Why do British World Cup commentators still salivate so much over Brazil? I get it, they've got an illustrious past, but so has Michael Owen. And like Owen, they haven't been any good since the early 2000s and have spent the past two decades getting a lot more boring and easier to laugh at.
Brazil have become the Lib Dems of international football. You know they're there every four years, but you can never remember anything they actually do. And yet, every single time they rock up at a World Cup, the sheer volume of commentator drool outdoes Harry Kane when he's struggling to open his velcro wallet.
Brazil were held to a 1-1 draw with Morocco in their opening game. I mean for crying out loud, Guy Mowbray wouldn't stop talking them up on Saturday despite the fact they were being run ragged by a Morocco side full of more random, talentless nobodies than Reform UK.
I'm all for a bit of passion, but treating a team with Lucas Paqueta and Bruno Guimaraes in midfield – and flippin' Brentford's striker up top – like the epitome of flair and prestige is like treating a Greggs sausage roll like Beef Wellington. Our media hands out free passes to Brazil faster than Chelsea hand 14-year contracts to Ecuadorian toddlers. It makes about as much sense as making Thomas Tuchel the poster boy for Just For Men.
BBC studi-d'oh!
The fact that the BBC haven't bothered to build a World Cup studio in North America annoys me more than the concept of affordable match tickets annoys Gianni Infantino. While the ITV lot are lounging in a swanky rooftop studio in Brooklyn with stunning views of the Manhattan skyline, the Beeb have made do with a glorified shed in Salford. It's the sort of pathetic, cheapskate stunt I'd expect from Mike Ashley hosting a wedding reception at a Harvester.
It's the friggin' World Cup, lads – the biggest sporting spectacle on Earth outside the Pembrokeshire Bog Snorkelling Championships – and the BBC are treating it like a late-night weather forecast on a budget news channel!
ITV are operating out of a glam studio in Brooklyn. And don't give me this patronising, bootlicking garbage about 'saving taxpayer money'. If you think I should be grateful to the BBC for being 'fiscally responsible' and cutting carbon emissions, then your mind is as warped as Romelu Lukaku's first touch.
I pay my license fee precisely so the BBC can make a good-looking, quality product. You can't take my hard-earned cash, deliver a piece of digital rubbish that looks like it was rendered on a PlayStation 2, then spend the rest lining Alan Shearer's pockets with a salary his punditry skills absolutely do not warrant. Appearances matter. If the BBC can't pull their fingers out and build a real, on-location set for the World Cup, then I'll be as tuned in to their broadcasts as Kyle Walker is to the notion of marital faithfulness.
