The state of football commentary in 2026 - as seen by those behind the microphone
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Nick Miller
Seven commentators who are regulars on UK and U.S. broadcasts on their craft, from coping with change to dealing with criticism
When Gary Lineker was suspended by the BBC from presenting Match of the Day in March 2023 and essentially everyone else involved with the programme stepped back in solidarity, an episode aired in which there were no commentators on the show’s Premier League highlights clips.
It was a weird, eerie experience. And if nothing else, it showed that, even if we get irritated by them at some points, commentators are an integral part of the viewing experience. They’re not the most important part, but boy is it strange when they’re not there.
Commentary has changed a lot since the days where one man — and it always was a man — would show up, talk about the game and for the most part, their words would be lost to the ether. Aside from a few notable highlights of some big matches, most of what they said would never even be broadcast.
Now, with so much more football and the overpowering nature of the internet providing both a platform for promotion but also ridicule, the role of the commentator is very different.
So it felt like a good time to ask some of those involved about where football commentary is at today. What is the biggest thing that has changed about it? How does social media influence their work? Should a commentator have an opinion on what they’re watching? And what don’t people understand about their occupation?
We spoke to seven commentators from a range of different perspectives and jobs. They are:
Peter Drury — lead Premier League commentator for Sky Sports in the UK and NBC in the USA
John Strong — lead commentator for Fox Sports on MLS and the U.S. men’s national team
Vicki Sparks — commentator and reporter for TV and radio, for the BBC, Disney+ and others
Guy Mowbray — lead commentator for BBC TV
Seb Hutchinson — commentator for Sky Sports, ITV and CBS on men’s and women’s football
Matt Davies-Adams — in-house commentator for Chelsea TV and others, plus — full disclosure — host and guest on several podcasts produced by The Athletic
John Murray — commentator and football correspondent for BBC Radio 5 Live
We interviewed each one separately, and have edited their words for length and clarity.
What is the biggest change in the job since you started commentating?
Drury: The availability of information on the internet. When I started out, there was Rothmans (the annual reference book filled with facts and statistics about the previous season), and World Soccer magazine once a month. In those days, researching a European game was very often shooting in the dark, whereas now there’s infinite information. And I don’t just mean in terms of numbers, but historical information, back stories, all of that sort of thing.
Hutchinson: There are more avenues for people to tell the story of football. When I was growing up, the commentator felt like the authority and sometimes the sole authority on a game. You took everything from what the commentator or co-commentator said, and it just stuck.
Now, people are doing watchalongs, reaction videos… a video will come out shortly after the game with lots of different views, the same game from different angles. I don’t know whether that’s changed the way you commentate per se, but it’s how you feel about the role. You probably don’t feel as much of a ‘guardian of the game’.
Mowbray: More opportunities. When I started in the early ’90s, the idea of being a football commentator was pie in the sky. We grew up with a handful of voices: you only heard them on the BBC and ITV. An old teacher of mine used to say, “You’re always talking about football — might I remind you that you’ll never get a job talking about football.”
Strong: The means of distribution are changing rapidly, and for us in the United States, it’s changed remarkably: 15 years ago, it was really just Fox and ESPN, and it was very much cable, satellite, subscription-based; more niche channels you had to seek out. Then NBC came in, then Turner, then CBS, and now with Prime Video and Apple, plus Netflix getting the Women’s World Cup rights, every media company in America is involved in the sport in some way, which is remarkable.
Murray: When I started, virtually every match I would do would be alongside another commentator (in addition to the co-commentator). So it would be me plus whoever it happened to be at the time, whether that was Mike Ingham or Alan Green or Peter Drury or Simon Brotherton. The obvious thing is you’re just doing more talking now.
Davies-Adams: The big thing I’ve noticed now is that a lot of the stuff I do, I feel like it is for social media. You know that the goal clip is going to be put on X and Instagram and whatever, and that does kind of come into your thinking a little bit, which is a weird place to be, but it has meant a lot more exposure as well.
If Chelsea put out say, the Estevao goal against Liverpool earlier in the season, that would have had well over two million views within a week or so. If you were putting that out as an edit on the TV channel, it might have got 5,000 to 10,000. The dominance of social media has definitely made my work reach a bigger audience.
