Sport

Euro 2008: Pundit Verdict

Analysing the analysers

Posted: 18 June 2008, 04:06

As the quarter finals of Euro 2008 kick off, there have already been some shock upsets and departues. But which pundits are having the best tournament? We round up the winners and losers.

Winners

Alan Hansen
You don’t go from being an only OK Scottish defender to Match of the Day stalwart on playing ability alone. Hansen’s shown once more (or “time and again” in the man's own words) this tournament the measured and impartial analysis that has rightfully earned him his place alongside the man who can eat crisps with his ears.

Martin O’Neill
As a coach, O’Neill brings a breath of fresh air into the BBC studio, and not just because he’s too lazy to turn up in a suit. In the middle of Tuesday’s Italy v France game, as Domenech’s team collapsed around him, O’Neill was the only one to defend the French coach’s decisions, admitting he would have made the same substitutions. It’s very easy just to criticise others, and the Aston Villa coach has proved he’s a better pundit than that.

Alan Shearer
Let’s get this straight: Shearer is a superb player, and rightfully a legend. But the man has the most boring voice in the world. When he first started out as a commentator, he made us want to sellotape over our ears with cardboard, so inane were his observations. He’s improved a great deal however since being moved to the studio, and has provided a striker’s insight that's otherwise missing from most of the coverage.

Losers

Andy Gray
By all means an excellent pundit, he’s not having a good Euro 2008 purely because Sky don’t have the rights to the tournament. He’s signed up to cover it for sports channel ESPN, but instead of soaking up the atmosphere in Austria, he’s stuck in a studio in the middle of nowhere, USA, in front of a blue screen pretending to be there on a show no one is actually watching.

Didi Hamann
Evidently still bored over the summer after being dropped by the German national team for the 2006 World Cup, Hamann signed up to ITV to be their token foreign pundit wheeled on whenever his national side play.  It’s a shame then that any extra insight he might be able to provide is lost through his sheer blandness. If only he was more like Boris Becker.

Marcel Desailly
Clear at the bottom of the pack is world cup winner Desailly. To be fair, he's not been given much to do. The Beeb just seem to cut to him standing on the sideline whenever France are losing - every match then. But then he doesn't make much of it either: the only thing less obvious than France's lack of teamwork is if he has any charisma at all. And he’s made the biggest blooper so far: when asked if Spain were the best team in the tournament, he replied “yes, but Germany are the best”. So no, then.

What do you think?