A s the rights-holder not tied to their regular set of white-soled Match of the Day pundits, ITV has made significant recent gains on the BBC for tournament coverage in being able to call up some big guns. Saturday lunchtime’s Trooping The Colour had also meant the baton was ITV’s for Euro 2024’s first three matches. Inform, entertain, hope the football is actually good and don’t hit the “let’s go off to the England camp” button too early? That was the formula, once opening idents revealed these Euros are jointly sponsored by Qatar Airways and Lidl to remind where much of football’s power lies and of the cost-of-living crisis.
Opening night saw an alpha-male lineup: Graeme Souness, Roy Keane and Ian Wright as Scotland were given a William Wallace-like disembowelment by Germany. Mark Pougatch, less high performance more eternal head-boy, oversaw proceedings in his brisk, sunny fashion. Wright is these days a nation’s favourite uncle but still possesses the kinetic energy to stop Keane going off at the deep end.
Still, so poor were Scotland that Wrighty and Souness could only nod approvingly as Roy hit the Keane-isms. “Being aggressive is part of football,” he squawked. Souey couldn’t have put it better himself.
The Friday night innovation was Christina Unkel, imported from CBS as video assistant referee expert. An initial communication breakdown with Sam Matterface was solved – Unkel would suffer a similar glitch with Seb Hutchinson on Saturday – bu.
