In 40 or 50 years’ time – perhaps a littler sooner, perhaps a little later – football historians will talk about this week as the moment the sport entered a new era in regards to its biggest superstars. No longer, they will say, was this Lionel Messi’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s world, for now it belonged to two greater giants. We heard them speak, we heard them muse, we heard them make fun of our teams and, finally, the glory was theirs. Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, praise be thy names.
Or maybe not if your own name is Mauricio Pochettino or Erik ten Hag, both of whom took umbrage at comments the pair made while working for Sky Sports. Pochettino hit back at Neville’s labelling of Chelsea as “blue billion-pound bottle jobs” during coverage of their loss to Liverpool in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final, hailing his team as “brave” after their 3-2 victory over Leeds in the FA Cup a few days later. Ten Hag went further and was more furious in his reaction to Carragher’s scathing assessment of Manchester United’s defending in their 2-1 loss to Fulham during Monday Night Football, accusing the former centre-back of being “very subjective” before United’s own FA Cup win, against Nottingham Forest. But, of course, you know this already because it has been front and centre of the discourse for days, confirming Neville’s and Carragher’s status as pundits like no other.
There have been plenty previously who have been forthright and outspoken but none whose utterances have carried so much weight, so much significance, so much cause for conjecture and controversy, with their oral power now reaching a fresh peak. And as Pochettino and Ten Hag bit, there followed an obvious question: just now annoying and tedious is this going to get? Because it has definitely got annoying and tedious.
I cannot be the only one who admires Neville’s and Carragher’s individual and combined ability to speak about football with a level of thought, directness and humour that, quite rightly, has elevated them above the rest after their respective shifts from the pitch to the TV studio, but who also doesn’t need or want their takes, hot or otherwise, to define discussions around teams, tactics, managers and matches. And that’s very much where it feels we are right now. ‘Nev’ and ‘Carra’ speak, we listen, and then we bang on about it for absolutely ages.
Much of this, of course, is down to the way Neville and Carragher are covered by the media, with their comments on punditry duty often becoming immediate back-page stories or, as has very much been the case this week, put to managers who may be offended by them, with their subsequent offence reported and analysed, stretching the lifespan of a story that was barely a story in the first place. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of me making this point in an article that, by its very nature, is doing the exact same thing. Journos, eh?
Yet the influence of Neville and Carragher also speaks to a wider shift regarding the role of the pundit. Gone are the days when they merely commented on the football in front of them; now, in this era of broadcasters needing to engage with audiences who increasingly absorb content online and on mobile via short-form videos and snappy soundbites, they are required to be part of the entertainment as much as observers of it. It’s all about the clicks mate, and nothing is more clickable than a former footballer saying something that sparks heated debate as well as emotions while sitting in a chair quite close to David Jones, Mark Pougatch or Laura Woods. Hence why Roy Keane gets so much work despite being objectively terrible at his job.
We live in The Age of the Pundit – there are lots of them and they all have a lot to say – and no two rule the roost quite like Neville and Carragher, initially through their natural, instinctive excellence and now through their awareness of how to market that to the absolute maximum. So they say sparky things on Sky which they know will get picked up by the press and public alike – Neville has essentially admitted his “blue billion-pound bottle jobs” line was planned – and increasingly use that as a platform from which to boost their profile and value via other outlets. And boy, are there other outlets. The Overlap, Stick to Football, a national newspaper column and regular, endless social media posts. You may well have also seen Neville and Carragher stacking shelves in your local supermarket, pulling pints in your local pub and haunting your daily nightmares. Pretty sure I have.
They’re everywhere and this week it really did become too much. That’s partly their fault and partly ours, and ultimately we all have to remember one, crucial thing: Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher are great but they’re not messiahs; they’re a pair of very noisy boys.
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