree, switch on BBC, go interactive and put on the FiveLive commentary. Happy Days.

Ah yes. I love Alan Green. The guy's a commentary genius.

[bluemovie]

Agree, switch on BBC, go interactive and put on the FiveLive commentary. Happy Days.

Yeah, I've done that for a couple of games. Martin Jol was brilliant to listen to for the Dutch game. Totally one-sided, but insightful too. He said that he usually watches their games with his family - all of them (himself included) dressed from head to toe in orange. 5 Live call the game well too. Unlike BBC tv, they'll say if something/someone is bad.

[Closed Account 2]

Who is worse Clive "That Final" Tyldsley or Motson ? I can't decide they're both so bad it's like two cheeks of the same arse... but both make Jonathan Pearce look good.

[pete]

No surprise Ian Wright not in coaching or management. He is shocking. Bring back Gazza!

[OwlsFan]

He was right as far as I could see, that game last night wasn't overly enjoyable at all and as Giles pointed out, it was like a poor pl match, Poland going forward were absolutely atrocious. Sometimes they are negative just for the sake of it, but to be honest I prefer that to the english stations talking up something that you know is bad.

There is always the dig at the PL though. Could he not just have said it was a poor game without a mention of the PL. If England are knocked out Laughing Bill will ask them: "What does this say about the Premier League ?". I guarantee it. The RTE Panel has its own agendas as well.

Lineker doesn't like the Germans - that's fair enough. But then neither do G & D. I do

[Roadend]

To be honest I think the PL is Giles' only frame of reference, he doesn't watch anything other than that (aprt from the odd CL game)which is blatantly exposed when he is asked about teams other than England.

[tetsujin1979]

To be fair to Giles, while his knowledge of the game outside England is limited, he does manage to pick up on the nuances of a player's game after only watching him for a few minutes. Very few (if any) of the other pundits on any station can do that.

[Schumi]

Was anyone else disappointed by Strachan not bothering to find out the names of players in the Germany v Poland match last night? "When number 17 came on for Germany, he made a big difference" and several other examples. How much work does it take to write down the guys' names if you're going to talk about them after the game?

[gustavo]

Dunphy et al should be able to realise the irony of them earning a living off a league which is muck in their own words

[jockser]

RTE's coverage is by far the best. No debate about that anyway. I turned over to ITV today during a break on RTE before the Spain game to catch Ruud, Ally and the gang talking about why Spain dont gel as a team. He started by saying something about the Basque/Catalan thing (McCoist was just "aye,aye-ing" having no idea where Spain was never mind posessing knowledge of its internal strife) and when he could see that noone had a clue what he was talking about he just said something to the affect of "Spain are like the US in the Ryder Cup" and this prompted jubilant cries of "aye" from Ally who instantly understood this so called "analogy". Hilarious stuff. I was expecting Gazza to fall thru the ceiling with a Sombrero on his head. Never happened though....

deadly