Poor pundits mean BBC is losing to ITV in the World Cup TV battle

Grey skies surround BBC’s colour men.

With Fame Academy, The Voice and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, BBC have never found a reality contest to match the success ITV have had with X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.

But I wasn’t expecting them to host their latest one during TV’s most watched sporting event.

With no live games during the domestic season, BBC have entered the World Cup with few co-commentators, or “colour men” as they’re known.

Their answer is to ask any former footballer that is hanging around Brazil to talk for a bit while a game is going on and the one who does this best (which is still open to whoever can sound excited to be there and has a rudimentary grasp of the rules) will be given the job for the Final (and perhaps to perform in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance, who knows?)

Phil Neville has been pulled apart enough so I’ll just say that he took the criticism on that sticking out chin of his, saying co-commentary was “harder than he thought.”

There’s also no truth to the rumour that the Chilean supporters who stormed the press box prior to their nation’s match with Spain on Wednesday had heard that Phil had been given their game to commentate on.

But the others aren’t much better. Robbie Savage was hyper-critical (and hypocritical) in his judgement of USA v Ghana, describing anything that didn’t end in a goal as “poor” and castigating America’s right-back for going forward when he should be settling for a draw and then praising him for making the run that led to their late winner. But at least he was animated about being present at a World Cup in football’s spiritual home.

Kevin Kilbane, Martin Keown and the wooden Rio Ferdinand have all done their best to suck the enjoyment out of a tournament that, joyously, quality defending has forgot.

Keown did have the excuse that he was paired with Jonathan Pearce for the France v Honduras game, a man whose week-long wrestle with goal-line technology doesn’t befit someone whose first job on TV was as the commentator on Robot Wars.

It all means that ITV, traditionally the poor relation to BBC in everything but singing contests, only has to broadcast all the matches without cutting to an ad break while a goal is being scored to win this year’s World Cup TV battle. But that’s been “harder than they thought” in the past!

BBC World Cup Coverage.