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The Best…football commentator

Alan Green
  • Posted at 12:34pm
  • 08 August 2007
  • by JohnAizlewood-RT
  • 7 comments

Football, as we all think we know, is about opinion. Yet when someone has the temerity to express an opinion they're bumptious, pretentious and getting above their humble station.

This brings us to BBC Radio Five Live's Alan Green, the man who has single-handedly transformed football radio commentary. Once upon a time, back when BBC Radio 2 found itself accidentally anointed as the voice of football, commentaries were delivered in the honeyed but opinion-free tones of dear Bryon Butler or Peter Jones.

Today, Alan Green, blessed with national radio's sternest Ulster accent since Gerry Adams, has more opinions than most. In fact, he's a walking, shouting bundle of opinions - all of them grumpy. He is, you suspect, a man who could (and probably does) start an argument in an empty room. Hence his famous feuds with Manchester United's Sir Alex Ferguson and Bolton Wanderers' manager Sam Allardyce, both of whom are not ones for measured criticism. Or even Alan Green's.

Radio commentary is a notoriously difficult discipline, creating hundreds of pictures in seconds, without a script. Green is more scattergun Jackson Pollock than considered John Constable. He approaches commentary as if football is the root of all evil and he is the man to put everything right in the name of "calling it as I see it".

Perennially surprised by the fact that England has a winter, he will rail at the weather at Blackburn in January; disappointed not to be borne to the press box in a bier held aloft by nubiles, he will attack the sightlines at all foreign stadia; he will bellow "get him off the pitch" if a player falls over; and should anyone be sent off our hero will personally call the International Court of Justice at the Hague to press for the strictest punishment, as he almost did when Arsenal's Emmanuel Adebayor had a tantrum after being dismissed in February's Carling Cup Final.

And not knowing of what he speaks doesn't stop him, hence his description of Middlesbrough's Abel Xavier as "looking just like Zeus, not that I have any idea what Zeus looked like".

In truth, his football knowledge is far from detailed, he resists all temptation to reveal which English club he supports (my money, although not much of it, is on Liverpool) and while I disagree with much of what he says, the never-ending joy derives from how this self-appointed, fire-bringing angel of righteousness says it.

He may be too big for his boots, but perhaps his boots are too small for him. In a world where to care is seen as a mark of the amateur, Alan Green cares. He cares that football isn't like it was when he used to watch Linfield as a lad. He cares that being awash in money may not be the Premiership's way forward and he cares that cheats sometimes prosper. In that, he is the voice of a real fan, but more importantly, he is fabulously, unmissably listenable. That's why he's the best.

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Comments

  • Posted on 13 October 2008
  • at 12:40pm
  • by Benjamin Nelson

Peter Jones was the finest and Mike Ingham is great as well - Alan Green well he moans about everything, if concentated on the game rather talking about things that annoy him ie someone not agreeing with him

  • Posted on 02 October 2008
  • at 3:14am
  • by annunciatore

The best football commentator? PETER JONES. 18 years deceased...but how we miss him.

  • Posted on 23 October 2007
  • at 8:58am
  • by Jfran

He can't possibly be the best, he is too biased.

I would have infinitely more respect for him if he admitted he was a Liverpool fan.

  • Posted on 22 October 2007
  • at 10:02pm
  • by magic_cantona

And to be honest, I thought he was a WUM.

  • Posted on 22 October 2007
  • at 10:01pm
  • by magic_cantona

Alan Green is dreadful.

Whilst listening to the game, you have no real idea what is going on because he's talking rubbish for 90 odd minutes.

And he hates Man United.

  • Posted on 13 October 2007
  • at 6:42pm
  • by Christhebuilder

The best?? You have to be jesting?? I can't stand his overbearing, clueless, partisan babbling.

In fact he annoys me so much I now turn the volume down on my radio and just watch the dial when the other commentators pass over to him....

  • Posted on 18 September 2007
  • at 6:25pm
  • by griffykee

couldn't agree more

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