Footballing lessons

Euro 2008 is finally over. So, what have we learned from the last three weeks of television coverage?

1. People don’t suddenly lose interest tournaments just because England aren’t there. While the early matches struggled to reach four million viewers, as the tournament progressed an audience unencumbered with the state of Rooney’s hamstring began to build. The audience for the Italy v Spain match grew as large as 9.3 million viewers, and as the Germany-Turkey semi-final proved, even an apology caption coupled with Alan Green’s curmudgeonly voice can entertain eight million people.

2. It’s time for a national review of lazy clichés about foreigners. Musical tastes of your average German football supporter extend further than David Hasselhoff after all. They prefer The White Stripes nowadays, and given ‘our’ supporters are still prone to the original outburst of DJ Otzi, maybe it’s time for a re-evaluation.

3. Alan Shearer finally made some interesting and insightful comments during the BBC coverage. Mainly, this was because he’d simply repeated the things Martin O’Neill had just said, but it’s a start. It’s a pity Gordon Strachan didn’t make more appearances on the sofa.

4. ITV Sport phoned in their coverage for the entire tournament. The presenters were in a studio in London, the pundits didn’t get any more exciting than Dietmar Hamann, and the highlight shows were almost entirely on digital wasteland of ITV4. Even the plethora of sponsors barely troubled themselves, as the fortieth dull outing for a yellow football shivering at the thought of ketchup on a hot dog proved. For next season, live free-to-air football is in the hands of them and Colin Murray on Five. Yikes.

5. BBC Sport committed fully to their bizarre notion that Motson and Lawrenson make a top double act. It’s a bit of shame that Mark Lawrenson seems to define humour as “replying to questions with sarcastic one word answers,” and clearly the chemistry needs a little work. With the rights to live matches out of their grasp, don’t be at all surprised if Friday nights on BBC One soon see a new version of The Odd Couple, with the action relocated to a flat in Shepherd’s Bush, with Motson as Felix and Lawro as Oscar. Pilot episode: Motty needs to bone up on Hammarby IF for a UEFA Cup group match, but Lawro has just won an incontinent chimp in a poker match. Hilarity may or may not prevail.

Mark Jones edits the Broken TV blog