Martin Tyler: The Voice of Football | OneFootball

One of the greatest voices to ever grace the sport, Martin Tyler’s dulcet tones have soundtracked some of the greatest football moments over the past 51 years. But legendary as his career has been, Tyler is far from finished.

June 19, 2025. As I was standing on the touchline of Lincoln Financial Field and preparing to speak to Flamengo players Danilo, Alex Sandro and Leonardo Nannetti ahead of their FIFA Club World Cup match vs. Chelsea, I found myself deprived of many things — namely, sleep, food, and relief from the sweltering Philadelphia heat.

Above all, I found myself deprived of conversation: all of the Chelsea journalists had left for the day, and all of the Flamengo journalists were speaking amongst themselves. As I desperately tried to stay awake and execute my questions, I heard a familiar voice, one that I had heard on quite a few football matches both real and virtual. A voice that had accompanied my childhood and my professional career: Martin Tyler. We spoke in detail about the tournament and agreed, when the time was right, to conduct an interview.

Photo By Ben Radford/Getty Images

Born on September 14, 1945, Tyler played football and cricket from an early age and attended his first match in 1953, watching Woking FC beat local rivals Kingstonian in the FA Amateur Cup. This would lay the foundations for Tyler to eventually break into the broadcasting industry, making his commentary debut in a Second Division match between Southampton and Sheffield Wednesday on December 28, 1974.

“My advice is: love the game and everything else will follow,” said Tyler in an exclusive Urban Pitch interview. “If you don’t love the game, then you probably should be doing something else. Because you’ve got to express a lot of feelings for the game. It’s not just calling the names of the players; you have to go with the flow and smell the fixture. That’s easy if you love the game, but it’s really hard if you don’t.”

Bit by bit, Tyler ascended the ranks and eventually graduated to Yorkshire Television, with his stellar displays in the broadcasting booth prompting his ITV Sport superiors to bring him to Argentina for the 1978 FIFA World Cup, and he’s covered every World Cup since.

Tyler emerged as one of the United Kingdom’s most beloved voices, but he was unable to dislodge Brian Moore as ITV’s No. 1 commentator, which is why he joined British Satellite Broadcasting’s Sports Channel in 1990, which eventually became Sky Sports.

Tyler proved integral in the growth of the FIFA video game, serving as the default commentator from 2005 to 2020, as well as helping to instigate the Premier League’s growth, before eventually stepping down from his role at Sky at the end of the 2022-23 season. At nearly 78, you could assume it was time for Tyler to call it quits. But you’d be wrong.

“Months before the 2022 World Cup Final in Qatar, I was asked to do a radio interview to promote the coverage for the SBS, and the interviewer said, ‘How does it feel when you’re gonna go and do your last World Cup game?'” said Tyler to R.Org. “I just went, ‘What are you telling me? Do you know something that I don’t?’ He just looked at my birth certificate and figured it would be my last. From that moment on, I was determined to do another World Cup game…instead of saying, ‘It’s a fair question because of my age,’ it prodded me to work another tournament.”

Rather than hang up the microphone, Tyler is continuing to mark his presence in the industry thanks to his commentary with Premier League Productions and his “The Joy of Football” podcast. And last month, he got the news that he was desperately hoping for: he’ll be traveling to Dallas this summer to commentate on his 13th FIFA World Cup for Host Broadcast Services.

Urban Pitch spoke to Tyler about his incredible career.

Urban Pitch: What was going through your mind when you were getting ready to commentate your first-ever match, and 51 years later, what do you remember the most from it?

Martin Tyler: The game wasn’t very good. Sheffield Wednesday won 1-0 at Southampton’s old ground “The Dell.” This was December 28, 1974, and in those days, the season went until the end of April, and then the FA Cup final was the first weekend in May.

Sheffield Wednesday did not win another league game from December 28 to the end of the season, so, clearly, they weren’t the greatest team in the world for me to commentate on, but they won the game. Southampton were expected to win, they were building a team that, in less than 18 months, won the FA Cup against Manchester United as a second-division side. They were building a team that made history, but on that day, it wasn’t a great showing from them.

I got through it, and at the end, the director said to me, “We like what you did. We’ve got another game in a couple of weeks, would you like to do that?” I said yes, but I also had a job, so I had the Saturday off to do this courtesy of my behind-the-scenes work at the big television company, London Weekend Television. I had to go back, and there weren’t too many games, but my colleagues did me proud.

They fitted around their work shifts so that I could do 10 games in two years, and then I got an offer to go on a weekly basis to a bigger television station, Yorkshire Television. And it really took off from there. I did a game 51 years to the day of my debut, and both games finished 1-0 to the away team, which is not always easy for a commentator. It means the home fans are not quite in full voice.

