Arsenal not the only Champions League final losers – who was TNT’s coverage actually for? | OneFootball

It’s been a long time since football existed solely for those who enjoy the sport. Wracked by insecurity, the game has long abandoned catering for loyal supporters and chooses to flutter eyelids at the mythical ‘floating viewer’.

But TNT Sports coverage of the Champions League final was something else, an insult to the pretence of neutrality and a snapshot of the banality that has replaced considered opinion in this country.

Pre-match, we were treated to an ensemble of Dara O Briain, Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan in a reboot of 2010’s era Mock the Week.

There is nothing any of the trio could add to the viewer’s anticipation of the match, no insight that would rewire your brain chemistry or a shared experience that dared to cross the threshold into the realms of relatable.

Instead, it seemed a wretched example of star-flexing from TNT. Still, it was heartening to see the underexposed Beckett and Ranganathan get some airtime and they’d be available to attend your nan’s funeral for a small appearance fee.

Coverage was also pockmarked by the appearance of Jack Whitehall, an amalgamation of the worst football supporters found at a Russell Group university.

It’s understandable that a few Arsenal-leaning pundits would be called upon for the club’s biggest match in 20 years. It’s less understandable that they made up the vast majority of expert opinion.

Arsenal fan Laura Woods fronted the coverage. Ex-Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere was a fine player pre-injury, but he’s taken to punditry like a brick to water and spent the evening offering the kind of analysis you could overhear in any pub.

It all seemed an elaborate fluffing project to make ex-Arsenal defender Martin Keown appear marginally more competent.

Keown is last thought to have smiled during John Major’s premiership, but he was the only pundit who talked sense about Noni Madueke’s extra-time penalty appeal.

You’d be underwhelmed if the trio fronted a mid-afternoon World Cup group match between Poland and Saudi Arabia, but their allegiance trumped everything else.

TNT Sport continue to operate under the assumption that everybody wanted the English team to win, with a glass eye for the reality that most viewers wanted Arsenal to lose.

And this sentiment was picked up and run with by Darren Fletcher, Ally McCoist and Steven Gerrard during the match itself.

A ‘Darren Fletcher commentary bingo’ sheet had floated on social media pre-match, containing gems like ‘irrelevant stat’, mannerisms such as ‘listen to the noise inside this place’ and the quietly damning ‘gives opinion’.

All commentators reach the parody eventually, but Fletcher doesn’t receive the modicum of affection that underpinned the perception of Motson, Davies and Tyldesley.

‘One-nil to the Arsenal has a nice ring to it,’ he cried unashamedly after Kai Havertz opened the scoring, with more than half an eye on the post-match montage.

It got worse over the course of 90 minutes, with everybody involved praising Arsenal in the manner of an enthusiastic parent overseeing potty training and ignoring the 24 per cent possession and one shot on target.

There was also the teeth-grinding ignorance of being told Warren Zaire-Emery really should be playing more for PSG, despite having the most Ligue 1 minutes and fourth most in the Champions League.

Fletcher will surely have known this; commentators spend days extensively researching both teams before matches. Instead, he led with his opinion instead of the facts and the viewer was left poorer as a result.

Extra-time offered no respite. Fletcher told us that Arsenal hadn’t been awarded a penalty all season before twice misunderstanding the definition of irony.

There was nothing ironic about the reaction to Madueke’s penalty box tumble. ‘Fletch’ asked ‘Coisty’, who was quick to say he’d ‘seen them given’ and Gerrard agreed, despite acknowledging the Arsenal man had grabbed hold of Nuno Mendes’ arm.

Later, after Gabriel sent his penalty towards the Slovakian border, TNT insisted that ‘our hearts go out’ to him. Possibly, until you remember he’s arguably the Premier League’s biggest sh*thouse and this generation had its John Terry moment.

It’s human nature to be caught up in the moment, to find your intellect subsumed by the raw emotion of sport.

But these people are broadcasters of a showpiece match, paid to be objective observers of events rather than breathing their own biases over them.

Even the trophy presentation wasn’t fortunate enough to escape this, with an ad break saltily scheduled approximately three seconds after PSG lifted the cup.

It’s hard to identify who exactly TNT’s coverage was for. All broadcasters are slaves to ‘clickable content’, but social media was united in scorn about their output from Budapest.

Aside from the horrendous celebrity crowbarring, football stations need to move away from the concept of fans covering their own team.

Manchester United and Liverpool matches are unwatchable on Sky Sports thanks to the combined efforts of Neville and Carragher.

And, despite a monopoly on European matches and the opportunity to do something different, TNT have spent the last decade copying the worst aspects of this model.

There’s also an uncomfortable truth here; nothing about TNT’s coverage would have enhanced anybody’s experience of the final.

Arsenal fans, understandably, will have had their minds elsewhere. Casual supporters and non-football watchers, surely the intended recipients of the pre-match fluff, will have found most of it floating over their heads.

And everybody else will have successfully alienated and p*ssed off. It’s telling that their coverage hasn’t improved since Jake Humphrey and Rio Ferdinand left.

Football is the most popular sport in the world. The Champions League final is the biggest match in the club game.

If you can’t let the football do the talking in those circumstances, then the game has never been more gone.