{"id":351480,"date":"2025-08-17T11:17:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T11:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351480\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T11:17:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T11:17:13","slug":"match-of-the-days-new-era-reassuring-dad-jokes-and-a-lot-of-wayne-rooney-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351480\/","title":{"rendered":"Match of the Day\u2019s new era: reassuring dad jokes and a lot of Wayne Rooney | Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The credits for the new Match of the Day<\/a> are in a comic-book style. Your screen bursts with fruit machine cherries when Bournemouth pop up, and freezes when Cole Palmer appears. Erling Haaland sits in the lotus pose under a blue moon. The most unlikely moment is saved until the title card appears, however, with the camera disappearing inside the bottom of the Premier League trophy, down a silver tunnel and out, directly, into Mark Chapman\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Chapman is a long-time BBC Sport anchor and the main man on Radio 5 Live. He is hardly an unknown quantity, but here he had been grabbed by a stylist and given a vaguely modish air with designer stubble and a cream overshirt hanging loosely off his shoulders. One of three presenters<\/a> charged with taking the BBC\u2019s venerable football highlights show out of the Gary Lineker era, he has to strike a balance between being familiar and fresh. He did so by making a dad joke about it; that\u2019s MotD heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may have seen and heard that there is a big change to the show this season\u201d, Chapman said as we emerged from the trophy tunnel. \u201cAnd that is \u2026 Wayne Rooney has joined us a regular pundit.\u201d Pause for laughter. \u201cSome things don\u2019t change, Alan Shearer is still here\u201d, he went on as Rooney audibly chuckled in the background.<\/p>\n

With Match of the Day there\u2019s never any time to dwell and as soon as Chapman had introduced himself and his colleagues in their ribbed polo shirts we were into the action. We began at Sunderland and their impressive opening win against West Ham<\/a>, with Rooney detailing the shift in offensive width that opened up the game. \u201cI actually got one of my only wins against them\u201d, said the former Plymouth boss of the Black Cats. \u201cGot that in early, well done\u201d, noted Chapman.<\/p>\n

From there it was City and some hyperbole over a new signing (an opening day tendency as old as time): \u201cAlmost the perfect midfield performance\u201d, said Shearer of Tijjani Reijnders. At Spurs v Burnley we watched Martin Dubravka become the first goalkeeper to cough up a corner for holding the ball longer than eight seconds. The debate on Brighton v Fulham began with penalty decisions \u2013 perhaps the most consistent fascination of MotD producers over the past decade. There was also an advert for an interview elsewhere on the BBC with, well, Rooney. \u201cBlimey, you\u2019re taking over\u201d, said Chapman.<\/p>\n

Rooney had been the main attraction at a football-themed bar in Westfield, Shepherd\u2019s Bush, on Thursday night as the BBC launched their new season\u2019s coverage in front of an audience of distracted influencers. This year he will not only be on MotD and interviewed elsewhere, he will also have his own twice-weekly podcast which, in the words of the BBC, will see him \u201cdiving into the football debates that are dominating your algorithm\u201d. When Rooney came up on stage to talk about it, he was obscured by a projection of his own face and the show was described as \u201cnot intentionally funny, just funny\u201d. So stay tuned on that one.<\/p>\n

The England and Manchester United icon shows signs of promise as a pundit. He\u2019s articulate, and on Saturday night was able to conjure up the right word when you could see he was looking for it. He\u2019s tactically insightful and has a wealth of experience to draw from too, obviously, able here to compare the current situation of Alexander Isak to the time he handed in a transfer request at Old Trafford. Most intriguingly he clearly preserves that bite that marked him out as a player, and strong opinions are likely to be forthcoming.<\/p>\n

Sunderland\u2019s 3-0 win over West Ham was the first match to be shown in the post-Lineker era of MotD. Photograph: Martin Swinney\/Sunderland AFC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Those hoping to dominate any algorithms will be excited at this prospect, but it also speaks to a tension that exists between the BBC\u2019s new strategy and a 62-year-old show that\u2019s an icon of TV. The BBC\u2019s sports coverage has always been predictable, consistent and middle of the road. It\u2019s part of what made the nation able to sit and watch it together (something that\u2019s still true, with BBC coverage of the Lionesses\u2019 Euros win last month the most watched broadcast in the UK this year). It is not, traditionally at least, a home for the deliberately provocative form of digital punditry known as \u2018hot takes\u2019.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it\u2019s hard to hide from the fact that the average viewer of BBC One is in their 60s, while less than half of 16 to 24 year olds watch broadcast TV. The BBC has a need to serve those audiences and clearly their strategy for the new season is designed with them in mind. \u201cWe\u2019re not just covering the games, we\u2019re following the fans\u201d, is the line. The many people who build their lives around their coverage will hope it doesn\u2019t shift too much. Certainly listening to Don Hutchison on 5 Live on Friday night was as informed an introduction to the season as you are likely to hear, even if it did go on a bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could say the more things change, the more they stay the same\u201d, was Chapman\u2019s take as he signed off the first show of the season, but there is one change that could prove unexpectedly disruptive. With presenters and suits alike trying to tread an impossibly fine line between reliability and novelty, the BBC has managed this season to bring forward the time it can show Premier League<\/a> highlights online. You can now watch the goals from 8pm on a Saturday night, bringing an end to years of frustration around antiquated embargoes. At the same time, it also means you can have worked through all the action hours before the BBC\u2019s flagship show has even gone on air. Funny old game, as they used to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The credits for the new Match of the Day are in a comic-book style. Your screen bursts with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-351480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115043830702945203","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}