Sparks: The big thing is social media. I remember saying to a writer at the start of my career, “Well, at least for me, once I’ve said something, it’s gone.” Now, that isn’t the case, particularly if you make a mistake. Then it’s immediately clipped up and shared online. There are also things like comm cams (commentator-facing cameras that capture them during games). That really does bring the commentary we do to another audience.
Those comm cams are not universally popular among those they are filming…
Murray: Initially, I wasn’t sure about it at all, because I feel that radio should not be seen. There should be a certain aura about radio, in that it should be what you imagine it to be, rather than actually being able to see it. However, I do recognise that it is good for business, and I think it naturally draws people to listen to the radio.
Drury: When Sky puts a camera on Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher watching Manchester United against Liverpool (as co-commentators), it is massively viewed, so you can’t on the one hand disapprove of that, and then on the other hand acknowledge that a lot of people are getting a lot of pleasure out of it. It’s not for me, and if you look at those things, you’ll see that I sidle off to the corner of the frame as best I can.
Sparks: Watching them back, it’s made me realise you do use your body so much when you commentate. I like to stand up, because if you’re standing up, you’re engaged, you’re energised, and that comes out in your commentary. I wave my arms around, not because I’m necessarily excited, but because as soon as you express something with your body, it comes out in your voice.
Hutchinson: If people see your face, that gives a bigger connection, and people will recognise you and they will feel like they know you more. Some people will appreciate you more, some people will hate you more. It’s just the way these things are.
A related phenomenon is goal clips: now, whenever a goal is scored, the broadcaster involved will race to get the clip onto social media as quickly as possible. Which is good for the viewer, but what about the commentators? Knowing that a bite-sized section of a game, which may not reflect your work as a whole, could change the way you commentate on a goal…
Mowbray: It’s not something I think about at all. My commentary is the whole game, the whole piece. It’s not something I’m massively keen on: there’s this idea that you need to be shouting and screaming and off the scale.
Drury: It’s something I think you’ve got to put out of your mind, otherwise it would certainly inhibit you. You might argue that getting the moment right is more important than it’s ever been, because that is what people, largely speaking, are going to hear and consume and remember.
Sparks: I think the beauty of commentary when you get it right is that when you call that huge moment, you are fully in the moment, and you are aware that you’re broadcasting, you’re not just reacting as a fan would. If part of your brain is thinking, ‘Oh, there’s a camera on me, and it’s filming my reaction’, immediately you’ve taken yourself out of that moment.
Davies-Adams: I’m thinking about stuff like, ‘I don’t want to be putting a load of context on this from around the rest of the game.’ If you say something like, “He had that chance that he missed 20 minutes ago” — even if we’re talking about a 10-minute highlight edit — that chance might not be in that edit, so it won’t make any sense. So it’s about trying to isolate it a little bit.
The other thing is that VAR has made it really, really difficult to call goals and not reference it. If you think there is a chance the goal’s going to be disallowed, it’s really hard to stop yourself from saying, “Well, for now, the goal stands.” If that’s going to be put in an edit, and they’re not going to show the offside lines or whatever, then that makes you sound daft, because the person watching it who knows the goal was given is thinking, ‘Well, why are you even saying that?’
Hutchinson: When it came to Michelle Agyemang (scoring the equaliser for England in the 2025 Women’s Euros semi-final) and the timing of it, it just felt, ‘This has got to go, you can’t hold this one back.’ You don’t get many chances in football like that to do it, because it has to be a goal that means something. People probably connect with it because that’s just how you feel when a goal goes in for your team.
Strong: Our Fox Sports digital team take a lot of pride in being able to, particularly at a World Cup or other major tournament, get the highlights up as fast as possible, because it serves a big part of the audience who can’t necessarily be there. If you’re someone who is trying to work your way up the chain, it’s like anything else — how do you stand out? Adding things into your calls that will really play well as a 20-second social media clip, that’s part of the gig.
Even in the early days of SportsCenter on ESPN, the thing that launched my career in certain ways was my call of a Darlington Nagbe goal in 2011, and it’s no different from the famous John Motson FA Cup call decades ago. It became one of the first really viral MLS goals at a time when YouTube had become truly global.
Commentators can get some quite spicy feedback on social media. The strategy seems to be: avoid social media…
Drury: I prefer to be blissfully unaware of it, for better and worse. You do find out what’s been said sometimes when it reaches an extreme in either direction. But if I’m being showered with praise, I find that just as awkwardly mind-bending as if I’m receiving brickbats. It just gets in your head. I don’t have a thick skin, so it hurts me when it’s not nice, and it warps me too much if it is nice.
