What makes football pundits tick?
Football pundits eh? What selfless reserves of human generosity gets these learned men to give weekly of their accumulated knowledge and experience?
“A thousand notes a throw,” the cynics among you suggest. But maybe there’s more to it than that. Ok, it’s doubtful that Stapo could be bothered conducting a civil conversation without some money changing hands. But what about the rest? Just what makes them do it? To shape our thesis, we’ve identified nine very different breeds of pundit. We suspect each lot has very different reasons for getting out of bed to watch Middlesbrough – Charltn
Show-offs
Why restrict the audience for your age-old routine of cast-off Kenneth Williams gags to a half-empty golf clubhouse in Marbella, when you can “perform” for half of Britain every week instead? For attention-seekers like Rodney Marsh and Ally McCoist, sensible analysis is not a priority. “His best position? Heh heh, that’d be telling Des… ho, ho, know what I mean, Andy?”
The Lifers
Smoothly-oiled analysis production lines, men like Andy Gray, Hansen, and Lawro can pick the bones out of a last-minute winner in their sleep. The McDonalds, Coca Cola, and Microsoft of punditry, you suspect they’ve long stopped caring where their ingredients come from or whether their source code is secure. When these boys step out of a studio for the last time, they’ll never watch another game.
The Institutions
Unlike the Lifers, the Institutions have a genuine calling to the punditry faith. In Big Ron’s case, his is a lifelong commitment to devising an entire dialect of gantry gibberish. Meanwhile, Johnny Giles lives and breaths to discover the midfielder who can put his foot on the ball, knock bread and butter passes, dictate the pace of the game and who, of course, has unlimited access to a rich vein of moral courage.
The Controversialists
When Eamo ducked and dived through Dublin airport in 1990, fearing he’d be lynched by Jackie’s army, he might rightly have numbered himself as one of the few pundits standing up for the truth. Nowadays, the professional cynic’s heart’s not really in it and there’s no sign of anyone stepping up to fill the pen-chucking void.
The One-Club Men
Handy work if you can get it. Not only does the Soccer Saturday gig bring in a few quid, it saves Frank McClintock and Phil Thompson the price of a season ticket.
The Fugitives
Football is a lot more forgiving than society in general. Thus, the kind of characters for whom reference checks might sometimes prove troublesome - Mickey Thomas, Vinnie Jones and George Graham, we’re thinking of you - will always find work in a studio somewhere. Mind you, we hear Sky has started nailing down those Soccer Saturday barstools.
The Unemployable
If you had a managerial track record like Chris Kamara’s, you’d be only too happy to find a routine winner at the Stadium of Light pretty “unnnnbelllllllievable” too.
The Journeymen
It might have something to do with their bank balance, but these hard-working chaps fill the unglamourous jobs nobody wants. We’re talking sitting in a gantry alongside Tom Tyrrell for example. Strangely, for a nation ostensibly offering little in the way of football expertise, a large proportion of journeymen pundits hail from Northern Ireland. Bryan Hamilton, Billy Hamilton, Sammy McIlroy, and Gerry Armstrong and co. have even taken in Eurosport on their travels.
The Invisible Men
For some ex-footballers, punditry is a sensible career move, the equivalent of a Commerce graduate opting for the bank. For instance, in different circumstances, you suspect that Robbie Earle and Clive Allen’s mothers would have suggested accounting. No danger of these lads ever getting shot for their art, the invisible man’s sole ambition is to make it through a broadcast without disagreeing with anyone and with an invite for next week’s Football First with Claire Tomlinson safely secured.
January 18th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
This is stupendous stuff, reminiscent of the wsc boys in their pomp playing it long down paradise alley