Jake Humphrey (left, covering the Champions League final with Mario Balotelli and Cesc Fabregas) is leaving BT Sport to focus on other projects, including his own High Performance Podcast Credit & Copyright: Shutterstock/Shaun Brooks
This was the last call from BT Sport, but unfortunately the coverage of the Champions League final was not widely acclaimed as “high performance”. His property is now under new ownership, the BT Sport channels will be replaced by something called TNT from July 18, and details about what sport will be broadcast, who will represent it and how much it will cost to watch remain sketchy. But at least one thing is certain: Jake Humphrey won't be the main host of the football game.
Rio Ferdinand said a generous goodbye to the host at the end of Saturday night, and Jake will now be spending more time with his High Performance audio podcast series. and his authorship of LinkedIn books such as High Performance: Lessons from the Best on How to Become the Best.
What lessons can the new broadcaster learn from this weekend's reporting? In terms of talent, analysis, news coverage and what might be called an understanding of the wider context of the event, there is much room for improvement.
First, the crowd on screen: I hope BT kept the receipt. hired by Mario Balotelli. Handing a new expert his or her debut is always a gamble, but the person who was one of the most enjoyable wildcards in football in his prime was a complete flop on screen. It may have been nerve related, but it was really surprising how depressed he seemed.Mario Balotelli is known as a character, but he was strangely subdued for BT Sport during the Champions League final. Photo: AFP/Paul EllisThis may partly be due to the strategy BT has been using throughout its tenure: absolutely filling the screen with pundits, giving Humphrey and top man Ferdinand thousands of actors including Cesc Fàbregas, Joleon Lescott, Balotelli, and moving players/coaches to the paddock. Fabregas is a shrewd guy, but the others aren't, and it boils down to a full-blown skirmish that seems hard to get a word in. Boys are boys, and on Saturday it proved hard to resist the trend of poking fun at each other, and has been for some time.
For example, this conversation with an emotional Kyle Walker, talking about his life journey from poverty in Sheffield to this day:
Walker: “I remember when my mom didn't have a pound for an ice cream truck.”
Ferdinand: “Let's turn it up loud, what's your favorite drink today?” p>
Lescott (who played more club games for Wolverhampton and Everton than for City, and previously supported Aston Villa) also filled a peculiar role as Manchester City's resident superfan. Colleagues and commentator Darren Fletcher asked him over and over again how he got on his nerves, how he carried himself, etc., as if he were an eight-year-old child having a big day, and not a highly paid expert.
In the era When Sky Sports encouraged constant bickering between its pundits, jolly boys strolling through a BT match wasn't necessarily an unwelcome change, but there was a bigger quality gap between the two mainstream British salaries. – Television sports broadcasters.
But, as with the Liverpool-Madrid Champions League final in Paris, where potentially big news was unfolding around getting on the pitch, BT derelict on Saturday by not devoting more time to the financial and regulatory context of Manchester City's achievement. . Here. Not everyone wanted them to win. While it's true that sometimes you just want to watch a match without Gary Neville yelling at you for food banks, it's equally common for BT to present a Potemkin Village-style vision of big sport; the lighting was gullible and lacking in rigor. There is a real “watch the bird” here, and people clearly don't believe it.
Humphrey has his own qualities, but it's fair to say that not everyone likes him, and the same goes for Fletcher. Des Kelly, a former journalist, was shocked on Saturday when he removed the eyepatch he was given for media accreditation/field access and forced Ilkay Gundogan to sign it. Extremely cringes.
BT Sport ended their Champions League coverage Saturday with a little whimper. Photo: PA/Mike Egerton
We can leave some room for an understandable fin de siècle atmosphere and respect the shock of the recent death of an important member of the BT team, floor manager Matt Wayne. But there is a feeling that some of the participants in the BT programs had a deeply mistaken impression that it was about them, and not about sports and history.
Although I would not go so far as to say that TNT gotta blow it all up and start over, Saturday night was certainly a cautionary tale about delivering a raw squib.
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