Search: ' Martin Keown'

The climax to the 2010 World Cup adds a new name to the trophy, as seen on TV

Round of 16 ~ June 26
South Korea 1 Uruguay 2
There are acres of empty seats for a match played in a downpour. Last week Peter Drury compared chilly conditions to a match at Notts County; we now discover Jon Champion’s benchmark for a rainy day at football: “Weather you’d expect at Port Vale.” Some Uruguayan fans are wearing Óscar Tabárez facemasks. Park Chu-Young has the first chance, his free-kick bouncing off the post with Fernando Muslera beaten. But the Uruguayans might have been three up at the break – Lee Jung-Soo gets away with a handball and Luis Suárez is wrongly flagged offside when clean through. Their one goal is a calamity for Korea, the prone Jung Sung-Ryong swiping ineptly at Diego Forlán’s cross as it flies right across the area to Suárez. Muslera is equally at fault for the equaliser, failing to connect with a defensive header that goes straight up in the air – “Look up the definition of no-man’s land, he’s there,” says Craig Burley – and it is finished off by the “Bolton Wanderers man”, Lee Chung-Young. Uruguay’s deserved winner is superbly curled in by Suárez, “the man they call El Pistolero”, after the Koreans fail to clear a corner. That 49-goal season for Ajax, the most repeated stat we’ve heard at the World Cup, gets another airing while Suárez appears to bounce off a photographer’s head en route to a group hug with the substitutes. Such celebrations are treated as a felony in English football but no one has been booked for them at the World Cup. Korea get a final chance but “Middlesbrough fans will not be surprised” as Lee Dong-Gook’s weak shot is held up on the muddy pitch and cleared.X

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Relive four weeks of statements of the obvious from the pundits, daily complaints about the wobbly ball and over-emphatic pronunciations of Brazilian names

June 11
South Africa 1 Mexico 1
“It’s in Africa where humanity began and it is to Africa humanity now returns,” says Peter Drury who you feel would be available for film trailer voiceover work when it’s quieter next summer. Mexico dominate and have a goal disallowed when the flapping Itumeleng Khune inadvertently plays Carlos Vela offside. ITV establish that it was the right decision: “Where’s that linesman from, that football hotbed Uzbekistan?” asks Gareth Southgate who had previously seemed like a nice man. "What a moment in the history of sport… A goal for all Africa,” says Drury after Siphiwe Tshabalala crashes in the opener. We cut to Tshbalala’s home township – “they’ve only just got electricity” – where the game is being watched on a big screen which Jim Beglin thinks is a sheet. Cuauhtémoc Blanco looks about as athletic as a crab but nonetheless has a role in Mexico’s goal, his badly mishit pass being crossed for Rafael Márquez to score thanks to a woeful lack of marking. The hosts nearly get an undeserved winner a minute from time when Katlego Mphela hits the post. Óscar Pérez is described as “a personality goalkeeper” as if that is a tactical term like an attacking midfielder. Drury says “Bafana Bafana” so often it’s like he’s doing a Red Nose event where he earns a pound for an irrigation scheme in the Sudan every time he manages to fit it in.

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Cameron Carter casts his eye over the BBC's football presenters

With no summer tournament as a distraction the new season has been a long wait for all of us. Even so, it is still irritating of Gary Lineker to preface each Match of the Day with a promise of “enthralling” games and “high drama”, as if a significant amount of those watching were still debating whether to commit to the whole programme. Match of the Day is one of the few commodities left, along with milk and weapons-grade uranium, that does not require a hard sell. Lineker is dangerously close these days to resembling the kind of schoolboy no one ever liked until his parents invited all the neighbourhood kids to his birthday party with a bouncy castle (symbolically, Lineker’s 1986 World Cup goals) and a chocolate fountain (the 1990 World Cup goals). This makes the boy popular for a while, but not, as he mistakenly believes, forever. In other words, we’re not actually winking back at you, Gary.

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Cameron Carter on Sky's relentless plugging of "Survival Sunday" and Gabby Logan's knees

Victor Lewis-Smith’s assertion that “alliteration is the leper’s bell of the idiot” came to mind in the last week of May as the newspapers and television collaborated to promote “Survival Sunday” (to go with “Super Sunday”, “Straightforward Saturday” and “Misplaced Monday”). Sky were so keen they had a countdown on Sky Sports News the day before: “Survival Sunday… 1 day, 3 hours, 25 minutes…”, just to remind you what an important day it was and also to be sure to refer to it as “Survival Sunday” when with your friends.

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Loftus Road has become a must-see destination for A-list celebs and reclusive billionaires, apparently – but this mysterious turn of events is yet to make much difference to facilities for fans or to the quality of the team, even if QPR are strong enough to see off promoted rivals, writes Taylor Parkes

When I was six, too young to have a team but old enough to understand, someone approached me in the playground and asked who I supported. In the late Seventies, any answer other than “Liverpool” was going to invite derision, but for once in my life I was determined to avoid the easy option. “Queens Park Rangers,” I replied, randomly, and was almost blown over by forced, hysterical laughter. “Hahahahaha – they’re rubbish!” This may have been true (they went down that year), but it struck me as somewhat ungracious coming from a six-year-old glory hunter. Ten minutes later, a stranger approached me and said: “I heard you support Queens Park Rangers.” I played along: “Yes, I do.” “Hahahahaha,” they said. “Hahahahahaha!”

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