Martin Tyler, Best EPL TV Commentator

The 2009-2010 EPL Awards have concluded. And more than 58,000 of you have voted to pick the best EPL-related TV, radio and podcast shows. We as supporters of Premier League clubs consume massive amounts of media – whether it’s matches on television, listening to radio programmes or tuning in to our favorite English football podcasts. So here are the winners of each category according to you, the voters:

2009-10 Best EPL TV Commentator

• Best EPL TV Commentator: Martin Tyler
• Runner-up: Jon Champion
• Editor’s Choice: Martin Tyler

2009-10 Best EPL TV Co-Commentator

Fans of English soccer in the United States have everything they could possibly wish for: All Premier League games shown live through television and the Internet. A daily UK sports news program from Sky Sports. Matches shown in HD, when and where available. Ways to get around the BBC blocking radio commentaries. And an Internet that is thriving with discussions of every facet of the Premier League you could possibly wish for.

Except, there’s still one thing missing. The final thing that would make the English soccer experience in the United States complete. It’s Match Of The Day.

BBC’s Match Of The Day has been on air since 1964 and, even 46 years since it’s launch, still has an important role in influencing the opinions of soccer fans throughout the British Isles. But just as it’s required viewing in the UK, the program would be a perfect fit for the United States.

Here’s why:

The United States has one of the widest selection of Premier League games (and other leagues) in the world. However even with 20 hours or more of live Premier League games shown on US TV each weekend, there’s a massive gaping void when it comes to highlights of the games and the goals.

Take, for example, the average of seven Premier League games that are shown live on a typical Saturday across ESPN2, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Soccer Plus and FoxSoccer.tv. You have to be a hermit to watch all 14 hours of Premier League action on any given Saturday. If you began your viewing at 7:45am, you would have to watch the 7 games one after the other (thanks to the help of a DVR player) with no break until the DVR finished showing you the last game at approximately 9:45pm that Saturday. That’s practically impossible even for the most hardcore soccer fan.

Imagine it’s a Saturday and you spent a couple of hours watching the early kick-off game on ESPN2. But for the remainder of the day, you had errands to run, chores to do and a family to spend your time with. After returning to your home by late afternoon, your obvious inclination is to find out what the results were from the day’s games and to watch the highlights. If you want to do this, your options are:

1. Watch the games you taped. You can fast forward through each one, or skip to the end to see the goal highlights. But it’s messy because it takes a lot of fast forwarding and rewinding and you completely lose context out of what happened in the games,
2. You can watch Fox Soccer Match Day on tape (from Noon to 12:30pm ET) and see goal highlights from some of the games shown on Saturday morning but not all of the highlights will be revealed due to some of the games being shown on tape delay later that afternoon on Fox Soccer Channel,
3. You can visit a website such as 101 Great Goals and watch highlights from each of the games. While the experience is pretty good, it ruins the element of surprise because you’ll know what the final results of the games were before you click on the links.

While the third option is the most comprehensive in terms of guaranteeing you’ll be able to watch highlights from each game, the videos are technically illegal in that the company who has the rights to show the game highlights legally online if Fox Soccer Channel.

On a Saturday, there is no legal option to watch all of that day’s highlights in one program either online or on television. Again, I repeat, there is not one legal option. You can either stumble through the three options above or wait until 24 hours later to watch the Sunday night show, the Barclays Premier League Review Show.

If it was a weeknight, you could wait until 10pm to watch Fox Soccer Report. But soccer fans in the United States are left stranded on weekends in the States.

In a random tweet I posted on Twitter earlier this week, I asked EPL Talk followers whether they’d watch an American version of BBC’s Match Of The Day. Out of the 57 responses I received, the vast majority were in favor of the idea. However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be better to just have a network air the original Match Of The Day program live on US TV rather than to create an American version of it.

I believe if Fox Soccer Channel acquired the TV and online rights to BBC’s Match Of The Day program, it could make a mint. The program would be a must-see for fans of Premier League clubs each Saturday afternoon and could be shown live at 5:30pm ET which is exactly the time the program airs on British television (10pm UK time). The program would fit nicely into Fox’s schedule right after the 3:30-5:30pm ET Serie A game ends.

It’s not just the highlights of the day’s Premier League action that makes Match Of The Day a must-see program. It’s also the analysis, no matter how good or bad people think it is, that is offered by the BBC pundits as well as the genteel Gary Lineker, as host, who is impossible not to hate.

One of the reasons why Match Of The Day would be popular in the States, other than providing excellent highlights, is that it has a magical appeal to the program because it’s been forbidden for so long. There’s a mystique around the show because Americans have heard Brits romanticize about it for so long. Plus, because it’s currently not legally available for viewing in the States (thus enhancing the mystique), many soccer fans end up getting it illegally through P2P file sharing such as BitTorrent.

While Match Of The Day may encourage some soccer fans to watch fewer live Premier League games on Fox Soccer Channel, there will still be many fans who prefer to watch live games in their entirety while others will prefer to watch a highlights package. Plus, the program would be the perfect gateway for new soccer fans to get initiated into the English variety of the sport and to encourage them to watch more games on Fox Soccer Channel.

I’m sure that although the TV rights to BBC’s Match Of The Day don’t come too cheaply, it would definitely be worth Fox Soccer Channel’s time to do their due diligence necessary to see how much it would cost and how it could frame advertising around the program. Because the BBC doesn’t feature any advertising, Match Of The Day runs 80 minutes without any commercials. While this may seem like a problem for Fox, I see it as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to beam a one-of-a-kind highlights show that soccer fans would be very passionate and loyal about. The program could be “Brought to you by [insert advertiser's name here].” What an opportunity to position one sponsor as the “one who brought Match Of The Day to you.”

