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Alan Green: The BBC has shown me very little respect, it’s all about banter now
The outgoing football commentator, famed for his spiky opinions, reflects on 45 years as the eyes and ears for a generation of radio listeners
Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer
Monday March 09 2020, 5.00pm, The Times
Alan Green has been one of the greatest, most distinctive commentators in the history of BBC radio. Sheer excitement fills his voice as he finds the perfect words, accelerating with the move towards the defining moment, especially in Champions League finals. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s winner in 1999 was captured with a breathless “absolutely astonishing . . . Manchester United rule Europe. I don’t believe it — but it’s happened.” Didier Drogba running up to take the penalty to make Chelsea European champions in 2012: “Drogba to win it . . . Come on, Didier!”
But this week, as the Champions League continues, Green will not be behind the microphone as the BBC phases him out. “It feels really awful not to be involved,” he says. “Champions League games are the highlight for me every season.” His absence is being noticed not simply in European weeks. He was at Hillsborough last week for the FA Cup tie between Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester City. “Somebody said to me, ‘Are you in semi-retirement?’ I said, ‘I suppose I am but it’s not of my choice.’”
After 45 years working for the BBC, Green’s contract commentating for Radio 5 Live is not being renewed when it expires this summer. “They have shown me very little respect in how that is ending,” the Belfast-born 67-year-old sighs. “I feel a mixture of disappointment and anger. I don’t think it’s justified. I was basically told, ‘You don’t fit our profile.’ I got a fair idea of what they meant by just listening to the output over the last year or so. There isn’t an ageist, sexist, racist bone in my body. I only care about ‘Can somebody do the job?’ There are new people in favour. They match the requirements in terms of ‘bants’ — banter with presenters.”
There’s a poignant moment in our chat when he realises “I am speaking in the past tense already”. The clock is running. Such a familiar voice on our airwaves, so good he won a Sony Award as Sports Broadcaster of the Year, is another casualty of the BBC’s much-debated changes. (In the interests of balance, I have to record that I contribute to 5 Live, as well as talkSPORT, and took a brief kicking in his 2000 book
The Green Line).
Green laments the loss of news-breaking shows on 5 Live like the Sunday morning staple
Sportsweek, which he describes as “a much-respected programme that was discarded” late last year. “It’s not the organisation I loved for so many years,” Green continues. “I hear about
[the departure of] Mark Pougatch, an absolutely outstanding presenter, and I’m really pleased that he is valued by so many other people [like BT Sport] that he probably doesn’t notice not doing 5 Live any more. Certain people have been discarded wrongly in pursuit of change. That’s OK if it is thought through and it works but I’m not sure it is working.”
The exit of the popular Pougatch caused plenty of criticism, following on from news of
Cornelius Lysaght leaving as a revered racing correspondent. Now Green is out. The BBC defends its position, as a senior source says: “Yes, the BBC is having to look at its strategy for young audiences otherwise we will become quickly irrelevant, but that does not come at the expense of authority, knowledge and experience.”
What seems strange about the BBC not wanting to keep Green is that, in many ways, he is the ideal commentator for many in this era who want spiky opinion. “Being honest is the only way I know how to do it,” he says. It’s brought him some run-ins, most notably with Sir Alex Ferguson and Sam Allardyce.
“I had immense respect for Alex in what he did as the manager of Manchester United. It is a matter of great sadness to me that we haven’t spoken for 28 years,” Green adds. “It was all about one incident when he misled the Friday press conference about team news [about Mark Hughes’s availability].
I was doing the commentary on the Saturday at Old Trafford and I said, ‘I’ve learned not to listen to any propaganda that might be coming out of the manager’s afternoon office on a Friday. I will try to recognise the United players when they come out on to the pitch!’ It was done as much for humour but by God, somebody obviously told him, and he confronted me, and he said, ‘You don’t f***ing pick my team’. I said, ‘Don’t tell me f***ing lies, tell me nothing.’ 28 years of silence since.
“With Allardyce, I just didn’t like the style of football his teams tended to play. I do remember going up to him at the end of one season, 2004, when Sam was out working [at the European Championship in Portugal], and I was staying at same hotel. I said, ‘I can’t speak highly enough of how well you have done this season [when Bolton finished eighth].’ I put my hand out, and he turned away.
“I am perfectly happy for people to disagree with me as long as they accepted it was honest and heartfelt. Other people [in broadcasting] say something stupid to provoke a reaction on social media. Definitely! It’s not my style. I get threats on trains, and threats outside certain grounds. You just have to take it and walk on.
