ITV wrong to snub Tyldesley, the master commentator
➤ Broadcaster’s decision to replace 65-year-old with Sam Matterface seems another move in the youth-at-all-costs policy
Television football commentators occupy an elevated position in modern media: they are able to supply the soundtrack to communal history. It does not happen very often, but when it does their words become embroidered into our memory. Kenneth Wolstenholme’s “They think it’s all over”, Brian Moore’s “It’s up for grabs now”, Martin Tyler’s “Agueroooo” – it is impossible to recall the event without the words that first described it.
And Clive Tyldesley provided us with one of the finest when, as David Beckham prepared to take a corner with his team trailing Bayern Munich with only moments to go in the 1999 Champions League final, he asked: “Can Manchester United score? They always score.”
Try to think of that picture without hearing his voice: clean, clear, excited and yet controlled – it was the perfect aural accompaniment, encapsulating the moment and mirroring the feelings of the audience. It is no easy thing to do, but, in that one second of possibility, Tyldesley proved himself a master.
Now we will not be hearing any more from him on the big occasions. ITV has announced that he is to be replaced as its lead voice by Sam Matterface, the excellent Talksport commentator. For whatever grand events ITV still has in its broadcasting portfolio, Matterface will provide the words. He might well one day come up with a line to match his predecessor. But he, more than anyone, will understand what an act he has to follow.
As his commentary has often suggested, Tyldesley is an emotional man. His response to his demotion to ITV’S secondary role was emotional indeed. Posting a video on social media, he spoke of how “upset, baffled and annoyed” he was by the decision. While he appreciated it was his employers’ right to do it, he had, he said, no idea why he had been cast aside.
It is hard to disagree. As casting decisions go, this was very odd, because Tyldesley remains a titan of his trade. Since he replaced Moore – when he retired in 1998 just a year before the Treble-describing turn in the Nou Camp – he has been consistently brilliant.
Niall Sloane, director of ITV Sport, said: “On behalf of ITV Sport, I would like to thank Clive for his superb work leading our commentary on some of the biggest occasions in world football throughout his outstanding career with us. We are very glad he will continue with us and look forward to working with him on many more occasions in the future.”
You may not like Tyldesley, you may be one of the many who insist his commentaries are tainted with bias. But there is no denying his ability to conjure a scene. He is a wordsmith, a man who enjoys the music of vocal delivery, someone whose commentary adds to the picture rather than simply telling us what we can see.
Meticulous in the way he prepares for matches (his handdrawn charts of stats and facts are works of art), he rarely gets things wrong. Plus, he has a sense of humour; his description of Reading’s Sam Sodje as “he ain’t Efe, he’s his brother” may have been prescripted, but it was a gag good enough to win the Edinburgh Festival joke of the year.
More to the point, there has been no noticeable deterioration in his mental agility. His short video tribute to Jack Charlton that he released on social media last week was a masterclass in delivery.
At 65, he seems to be the victim of a decision based on his birth certificate. ITV appears to have succumbed to the type of you-that-all-costs recruitment policy that is rapidly turning BBC Radio 5 Live into an unlistenable gibbering wreck.
If nothing else, it is the sort of thinking that wholly misunderstands how to attract a young audience. When it comes to football commentators, what those under 30 want is what the rest of us want: a voice that knows precisely what it is talking about. Clive Tyldesley is that and much, much more.