Monday 7 June 2010

World Cup Daily arrives




The first edition of the Guardian's Football Weekly team's World Cup podcast has just been released. Usual informed analysis and a good preview of what to expect from the upcoming weeks:

World Cup Daily 

When a podcast opens with lines such as: 'What kind of message would it send to the world if England won the World Cup? What kind of template is that for being the best in the world? To have a bloated, over-inflated league, have a rubbish coaching structure, don't look after your youngsters and get a foreign manager in and you too can win the World Cup', it's clear that those involved don't pull their punches.

In complete contrast I made the foolish mistake of relaxing my guard enough to try watching BBC Three's 'World Cup's most shocking moments', still available for your own misery on Iplayer. Talking head shows are generally abysmal, and despite some interesting clip choices, getting in Mathew Horne from Gavin and Stacey to comment on incidents he clearly had not seen before making the show, as if recalling fond memories, was aggravating.

Any programme that can make Peter Crouch's wooden acting one of the least problematic issues of the production deserves a kicking, and getting third party 'celebrities' to repeat cliches about German efficiency is an impressive waste of money.

The programme is mildly symptomatic of a greater malaise in the general punditry knowledge base across our media as a whole. There are great analysts out there, but they are not in the mainstream. It cannot be right that we can send people like Ian Wright and Andy Townsend to such major competitions in place of pundits such as Sid Lowe and Gabriele Marcotti.

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