Jimmy Magee is bad at Commentating on Football Games

[This was originally posted at firejimmymagee.wordpress.com in a pique of rage at the inadequacies of Mr Magee's commentary at Euro2008]

Listening to Jimmy Magee do commentary is reminiscent of watching sports coverage from behind the Iron Curtain. Everyone can recall watching a football game broadcast from Kiev, Moscow, or Bucharest, where the image had an elusive grainy quality to it (for reasons which were never quite apparent), and where there always seemed to be a five second time delay between image and commentary.

Jimmy Magee, surely ironically nicknamed ‘The Memory Man’, must long for these heady days of Soviet dominance, because not only does he incorporate his own five second time delay into commentary by dint of his own ineptitude with player recognition and general lack of football knowledge, the complete effect is to render the image granier than it would appear on any other television network. Fact. The man is clearly some sort of optical illusionist.

Events like the European Championships are a brutal reminder of just how deficient the man is at commentating on football matches. It is sometimes easy enough to overlook this when he does a five minute segment on RTE’s Premiership programme (a little careful editing can take care of the time delay), but when a major tournament thrusts him into commentating on a full length, live game, between - gasp - foreign football teams, well, one can be forgiven for coming across all Father Jack and shooting the TV. Or, at the very least, putting up with Mark Lawrenson’s inane musings on the BBC.

There seem to be two key components to the typical Magee commentary, which cumulatively create the ‘time lag’ and ‘fuzz’ effects.

1) Mispronunciation: Ok, so it’s not always easy to pronounce the names of foreign athletes. We can accept and admit this much. However, when you have been commentating on international football tournaments since 1966, when you are paid to have a basic knowledge of those taking part in said game of football and to at least provide some sort of insight which those watching supposedly cannot, well, Jimmy’s activities are inexcusable.

For example: During the Italy-Romania game, the Italians brought on Fabio Quagliarella as a late substitute. Magee, presumably having laid eyes on the name for the first time in his life, got no further than making a ‘Qu’ sound, which was prolonged for three or four seconds (perhaps to allow Italy coach Roberto Donadoni time to change his mind and bring on Antonio di Natale instead?) before giving up. He can’t even commentate on substitutions in real time.

2) Lack of player recognition: Magee clearly can’t distinguish between the majority of footballers on the pitch, a deficiency which is unfortunate given his chosen profession. This generally leads to, as usual, huge gaps in commentary while Jimmy rustles through his notes to find out who the number 3 for Romania is (actually, given his lack of preparation, I’ll wager that the notes belong to the unfortunate Mark Kinsella). Of course, once he positively identifies Razvan Rat and butchers the prononciation (easier in this case), the play will have moved on.

So, what Jimmy does to avoid this hugely embarrassing situation (which still occurs, by the way), is play a high stakes game of roulette, memorizing the names of three or four footballers on each team, then taking his chances each time that team gets the ball that the player in possession is one of his men. During the Italy-Romania game, it seems that Jimmy’s ‘chosen ones’ were Grosso, Zambrotta, Chiellini, and Toni, whose names he quoted seemingly at random. One important point must be made: Jimmy’s ‘chosen ones’ seem to be picked for ease of prononciation, and not because he has any particular proficiency in recognising these players when they actually have the ball.

This method is particularly effective where player names sound somewhat alike - so in the case of the Romanians, Nicolita and Nicolae are interchangeable. Seeing as two players share the surname Nicolae, if Jimmy mumbles ‘Nicolablerghsplaat’ he has a reasonable chance of being vaguely correct. But the ball will invariably have gone. Given all this, surely Jimmy’s dream commentary gig would be a game involving the Welsh rugby union team, with its abundance of men named Jones (eight in the most recent squad). But I digress…

Jimmy Magee holds a position where he is supposed to enlighten, and all he does is plunge the viewer into darkness. On discovering that he was doing commentary on the Austria-Germany game earlier, I somewhat flippantly remarked that watching no football at all would be better than watching football with Jimmy doing ‘commentary’. And I love my football. However, I also value my sanity quite highly, and for that reason, Jimmy needs to make this tournament his last. The only possible excuse I can make for the man is that he quite likes the idea of replicating those broadcasts from far flung Soviet outposts in the 1970s and 1980s.

So, either the man is lazy with his research and generally poor at his job, or he longs for the brutal repression experienced behind the Iron Curtain. Either way, Jimmy, it’s time to go.