We have the advantage, of course, of knowing the outcome. Gary Lineker’s introduction to the BBC coverage of the Euro final was the prelude instead to a night of disappointment. It didn’t change the story of football in our country forever, and still no England team has won a major tournament on foreign soil.
Sporting immortality remains as tantalisingly out of reach as it ever did. Football , inevitably, didn’t come home. Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital subscription to Yorkshire Post, you can get access to all of our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.
It’s not so much the hope that kills you, it’s the hype. The BBC’s 90-minute pre-match build-up – a game before a game – featured more fanfare than Elgar managed in Pomp and Circumstance . There was inspirational poetry, rousing music, and, of course, images of ‘66 flashing here and there.
They think it’s all over – it was soon, with a 2-1 win for the superior Spanish. All of us in the media, of course, are guilty of hyping things up to some degree or other. Part of that is a result of having so much air-time or columns to fill; part is the shifting trends of society and the changing nature of consumer demands.
The BBC, for the most part, I thought, got it right, although whether we really needed to hear messages of support from such as Ellie Goulding and Ross Kemp is open to question (other celebrities are – and indeed were avail.
