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Negative press stories allowed some World Cup visitors to justify staying in a sanitised environment. But those who did so missed out on the complete experience of South Africa in 2010. Jonathan Wilson reports

Maybe what I did was stupid – certainly the South African woman sitting next to me on the plane home thought so – but, frankly, the air of paranoia was driving me insane. In most cities in the world walking ten minutes out of a football stadium to a bar would be a normal thing to do; not in Johannesburg.

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Dear WSC
In response to my letter published in WSC 275, Mark Brennan Scott accepts that we send someone to each of the weekend’s Premier League games, to commentate live, but not unreasonably asks whether Match of the Day commentators ever “re-record bits they are unhappy with”. Not exactly, but the beauty of an edit rather than a live game is there is scope for tweaking both the sound and visuals by transmission time. Every now and then, a commentator will, for example, misidentify a goalscorer and then correct themselves, in which case we have been known to remove take one in the edit. I’ve found a copy of a letter I had published in WSC 240 in which I said: “If a commentator gets something wrong at the time we may even spare him his blushes at 10pm by removing the odd word.” That remains the case, but most of the time the commentator’s natural reaction works best. If it takes a couple of replays before they identify a deflection or suspicion of handball, that will nearly always feel more authentic than trying to look too clever after the event. In shortening a game for transmission, we may occasionally “pull up” a replay or remove a few words, but would almost never re-record any section of a commentary unless there’s been a technical problem. Furthermore, in all cases the commentators go home after the post-match interviews and a producer back at base edits the pictures and sound recorded at the time. In early days of the Premier League, only two or three games had multi-camera coverage and commentators present, so there were occasional attempts to add a commentary to single-camera round-up games, for example, for Goal of the Month. However, not every commentator was a convincing thespian and one or two “Le Tissier’s capable of beating three men from here and curling one into the top corner. Oh my word, he has…” moments did slip through. With multi-camera coverage and a commentator at every game, that no longer happens.
Incidentally, call us old-fashioned but there was a degree of pride in this office in MOTD’s recent use of “crashed against the timber” as cited in Steve Whitehead’s letter. Better that – or maybe “hapless custodian” – than some unpleasant modern notion like “bragging rights”.
Paul Armstrong, Programme Editor, BBC Match of the Day

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Jonathan Wilson reports from the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations where he found the football disappointing but the organisation worse

Remember 1990? Remember Cameroon capping a decade of African development by pushing England to the limit in the World Cup quarter-final? Remember the general assumption that African football was emerging into the mainstream and that African nations would soon be challenging for the tournament on a regular basis? Since then, despite the increasing prevalence of African players at top club sides, more teams from the Asian confederation have reached the last eight than from Africa.

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Filippo Ricci tells his story of mistaken identity and the search for an elusive sticker

I have always had a love-hate relationship with picture cards. Despite many attempts, I never managed to finish a single football collection. I’ve always felt a bit ashamed of myself because of that.

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The fuss over the timing of Ghana 2008 helped put the tournament centre-stage around the world – and those watching can only have been impressed, writes Alan Sharif Duncan

There can be no turning back now for African football. Largely overlooked a decade ago as little more than the continental confederation’s nativity play, the Africa Cup of Nations is being transformed into something of a global sporting phenomenon. While there will be those who will mourn its relative loss of innocence to a world of sponsors, TV rights and unprecedented western media scrutiny, Ghana 2008 was, in terms of the quality of football alone, a timely coming of age – two years before South Africa hosts the World Cup.

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