It’s time for Match Of The Day to come to the United States. That time is now.

You may not want to hear it, but it’s the time of the year when stores are frantically getting ready for the holiday shopping season. The Christmas displays in shop windows seem to appear earlier and earlier each year.

Football is not immune to this, of course. The sport generates a tremendous amount of revenue for clubs and retailers worldwide from football shirts, equipment, books, DVDs and more.

But one big market that many foreigners may not realize or understand is the massive Football Annuals business in England.

Football Annuals are hardcover books that find their way under the Christmas tree of many British teens and grown adults. The annuals are heavy on quantity and light on quality. Usually there are a couple hundred pages filled with photographs and articles, and they’re the perfect books to flip through wherever and whenever you have time.

Growing up in the UK as a child, I remember getting Shoot Annual and Match Annual. They were the type of gifts that you knew what they were before you ripped open the Christmas wrapping paper because of their unique rectangle shape, thickness and weight.

While the Shoot Annual and Match Annual were filled with fluff interviews, sidebar features, team photos and somewhat interesting articles, there were other annuals available. In fact, the business of annuals was, and is, huge. There’s The Beano Annual, Dennis The Menace Annual, The Dandy Annual, Roy Of The Rovers Annual and more. Beano and Dandy are British institutions and have nothing to do with football, but are perfect comic books that sum up British humor.

The business of football annuals has changed very little. Many of the aforementioned titles are still available with new titles released each autumn. Football clubs even produce their own annuals now as well as News Of The World and BBC’s Match Of The Day.

If you like collecting football books or have children who are interested in the sport, a football annual could be a perfect gift this holiday season.

What are your memories of football annuals? Share your trips down memory lane by clicking the comments link below.

Which is the better Premier League highlight show? BBC’s Match Of The Day or TWI’s Premier League Review Show?

Millions of people around the world watch the highlight packages that feature the best bits of each Premier League match, so the shows should be quite similar, right? Wrong.

Read on to learn the major differences between the two:

Match Of The Day
BBC
Running Time: 1 hour 24 minutes (with no commercials)
Player and Manager Interviews: 20
Pros: Classic opening and closing tune, better on-screen graphics, in-depth analysis by co-hosts, more impartial to clubs outside the Big Four, no commercials, more interviews, goal of the month segment and Gary Lineker.
Cons: Highlights from Saturday matches only, Mark Lawrenson states the obvious far too often and no interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson.

Premier League Review Show
TWI
Running Time: 1 hour (with commercials)
Player and Manager Interviews: 16
Pros: Interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson and Martin Tyler’s commentary. Plus it has highlights of all the matches through Sunday.
Cons: Some highlights feature voiceovers instead of actual commentary, too focused on the Big Four and includes TV commercials.

The above statistics are from this past weekend where I watched both shows side-by-side. Of course, we were treated to everything from Liverpool against Man United to West Brom versus West Ham.

TWI’s Premier League Review Show opens with the song “My Saturday Self” composed by Peter Lawlor. The visuals paint a picture of a futuristic space-age world where some of the top Premier League players beam a football from player to player.

In last weekend’s episode, the program began outside Anfield as it showed footage of the Spirit Of Shankly supporters union protesting against American owners Hicks and Gillett. After a lot of build up and hype, the producers then began to show the highlights of Liverpool against Manchester United, undoubtedly the biggest match of the weekend.

A big difference between both programs is that the Barclays Premier League Review Show always plays the biggest matches at the beginning of the match and winds its way to the smaller teams near the end of the show. While Match Of The Day began with highlights of the Liverpool match, it tends to mix things up quite a bit and often begins with the match that has the most interesting story. For example, when Hull played Fulham on the opening day of the season, that game was the opening one showed on Match Of The Day instead of the typical clash involving a Big Four club that the Premier League Review Show would highlight.

To me, the Premier League Review Show is a glitzy package that reinforces the belief that the Big Four is what really matters in the Premiership.

Match Of The Day, an important fabric of the English game, began in 1964 and hasn’t changed much over the years. The biggest thing going for the program and the true differentiator between it and the Premier League Review Show is the analysis provided by the co-hosts.

In last week’s episode, it was Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson on the seat. Hansen’s analysis was eye-opening. For example, there was good insight by Hansen where he showed onscreen the workrate of Robbie Keane in the game who, despite not achieving much up front, was chasing the ball and pressuring Man United’s midfield quite effectively, forcing them to make mistakes.

Hansen continued by showing excellent replays of Albert Riera in action during the game with some beautiful touches and Hansen pointing out how much of an impact Riera made down the left wing by floating in dangerous crosses into the Man United penalty area.

Hansen then turned his focus to Gerrard and Giggs, and how both of them made some awful mistakes after coming on the pitch as subs. Gerrard letting Giggs through who almost scored. And Giggs letting Mascherano through to pass the ball to Kuyt and then to Babel for the winner.

The list goes on and on. While Lawrenson wasn’t as insightful as Hansen, Lawrenson later provided some good analysis of Chelsea. He discussed how Scolari lets the full backs be more adventurous coming forward than Chelsea with Mourinho, and how Ashley Cole and Bosengwa had wonderful games down the wings.

When it comes down to it, it all depends what you’re looking for in a Premier League highlight show. If you want analysis to show you things that you might not have seen, Match Of The Day is your ticket. If you want highlights of just the goals and most of the focus and priority on the Big Four, then the Premier League Review Show is your cup of tea.

What are your feelings about either show? Share your feedback by clicking the comments link below.

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