The difference was, in the first game, the goal came after 2-3 minutes. That’s really a test in any game for a commentator, however many years you’ve done it, to be really on their toes straight away. Sometimes you see players struggle to find their footing in the first couple of minutes, and it can be like that in commentary as well, especially in your first commentary. I remember thinking: Don’t make a mistake. And I think young commentators feel that, and then it comes to a point where you actually realize you will never do a perfect commentary. There’ll always be something that you’d like to improve on afterwards, and then you don’t worry so much about making the mistakes, because you’re a human being and it’s going to happen.

What’s your Mount Rushmore of football commentators?

One thing I don’t do is predict games, and I don’t do this because I don’t want to think, “Oh God, I missed him out.” What I can say, Zach, is that knowing the joy of the job, but also knowing the hard work that has to go into it, there’s nobody at the top of the tree that I do not admire.

When we’re watching television, of course we like different actors, or different actresses, or different films, or different genres, so there’ll be something that’ll maybe not quite sit as well, and something else that you really love. But you recognize the body of work that’s gone in to get somebody to do that on a regular basis. And I have to say, the standard of younger commentators coming up behind me is very, very high.

There are times that I wish I was 30 or 40 years younger, and I would go again, but I’m glad I’ve had my time as it is, because I’ve seen the development. I’ve been part of a real change in broadcasting, and I’m very grateful for that. I’ve still got a little bit of fuel in the tank. I may not be a Formula 1, but I’m still out there pitching, you know? That’s a terrible mix of analogies, but I’m still behind the wheel, shall we say.

What have been your favorite player names to say?

There have been so many. Clearly, Agüero is one that comes to mind, because it meant so much to me — I didn’t expect it. Honestly, when it happened, I was just so lucky. I felt so lucky that I was in the position to watch, let alone have a microphone in my hand, to watch an amazing finale to a match and to a season, with such happiness in the stadium.

If you push me on that, that would have to be the one, but I try to pronounce the names correctly. That’s a big thing for football commentators, and not everybody feels the same about them; not even the producers feel the same about it. In some English television, channels and programs, the anglicization is sort of accepted. I’m more from the school of trying to say the names as the players like to say it. For example, Tottenham have a promising young player named Lucas Bergvall, whose name is pronounced Berry-vall in Sweden, and the Premier League sends out a video to us of the players saying their names in front of a camera.

It’s disrespectful to say, “Well, actually, I don’t want to call you that,” because he’s done it two or three times now on these different videos every year, and it’s the same. But then you get Erling Haaland, who wants to be called the English pronunciation, and we have to respect that. I commentated on his dad Alf-Inge for a number of seasons in the Premier League, and he preferred the Norwegian pronunciation, so, if those clips get out, people will say, “How can he be his dad, because his name sounds different?”

Those are the little things that commentators get a bit picky about, but I would say to anyone, it’s your choice, as long as you’re backed up by the production team you’re working for. But Premier League Productions, where I work for now, they’re very keen on getting as close as possible to the actual sounds.

Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Lastly, what have been your favorite and least favorite broadcasting booths to commentate from?

We don’t like booths to start with…we don’t like glass. I’ve been in one or two places around Europe, especially countries where it is cold in the winter, and it rains on the glass. You might as well be looking at the monitor, you might as well be sitting in the studio back in London, so I’ve had one or two issues about this where I’ve had to ask to be moved, because it has been almost impossible. I suppose, as an old school commentator, I’m just pleased to be doing it, I wouldn’t want to make a fuss, and then have somebody say, “What a pain in the backside he is,” when I’m really grateful to be there, so you’ve got to get on with that.

I once had to say, “If that glass isn’t removed tomorrow, I’m bringing a brick with me and smashing it myself,” and it was removed. It was a terrible thing to say, and I do apologize: I tell the story against myself, not for myself. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but that’s how strong you feel about it.

Running tracks are a nightmare, so the worst one in the Premier League, of course, is the London Stadium. You want to be closer to the action, and I think that’s part of the problem for the fans as well. There have been some fairly distant ones in tournaments where perhaps they’ve converted their stadiums. The World Cup in the USA will be interesting to see where we get put, because the broadcasting booths are not necessarily seen in quite the same light for NFL commentary vs. football commentary. I heard Donald Trump say that we’ve got to get rid of football as referring to American football, and I thought to myself, “Good luck with that.” I know the USA quite well. No one’s gonna change the NFL, even for the second World Cup that they’ve had.