TNT's Champions League Goals Show Review: Cable TV, the game is over

Or, how to kill your coverage in three rounds...

There’s sports shows that age badly, or were of their time, or they contained what was then-considered insight but now looks rudimentary as the sport itself evolves.

But there’s nothing quite like the superhuman stupidity which TNT have achieved via their revamped Goals Show, a bafflingly awful, media executive-driven annihilation of a great concept.

It’s one that is so inane, so devoid of any feeling or emotion, that it should be a wake-up call - if one was needed - that very few people on either side of the sports media fence have any idea whatsoever what they are doing.

Let’s give the suits a break, for just a second. It’s hard to make a modern show that has to conform to broadcasting standards and delivers a professionalism expected from the conventional cord audience.

But TNT already had it, in its previous incarnation. A charismatic host in James Richardson, doing what he does with aplomb and able to fill in dead air with the best of them. Julien Laurens, Raphael Honigstein, and James Horncastle, all European experts in their respective fields and, importantly, clearly tight with each other and Richardson and comfortable in their environment. Because for a goals show, it’s not just about knowledge, it’s about enjoying the goals going in.

And it led to a buoyant atmosphere. They cheered, they whooped, they made an event of it, and boy does the Champions League need it because in this format legitimate drama will be extremely thin on the ground.

Most neutral fans tuned in because they were guaranteed to find out something about the teams involved if events were quiet, and if the goals were flying in, they would get some analysis worth a damn.

And yet, of all the elements of TNT’s risible Champions League coverage, this is the one they chose to rip up. And, for want of a more agreeable phrase, it’s absolutely shit.

There’s one or two concessions to make; firstly, the sale of one match to Amazon meant that the Goals Show is now [Most of] The Goals Show, in that they have to acknowledge a game that is being played, but for them may as well not exist.

Tonight it’s Arsenal v Shakhtar Donetsk, and it’s reduced to a description of a goal by host Matt Smith but, like a tree falling in the woods, we don’t know if it’s happened because on the GOALS show, we haven’t seen it.

Secondly, having four men on a panel just won’t cut it these days. It’s not entirely clear if any or all original members were available this season anyway, and that might have played a part - though Laurens and Horncastle are separately involved.

And so Karen Carney is inserted, with as much integration as Yoko Ono enjoyed from the rest of the Beatles when hooking up with John Lennon. There’s nothing wrong with Carney but everyone knows this is a format that requires ad-libbing and personality, and instead she’s just commentating in a series of syllables either behind, or in front of, the coverage we’re watching.

And that’s probably the biggest failing on evidence in Tuesday’s carnival of the banal. I’m not sure what stream they are watching in the studio, but at home I’m forced to watch them cut away from a Dortmund player, live, about to tap the ball into the net for a goal elsewhere which could have waited, and in the second half watch Stuttgart’s late penalty v Juventus be saved while the panel chat over the top of it, yet make no indication that they saw it happen.

It’s football in the Twilight Zone, watching with a friend in another dimension who might be suffering cosmic buffering issues.

Owen Hargreaves is here, usually good, better than ever in fact, but another not meant for this style. He’s talking about Vini Jr’s talent for pretty much the entirety of the second half. He scores a hat-trick against Dortmund, fine. But he’s also about to win the Ballon d’Or, the most prestigious award in the game. He’s not appeared from nowhere, and we know he’s good. Yet Hargreaves gives him a substitute teacher level of analysis from a pundit who can clearly do better.

And Horncastle. He remains, though his lifeforce has been dissolved, his friends all off at other universities now or, in the case of Laurens, on a different timetable so they can’t get a pint together in the Union.

And then there’s Matt Smith - a classy broadcaster and by all accounts a thoroughly nice bloke. But this is a format that exposes him, too, in that there needs to be constant rapport, to-ing and fro-ing with your guests, and a desire to make the dull moments interesting, and the big moments momentous.

He unfortunately fails on all counts; there’s a moment in the first half where Madrid hit the crossbar twice in the space of five seconds, and yet the decibel level of the discourse doesn’t rise above the server at a McDonald’s drive thru asking if I could please move to the next window. This is an attempt at Youtube-style TV with a coterie who could not be further from the Youtube generation even if the footage were in black-and-white.

And let’s face it, we’re in an era where TNT are forking out ungodly sums for this content and yet [some] fans would rather watch SOMEONE ELSE watch the game on their behalf rather than endure this. There is nothing progressive about it, nothing substantial about it. It neither markets to the lowest common denominator, nor offer anything in any way superior. It’s a channel represented by the one bloke with a phone at the back of a wedding with his mates crowding around it - but at least they would celebrate if a goal went in.

So TNT have a format where they can literally cheerlead for the competition - this is the exact purpose - and yet choose to serve us a pre-theatre menu equivalent, when the a la carte had already delivered. With BBC now having a highlights package, on demand, I don’t see a reason why anyone would sit through this.

And so sometimes it’s less about the format, and more about the talent, and even more about the chemistry. Our favourite TV shows, our favourite songs, could have been merely wallpaper in our lives if the wrong note is played or actor is cast.

TNT had the format and it had the talent, and yet this is what we have. In an environment where the traditional cord providers are suffering unimaginable losses on their football content, the construct of this show, as it currently stands, is completely representative of where football’s precarious revenue model is positioned - costly, shitty, and actively unwanted by literally everyone.