Exaggeration and hyperbole serve sports commentators well around the world, but few have so profoundly embraced the language of over-excited incredulity as British soccer pundits, writes Harry Pearson.
Where “you or I see a footballer striking the 3,758th best shot we have ever witnessed, Andy Townsend and Ally McCoist see the equivalent of a yeti spontaneously combusting while riding a unicorn through El Dorado.” The country”s TV commentators are permanently amazed at all the “unbelievable” events that have, quite believably in fact, just taken place before their very eyes.
Pearson recalls the absurd but entertaining 1970 trans-European TV show Jeux Sans Frontieres, which pitted teams of young people from across the continent competing against each other in mindbogglingly imaginative stunt games that usually involved swings, chutes, greasy poles, unwieldy costumes, and farcical amounts of water and foam. As the show is reportedly slated for a comeback, Pearson says “the BBC should send Gary Lineker and the boys to provide the analysis. After a few evenings in Ghent and Grenoble watching half a dozen 10-foot foam-rubber frankfurters trying to force their way through a gap in a polystyrene wall before they are knocked to the ground by a giant bread roll, surely even Alan Hansen would start to recognize the entirely plausible when he saw it.”