Are you listening Phil Scolari?
So bobbins former England manager Steve McLaren is going to commentate at Euro 2008 - the very tournament he and his team failed to qualify for.
It reminds me of what Clive James once said about British downhill skier Konrad Bartelski and the latter’s appearance as a commentator on Ski Sunday: Bartelski sits in the commentary box advising the greatest skiers in the world and then goes out there and comes down the mountain on his head.
Posted on April 24th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
It’s Scolari.
Just sayin’
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Dammit. So very tired. Fixed now, ta.
Is he made of cotton reels? If not, then presumably bobbins is a form of address, like Dame Edna Everage’s possums, in which case there ought to be a comma or two in the vicinity.
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I refer the honourable gentlemen to the definitive arbiter of such matters.
You still have knobheads in charge.
So, sunk in a deep armchair with an optimistic bottle of Rioja (Baron De Ley Reserva), I have tried to tot up reasons why the great credit smash-up of 2007-2008 may now be safely over, heralding sunlit uplands once again.
And it’s about time CommentLuv found out about apostrophes. It is 1.3, after all.
Philips last blog post..No Pauper’s Grave for Ministry of Justice
Yes, now that is irritating. I’m sure is was working in 1.2. I shall investigate.
I feel the same way when I hear Graham Taylor offering his “expert” opinion on England matches on Five Live. How on earth did he get that job?
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Well, by succeeding with every club team he’d taken charge of until he got the England job. At which he failed: but that’s the Peter Principle for you.
I don’t see why McLaren shouldn’t be a commentator. An art critic doesn’t need to be a sucessful artist.
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But Justin, Sir Alf Ramsey’s dead, as is Fred Perry (men’s tennis). Besides, Alan Shearer may be the Premiership’s all-time leading goalscorer, but he still bores the a*** of me on MOTD. Then again, who’s going to argue with Michael Johnson when it comes to men’s athletics?
I wouldn’t have appointed McLaren to the job in the first place, but having got that job I think there was a massive over-reaction against him. Sure, England were poor. But they’ve been poor for years and just about got away with it. If England had drawn with Croatia and scraped through he’d still be manager now. Anyone remember the injury-time equaliser against Greece in 2001? England were absolutely outplayed that day.
Sorry ejh, I meant how did he get the Five Live job! Agree that his appointment as England manager in 1990 made sense, although not for long…
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There’s something badly wrong with Clive James’ logic, if it means we should be listening to Wayne Rooney jabbering on for 90 minutes.
Relatedly, I have very mixed feelings* about Geoff Boycott as a commentator and indeed human being, but he was a decent batsman.
*Basically I dislike him. On the other hand there’ve been plenty of cases recently where appropriate commentary involves being bloody rude about the England team, and he is exceptionally good at that.
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I like him a lot as a commentator: I thought he’d be Fred Trueman Mark Two, but he’s a thousand times better, and contrary to what some people say he’s not afraid to say he’s seen a good shot when he’s seen one.
Clive James didn’t, and doesn’t, know a great deal about sport other than what he saw casually on TV. Which is fine, he was a TV critic and a great one, but it does perhaps mean that he doesn’t know when he was getting - from a sport’s point of view - good commentary and when he was getting bad. You can hear a similar phenomenon every time England reach a World Cup or European Championship Finals tournament, i.e. not this summer - people in pubs giving their loud and confident opinion on a game they actually know nothing about, but it’s OK because some pundit’s just told them something so it’s true. Not their fault, not the pundit’s fault, not anybody’s fault, but at the end of the day you do need to know something about a subject to evaluate the worth of sombody else’s opinion on it. In this instance Clive James, a deeply cultured and intelligent man, did not.
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I don’t disagree with what you say about Boycott. But as well as all that he’s a cock, which I’m afraid I find hard to ignore.
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