Strong: I’ve not engaged with anything anyone has said about me on social media since early in 2018, and I haven’t even posted anything on social media since, I think, before the Qatar World Cup (in 2022). I’ve cut it out completely just because it was serving no useful purpose to me. That’s a very privileged position to be in, I admit.
I’ve removed myself from it completely. Like, I will probably not read this article, not because I don’t appreciate the concept of what you’re writing, but the fact that I’m in it and there will be comments on the article just means I’m going to opt out. I’m the type of person that I could have 99 kind comments and one negative thing and what does my brain focus on?
Defining the role of the commentator in modern broadcasting feels obvious, but it has changed significantly over the years, and is different from every perspective. So what do the commentators think it is…
Davies-Adams: No commentator wants to be the star of the game. The best thing for a commentator is for nobody to comment on your work.
Mowbray: I’ve compared being a commentator to being a referee: you’re doing a good job if people don’t really notice you. If people notice you too much, that probably means you’re getting on their nerves. We’d be missed if we weren’t there, as was shown in that episode of Match of the Day when there weren’t any commentators. You should complement the game. You’re a guide or companion, but not in an obtrusive way. It’s not about you.
Drury: I know not all of my colleagues agree with this, and I’m respectful of their view, but it’s my opinion that it’s absolutely not my job to have an opinion. I am an articulator of the football match. And given that I sit next to somebody who’s played 600 games for Manchester United or 700 for Liverpool and for England (Gary Neville and Carragher), I feel it borders on impertinence if I start expressing my opinion. If you’re employing someone to have that opinion, why would mine matter at all? I want my job to be the relator of facts.
Hutchinson: An engaged commentary draws me into a game more. If it’s a smaller game — like, an Under-17 World Cup game or something — and it feels distant, then I might be put off and think, ‘Oh, I don’t want to watch this game anymore.’ I need something to draw me in, I need a hook, and if it’s not something that’s taking place on the pitch, then I need the coverage to do it.
Mowbray: There’s a caricature of a commentator as just someone who is churning out stats. A lot of them are superfluous, but there’s a difference between stats and facts: if you can come in with a relevant fact at the right time, that adds to the pictures being watched.
Strong: One thing I’ve always focused on is that ability to give a feeling of gravitas, that feeling of authority that is impossible to define, but you know it when it’s there. Those types of voices where, when you hear them coming through the television set, you almost stand up and think, ‘Oh, OK, this is a big game.’ You hear their voice and you just know to sit up and listen a little bit.
Murray: I don’t like it when commentators use ‘footballese’ — things like ‘worldie’, for example. That’s the language of the pundit or the fan. I don’t mind it if it’s the summariser or the pundit, because that’s their world. You’re trying to tune in to what the fan would want, but I still think as a commentator, in terms of language, you have to be one step away from that.
What does a commentator want from a co-commentator?
Drury: Ideally, I want instant interpretation. They’re not just saying, “It’s a great ball over from the winger and the big centre-forward’s headed it in.” They’re understanding and explaining, very quickly, the things which a regular football punter might not see. If a co-commentator can show me something, observe something that I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, then I think they’ve done their job really well.
Hutchinson: I look for two things. One is enthusiasm for the game that they’re watching: with someone like Ally McCoist, the principal reason for his popularity is that he genuinely cares about the game he’s watching. Not only does that make a connection with the audience, it also connects him to the commentator. And the other is I do want them to tell me something I can’t see, which is difficult — football subtleties are getting harder to pinpoint.
Davies-Adams: One of my old bosses at Chelsea used to be very big on, “I don’t want to hear the co-commentator on a goal until a replay comes in.” That’s when they’re telling you what’s happened and why this goal has been scored, and that’s something that’s always kind of stuck with me. If you’re meeting somebody for the first time an hour and a half before the game kicks off — which has happened to me a few times this season — it’s not realistic to expect to have a rapport with them, but also I don’t want to be like, “Right, this is what we’re doing, this is what I want you to say.”
