The dark arts were on show, but no balance!

THERE was a moment around 67 minutes into last night’s match when irony shut its eyes and died. The camera had focused on Colombia’s best player, who was missing the game because of injury, and ITV’s commentator Clive Tyldesley said: ‘All James Rodriguez can do tonight is cheerlead.’ Perhaps this wasn’t the best night to bring that word into it. Not when ITV did everything possible to wave their pom-poms for the boys. A chunk of In-ger-lund is OK. It is the World Cup. It is England. Something weird and wonderful may or may not have been happening. And there was a curse to think about — ITV had broadcast only one England win in 11 games at major championships since 1998, against Trinidad & Tobago in 2006 (the Beeb have shown nine wins in

13 in the same period). But there has to be at least a modicum of balance in coverage of these occasions, surely. And just as it has been missing across both ITV and BBC in previous matches, so it was missing again last night. It started with the all-English panel and continued with the bizarre tone of how the action was covered. This was a game dominated by what Lee Dixon described as the ‘nasty dark arts’. Yes it was. This was Gary Neville’s take ahead of the second half: ‘The Colombians are at it. The key for us is not to get involved in this nonsense.’ That accompanied a lengthy discussion over why Wilmar Barrios ought to have been sent off for a headbutt on Jordan Henderson and Neville’s declaration that one of the Colombia coaches was ‘a numpty’ for barging into

Raheem Sterling at half-time. Hard to argue with any of that. The coach was a numpty. It should have been a red. Colombia played with extremely grubby, dark tactics. But here’s that thing about balance. Henderson held his eye when Barrios’s contact was to his chin. Harry Maguire dived for a penalty in the second half. John Stones looked as though he might have left a little boot on Radamel Falcao. Henderson aimed a sort of backwards headbutt at Yerry Mina. Glenn Hoddle briefly questioned the incidents, but there was no ‘dark arts’ fury from the panel ahead of extra time, no verdict that the English were ‘at it’. It passed by without becoming the same narrative. If it felt a little bit like cheerleading, then that is probably because it was.