A golden retriever and a game of guess the pasta were unusual to see in a Women’s Champions League show – but I understand how they arrived there
Disclaimer: I have made a lot of bad TV programmes. I have done quite a few below-average radio shows. Podcasts, there are millions of them – some might say too many – and I’ve done my fair share that won’t go down in history. In between those, I’ve hopefully done some pretty good ones – it’s not for me to say.
I have had good ideas and the odd great one that didn’t make it to air (attention the full-size unreferenced post-Keys and Gray elephant in the Soccer AM studio). I’ve had more awful ones. I’ve hosted shows where I’ve had almost complete editorial control, and ones where I could have been replaced by a performing monkey.
I’ve had to host TV shows at every possible height – sitting on a sofa, on a normal chair, on a normal chair behind a desk, on a bar stool in a pub, on a bar stool not in a pub, and standing up when there was somewhere comfortable to sit just out of shot. I complained a lot, but standing did actually work, Murray.
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The point being, I have some experience when it comes to reviewing the opening night of the Disney+ coverage of the Women’s Champions League. The Hangout was hosted by Alex Scott with her fellow former England international Lianne Sanderson, the content creators Tyra Mills and Alex Bailess, and quite inexplicably a golden retriever called Barley Boy, who at the time of writing has 82,000 more Instagram followers than I have – I must work on my reels.
The show included a quiz about Italy, including guess the Italian name for football and what pasta the reporter in Milan is cooking. There’s an incredible still image of the panel staring at a load of farfalle on a big screen normally reserved for team lineups or key match incidents.
The immediate reaction was a mix of bewilderment and fury from seasoned lovers of the women’s game. Kathryn Batte wrote an understandable critique for the Telegraph. The broadcaster Flo Lloyd-Hughes posted on X: “Disney’s new UWCL coverage is the closest we’ve seen to CBBC football (derogatory). I wouldn’t be surprised if we see someone gunged for making a wrong prediction or perhaps Raven will make a cameo. Keep stopping to remind myself this isn’t a dream.”
Consistent with all the criticism is the truth that the men’s Champions League would never be covered in the same way. It is perhaps interesting to ask how the team arrived at the concept. Why replace former pros with content creators, why replace tactical analysis with asking what’s the biggest city in Italy? Why a dog?
The broadcaster Marva Kreel perfectly articulated one of the issues in her own X post: “I think a lot of the problem with the debates in women’s football broadcasting over analysis and punditry v content creation and gimmicky fun, is that in men’s football you can get both – and in different shows. In women’s football you get one show, and so they try to do it all.”
It’s a fair point. I’ve mainly hosted the show before the show – where a dog running around wouldn’t be regarded as a crime against the game. In fact hosting live football is significantly more straightforward than interviewing an indie band about their difficult second album or trying to come up with a three-hour radio show in the middle of the international break. The show Disney tried to make on Wednesday is technically much harder than Super Sunday – but that doesn’t mean it was the right call.
I can understand the thinking. I imagine the bosses told the producers they want to bring in a younger audience. I have been told this before. Exactly how to do that is impossible to work out. Should I stop making references to Jossy’s Giants and Aswad? And Disney could probably argue that most of the criticism didn’t come from young people. It came from people who expect the game to be covered in a certain way.
Disney may be being cynical – people are talking and writing about it. The hardcore will watch anyway. Had they produced more traditional coverage, no one would have said anything. And sometimes you have to try something different. I wouldn’t want to be too critical; Disney may give me a gig one day.
Major broadcasters have less money to make the same amount of stuff – and have had a battle over the past 20 years to work out how to harness social media. I saw it at Sky, where a Facebook livestream filmed on an iPhone in the green room would get as many views as the show itself with the costs of studio/lighting/sound/producers etc.
As a middle-aged man – whose wife accuses him of being a “boomer” – I really dislike the phrase “content creator”; perhaps I’m nervous that eventually they’ll take all my jobs. From what I saw, Bailess and Mills came across as very personable and fun – which was clearly the brief – and you can’t criticise anyone for taking a job. And they bring a following with them – quite how many followers lead to subscriptions is a different question.
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I feel for Scott, who perpetually finds herself in the middle of some sort of culture war. You are entitled to regard her as the greatest or worst broadcaster of her generation – or somewhere in between – as you are with me or anyone else. I know many listeners certainly feel the latter about my abilities.
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I found the discourse around the end of Football Focus pretty troubling – people suggesting the show went woke and lost its way when she was appointed. It’s much more accurate to accuse me of turning Soccer AM woke, with my clarinet, lefty snowflake opinions and inability to flirt on live television. But then I’m not a woman and I’m white; generally people just accuse me of turning it shit.
But back to the Hangout. I imagine Scott didn’t suggest having a dog in the studio or having guess the pasta. Perhaps she has a lot of editorial control – I genuinely don’t know. But sometimes as a host you have to do what you’re told and do it with conviction.
The reality of live football coverage is that people are watching because they want to watch the game. If people want comedy, they’ll watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. If Liverpool are playing Real Madrid, the fans will watch it – and either enjoy or endure the coverage. But what you can do as a broadcaster is make it as compelling as possible, and there are different ways of being a good host or pundit.
Live football coverage hasn’t changed dramatically in 50 years. Welcome, team news, managers, bit of tactics or player focus, throw to commentators. Half-time: what did you make of that? Full time: what did you make of that?
The dog did not return for the second night of coverage. I know it would have been a strange and difficult day for everyone involved. They made a show, people didn’t like it and they had to go again the next night. Do you double down, screw the haters, or try to subtly move towards a more traditional setup? It seemed on Wednesday they went for the latter.
You can’t magic up an audience, but you can make people feel like you respect the game, you can do it in an entertaining way without introducing animals, and people will come back and watch you again.
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