THE BIG GRAPPLE

Windswept in front of the skyscrapers, ITV put their big names on a big set – but their commentary pairings still have viewers reaching for the remote

By TAYLOR PARKES

It was 34 degrees in my front room at midnight. A desk fan stirred the air like hot soup. Old assumptions, sporting principles; everything was melting like tarmac. And when the going gets weird, the weird turn on ITV. It’s quicker to count the World Cups that haven’t been staged in authoritarian hell-holes, so because this was business as usual for FIFA, ITV pretended it was business as usual in America: soft rock, camper vans and beach volleyball. Mark Pougatch, a First World War commissioned officer who’ll never be respected by his platoon, welcomed us into their Brooklyn waterfront “apartment” like the gauche millionaire he is. “We’ve got the Empire State Building in the distance,” he bragged, in case we thought it might have vanished.

ITV is still the greasy-spoon breakfast of televised sport, except the fried bread is sourdough now, and the beans are in a ramekin. You might roll your eyes, but at least it doesn’t give you campylobacter. Laura Woods, shambolic and unselfconscious, anchors live TV like nobody’s watching, but somehow it works (although her verbal tics are grating – when she expires, Woods’ last words will be “Guys, I’m dying”). Gabriel Clarke, looking like Mark E Smith would look had he become an inner-city vicar, still reports from the England camp, but now with a gentility that almost feels objective.

Alas, there’s no escape from the true horror of commercial television: the commercials. In this adblocked age they feel more intrusive than ever, David Beckham luring you into an alley, opening a battered suitcase and showing you his wares: crisps, fizzy drinks, cheap lager (“Trust me… I never consume anything else”). Almost as bad was the constantly-repeated promotion for ITV’s World Cup ticket competition, with its horrifying climax – Pougatch rasping “Good luck!” like a sarcastic Newgate jailer.

And yet it could have been worse. Those popular “rehydration breaks” (in which 22 men drink water, while millions expel it) were an obviously artificial space gouged out for yet more advertising, and though you can’t credit ITV for not obliging – Ofcom stopped them, because some things haven’t melted yet – plugging that space with Emma Hayes’ impromptu tactical breakdowns was an unexpected masterstroke. At her worst, Hayes was ragebait for polo-shirted inadequates, which is better than nothing. At her best, she was plainly magnificent. Once she’d left, those longueurs felt longer. Football commentators can’t fill time like the chaps from Test Match Special , not least because nobody would ever bake a cake for Sam Matterface.

For the big games, we got the big names: Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Ian Wright, in slacks and short-sleeved leisure tops, like a child’s painting of Sean Connery. Wright’s metamorphosis from SunSport loudmouth into likeable human being is one of this century’s less nauseating redemption arcs. He brings authentic emotional warmth, even if his neck looks like it’s holding up something by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Gary Neville, pursed lips encircled by that salt-and-pepper goatee, gave us the perfect Gary Neville moment, shaking his head grimly at the pressure on the England team from “our press, our media… us ”. But pity poor Roy Keane, who’s now being paid to impersonate Roy Keane, and he knows it. This must be everything he ever feared, his righteous fury reduced to a joke for idiots like Pougatch who could never comprehend it. His shame is palpable; there’s ash in his mouth. When he starts up, it’s like watching Pete Townshend smash his 10,000th guitar.

ITV’s new star pundit was Duncan Ferguson, looking like a retired Russian porn star and sounding like a broadsword colliding with a vitri - fied fort. Duncan is used to other men treating him with fear-based respect; stranded on a panel of women, he floundered. “The tea lady would get picked before him!” he quipped, and paused for sycophantic laughter, which never came. He looked confused. This had never happened before. Duncan is a hard man, but talking to women is even harder.

After midnight, things became less formal. Bradley Wright- Phillips turned up in the kind of shirt a computer technician would wear to a bris, and white trousers with red and gold stripes which looked like he’d borrowed them from Evel Knievel. At least his high-speed patter made the pre-dawn chat less lulling; Jobi McAnuff sounds like he’s trying to flog you a one-bedroom flat above a Ladbrokes in Sydenham. Featureless and horribly relaxed. Duncan addressed him, respectfully, as “Jobbie”.

Commentary is always ITV’s weakest suit – inevitably, this was the summer of Sam Matterface. After Morocco dispatched the Dutch, he summed things up, slowly and hesitantly, as though a gopher had scampered away with his notes. “A magical, magical memory… and one… that is… at this… World Cup.” Erling Haaland put Norway two up against Brazil, and Matterface responded like a character from Clueless : “Oh, stop it! Just stop it!” I wanted to gag him with a spoon. Matterface has been roped into a permanent three-legged race with Lee Dixon, who seems to think the trouble with Mark Lawrenson was that he was insufficiently morose. It’s a bold move, partnering the doleful Dixon with someone whose wisecracks have three exclamation marks (“Joe Bell there, looking very calm – his middle name is Zen!!!”), but this combination is not so much sweet’n’sour as exasperating’n’intolerable. “That’s a foul throw,” Dixon groaned. “It drives me mad. I think if you take a foul throw you should miss a game. It’s the…” I’ll never know what he said after that.

Pougatch, a First World War commissioned officer who’ll never be respected by his platoon, welcomed us into their Brooklyn waterfront “apartment”

Seb Hutchinson got paired with Andros Townsend, who mused on whether it’s better to play offensively or defensively against Argentina: “Which way do you want to be hurt?” “Don’t ask me that question!” Seb squealed back, as though it had some deeper significance. Townsend should probably try to sound less like he’s reading his pre-match chat off a piece of paper, but then Townsend sounds like he’s reading everything off a pieceof paper. One day, somebody will hand him the piece of paper upside down, and we’ll get 90 minutes of blissful silence. In the end, the heat became hallucinogenic. One night at 5 am, Woods and Karen Carney waved hello to nursing mothers at home; if 30 years ago, someone had asked me to guess what televised football might look like in 2026, I’d have got that bit wrong. I know I heard Jon Champion, astride the dead stag of Scotland’s struggle with Morocco, say “Ally McCoist, can you hear the distant sound of the pipes?” Once, I think I dozed off and woke up at 15 in the morning, halfway through Lesotho v the Cook Islands. Freed From Desire was being hummed by wasps, and in the distance, Duncan Ferguson climbed the Empire State Building, swatting at biplanes. Up next on ITV: Celebrity Lingo , with Bungle and Lord Carrington. This world is melting, like tarmac. It might have happened.