Sparks: When you click with someone, it is so joyous. I think that’s particularly important for radio, because you’ve got to talk with one other person for 90 minutes: if the football’s great, then it’s really easy, but if the game isn’t interesting, or if it’s over after 20 minutes and somebody’s 3-0 up, you’ve then got to find 70 minutes of entertainment and reason for the listener not to switch the radio off. If you’re bouncing off each other at those moments, those are the games where you have fun. Which I think it should be.
Strong: When you think about (NFL commentary duo) Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, or the golden era of Al Michaels and John Madden, then (Michaels) with Cris Collinsworth, the really top commentary teams in other U.S. sports are ones where it sounds like they’re best friends. That’s the best compliment that Stu (Holden, former USMNT player and Strong’s broadcast partner on Fox) and I ever get from people, and it’s something we are very intentionally chasing because we are, in fact, best friends.
John Strong, left, and Stu Holden, right, on commentary duty at the 2024 Copa America (John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)
Most of us watch football on TV or listen on the radio for fun. But when a commentator is off-duty and watching or listening, what do they do? Can they switch off and just enjoy the match, or are they constantly analysing the commentary?
Strong: It’s the same as the worst person to watch a movie with is a film student: the worst possible people to watch sports on television with are people who work in sports television. We’re constantly talking about, “I don’t like that cut. Why would they take that replay first? Why wouldn’t they take the wide angle first?”
It doesn’t mean that you’re criticising. It just means you’re analysing it. And beyond that, it’s almost compulsive in some ways for me to commentate on a match in my head as I’m watching it. I have to force myself to turn that part of my brain off. I think anyone who is truly good at anything, you have to be vaguely obsessive about it.
Sparks: Football is not the switch-off that it was. Before I got into this industry, I used to just watch Match of the Day, absorb it, enjoy it — I wasn’t analysing the way the package is edited, or thinking about the commentary, or, ‘Oh, I’ve got Leeds in two weeks. Right, OK, hang on, let me pause it and just make a note there of that dodgy penalty appeal.’ You’re always thinking about strands and storylines as a commentator.
I feel like I’m always learning in the same way that a footballer will go to training. I want to listen to other commentators, learn from them, listen back to my own stuff and make notes. So I think it has really changed my relationship with football, but I’m so glad because I could not love my job more.
Davies-Adams: It’s ruined my ability to just watch football and actually enjoy it. I have to tell myself every time, “Stop listening to the commentary and watch what’s happening, because I’m not at work now, and it’s not serving anybody.” Already, I’m thinking, ‘If I watch the game tonight, who’s the commentator likely to be? And can I, with the greatest will in the world, tune them out and watch the game?’
Murray: You’ve got to make sure you’re not burning yourself out. It’s important to retain a freshness as well, because with freshness you have enthusiasm. I would not want to — and this very, very, very rarely happens to me — be leaving the front door and thinking, “I wish I wasn’t doing this.’ On the very, very rare occasions it does, I have to give myself a bit of a talking to.‘
What are the main things the average viewer or listener doesn’t understand about being a commentator?
Mowbray: I sometimes don’t think people understand the difference between a commentator, a presenter and a pundit. They’re all very distinct, different roles. The number of times, when Gary Lineker stepped down from Match of the Day, people asked me, “Are you going to take over? Are you going to throw your hat in there?” I don’t do that job! As if!
The other thing that gets on my nerves is when people tell you — not ask you — that you weren’t there (at the stadium) and you do your commentary after the game for Match of the Day. There’s not really much point in arguing with them. Maybe they think the Earth is flat as well.
Murray: There is a lot of travel, and as anyone who spends any time travelling up and down this country, or indeed anywhere, will appreciate, there are a lot of hitches involved and it’s incredible how often I’m delayed, whether it’s road, rail or air.
Hutchinson: I suppose one thing a lot of people don’t realise is just how much is going on besides the game itself. It’s a live broadcast, so people are constantly talking to you, be it a director, producer — and VAR is now added to that, so we hear them as well. If you just try to count to 10 and somebody else is talking in your ear constantly, you can’t do it freely. There is going to be that lapse from a commentator every now and again, not just because of that, but because of other distractions going on: there might be a camera in the way at a certain point or the monitor might have broken.
Sparks: People are sometimes surprised about the amount of work and prep we do. It essentially is like constant exam revision. Our job is amazing and incredible, and the games are the funnest part, but the vast majority of my week is spent sitting by myself on stats websites, watching highlights, making player cards, memorising their faces and their numbers, finding pronunciations, speaking to press officers, watching press conferences, then distilling all that into little stickers that I put into a book. So it is basically like doing GCSE history all over again, every single day, but with football. We are massive geeks.
