Since the transfer window slammed shut on Friday night, there have been many articles written slamming SKY Sports for their wall to wall coverage of what can only be described as an event. True, the coverage of what was described as “The most exciting day of the year”, led by Jim White, was pretty excruciating at times. Watching reporters attempting to try and generate mass excitement for incidents such as Tony Pulis leaving the Stoke training ground to go home for the night was, though amusing, bizarre in the extreme.
Indeed, away from Transfer Deadline Day, it’s easy to knock SKY Sports in general for their coverage of what they have basically trademarked as “The Best League in the World”. Richard Keys and Andy Gray may have departed but the coverage remains bombastic, littered with cliches and Jamie Redknapp telling us how great a player cousin Frank Lampard is or how Chelsea’s new wonder-boy Eden Hazard is “literally on a hot streak”.
However, we should not forget the humour SKY Sports provides and particularly in the form of Jeff Stelling and “the boys” on Gillette Soccer Saturday. The concept seems alien to some: watching people who can barely talk English it seems (Paul Merson in particular) watch football and then tell you about it as accurately as they can possibly remember; or not if you’re someone like Chris Kamara, who famously had to be informed live on air by presenter Stelling that he had missed a red card in a game he was covering.
But somehow, it works. Gillette Soccer Saturday can often be an outrageously funny watch. It may be a particular kind of British humour or “banter” that can on occasion touch nerves, as the video below shows when Jeff Stelling highlights Matt Le Tissier’s overtly sexist claims that players should have their kits washed by their wives, but on the whole when viewed in jest, it adds a bit of normality to the fervor of SKY’s Premier League coverage.
SKY can often be accused of taking their football coverage far too seriously but there is little danger of that on Soccer Saturday and as the hilarious video below shows; the station could do a lot worse than continue to follow the example set by Stelling, Le Tissier, Merson, Phil Thompson and Charlie Nicholas.
Adam Mazrani
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