An example of Vicki Sparks’ commentary notes (Vicki Sparks)
Strong: One of the interesting trends that happened in the U.S. came with Covid, when you had a lot more commentating being done ‘off tube’, in the studio (as opposed to in the stadium). That’s always been true for soccer and for international sports, but it became a thing in American sports. I think that trend hasn’t reversed itself necessarily. The networks or the streamers are being asked to pay ever larger sums to acquire the rights, and that means the production budget’s getting squeezed, and you have a lot of commentators being asked to do a lot more with less, being asked to do a lot more matches over a given weekend, being asked to do a lot more of them off tube, and that’s hard. It’s a different skill set, and it almost becomes a challenge to readjust to calling matches in a stadium and remembering what it’s like to have a full 360-degree viewpoint.
Davies-Adams: Working ‘off tube’ can be more difficult, but it can be much, much easier as well, I find. Like, for example, if I’m doing a Women’s Champions League game, and maybe I don’t know the teams that well, other than what I’ve watched from them on research, it’s easier to identify players by looking at a monitor, rather than looking on the pitch.
Which other commentator, working today, do you most admire?
Sparks: There are so many, it’s genuinely hard to pick one. I just felt so welcomed by the 5 Live team when I joined: John Murray, Ian Dennis, Ali Bruce-Ball and Conor McNamara. They were so supportive, they were so encouraging. So I will just talk about them because they were such a key part and have been such a key part of my journey.
Strong: If you think about a triangle: at one point of the triangle is Al Michaels, at another is Martin Tyler, and at the other is Andres Cantor — three who do the same thing in wildly different ways. I’m a little ping-pong ball bouncing around in that triangle. I learned a ton from the electronic voice of John Motson on the EA Sports video games for years. Jon Champion, from an English standpoint, does a terrific job. Ian Darke similarly, and it’s been fun to spend bits of time with him when he comes on our roster for World Cups.
Davies-Adams: Steve Wilson’s my number one. He’s got a really nice use of language, in that it’s not overly formal, but it’s not too informal. I feel like he tells me things about games and teams that I don’t know. There are lots of things I’ve taken from him, maybe just a word, maybe a way of explaining the situation.
Murray: Jon Champion was someone I’ve always looked up to, because he’s only slightly older than me. Because he came through earlier, he was almost like the generation before me and made great strides as a younger commentator.
It was at this point that some of the interviewees, along with the interviewer, drifted into a sort of reverie about John Murray’s voice…
John Murray on duty for the BBC at the 2022 World Cup (Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Drury: I would say I am at my happiest listening to a football match with John Murray (commentating). He knows how to speak the language, and I think his combination of lightness of touch and seriousness in the moment is pretty much ideal.
Mowbray: He makes it very clear he’s delighted to be where he is. You can hear it in the uplift in his voice.
Sparks: The lightness, like that little twinkle in the eye that comes out in his voice when he commentates. I can picture the exact expression on his face when that twinkle comes out. It’s like this slightly cheeky smile and side-eye.
Murray: I have heard people talk about my style, which leaves me quite surprised that I have a style, because it’s not a style that I’ve cultivated. I think what you hear is what you get, so I do think that what comes out of my mouth is my natural personality. If you spent time with me, you would probably feel that the person you hear on the radio is the person I am.
Finally, three of the seven — independently — wanted to give an under-appreciated colleague some flowers…
Mowbray: If I must give you a name, and it might not be one that many viewers will know, it’s Daniel Mann (who commentates for Sky Sports, mainly on the EFL). He does it how I like to think I do it. He’s entirely himself, his knowledge is encyclopaedic, and he has such a light touch and rapport with his co-commentators. He adds to the pictures and gives the viewers something they probably didn’t know. He’s one of the commentators I would never go up against in a football quiz.
Drury: He has a twinkle in his eye when he’s commentating, too. He has an extraordinary knowledge of the back story.
Hutchinson: We want to think that the commentator has been loving football since the moment they were born, but not necessarily in a nerdy way, just in a way that they remember stuff that other people don’t, and they care about the little details going on in the game — sometimes the irreverent stuff. Dan’s just one of those people that gets under the surface of every game he does.