“After the 1999 Champions League final, early the following season, I was at Old Trafford, and this guy came up to me, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, what’s he going to say? Is it going to be hostile?’ He said, ‘I’ve got to get you to listen to this.’ And he played his ringtone which was my commentary on the Solskjaer goal! Fantastic!”
Green’s thoughts scrolled back to United’s semi-final that year against Juventus. “I always had this gritty admiration for Roy Keane,” he says. “I thought Roy was immense in terms of his character and drive. I remember vividly the night of the Turin game when Roy was booked and would miss the final. We journalists always got on the plane after the players were already sitting there. Roy was sitting on his own, window seat. I just leant over to him, and said, ‘I’m so, so sorry, you don’t deserve to miss the final, you were key tonight’. He just looked right through me! But I meant every word. Keane, for me, was immense, the way Steven Gerrard was for Liverpool, the way [Jordan] Henderson is now.”
Administrators did not always take kindly to Green’s occasionally withering verdicts. “One of the difficulties I had with [the former Premier League chief executive Richard] Scudamore was [that] I was strong on my opinions on the Premier League. We are the most watched league in the world, for good reasons, we are a great watch but it doesn’t make the football always the best. Scudamore made it known to me that he didn’t like that. He thought I should be more involved in ‘selling’ the Premier League. The Premier League is outstanding but that doesn’t mean it’s faultless. That’s my commentary style: if something’s wrong, I’ll call it’s ‘wrong’ but when it’s good I’ll make sure I’m screaming to the skies that it is bloody good.”
I found him in understandably reflective mood when encountered at Hillsborough last Wednesday. The ground brings back the bleakest of memories. Green was commentating on that fateful day in April 1989 that claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans. “I hate going back. I can’t stop looking towards the Leppings Lane end.”
After the game was abandoned, Green left the peerless Peter Jones, the senior commentator, to take over the broadcast and took on the grim assignment of gathering news on the unfolding disaster. “I interviewed Graham Kelly [the FA chief executive at the time] live and he was already crying, he’d just been given the latest casualty figures. The death toll was beyond 50. I was crying as well. I think about Hillsborough every day.”
He thinks, too, of those he has worked with like the late Jones, “so helpful” and Jimmy Armfield, whose “death hit me hard. He was like a broadcasting father to me and Mike.” The Mike to whom he refers is Mike Ingham, who he worked with for years, sharing commentaries. Ingham has now retired to the West Country and has written a book. “A couple of months back, the
Daily Mail ran a story about Mike’s forthcoming book, and made the point that he didn’t mention me once in the book, and what’s the story behind that? The truth is I don’t know. Yes, it did hurt me.” In essence, Ingham was urbane, Green occasionally prickly, yet they blended into a magnificent broadcasting double act.
“I swear hand on heart, I’ve never done anything against Mike,” Green adds. “It’s very sad. We were so close. Think of all the times we shared. The only Alan Green mentioned in the book is the former Coventry player! I can’t imagine it was deliberate. Mike surely wasn’t like that. I hope not. Mike was a constant theme throughout my book.
“Mike retired at the World Cup final in Rio (in 2014) and there was a blaze of publicity for that, and Mike deserved it. I remember during the commentary when I handed over to him, and saying not only how much I had appreciated his friendship and being a work colleague, I said he’s been like my brother for all these years. I can’t say anything more to show how much I appreciate Mike. I am not in touch with him. It’s a delicate subject.”
Green surveys his industry with his usual keen eye and ear. “The best television commentators, and I put [the BBC’s] Guy Mowbray highest of all, don’t over-commentate,” he says. “They get the balance right between opinion, description and silence. Silence can do wonders in terms of your appreciation of a game. There are many occasions when I shut up in a commentary because that couple of seconds of silence said it all. I wish commentators would sometimes back off a bit. Atmosphere is so important on radio, so don’t talk over the crowd. If the crowd is really noisy, let the crowd dominate for those few seconds.” He is surprisingly modest about his own delivery, and waves away compliments about his best lines. “I can’t stand the sound of my voice. Neither does my wife [Brenda]!”
He turns pensive again. “I don’t know what I’ll do next season. I’d like to work for Premier League Productions and do some commentaries for them. I can’t conceive of not working. My wife will not want me at home! Forty years of marriage is one thing, but seven days a week? Not a chance! I haven’t a clue how she puts up with me. It is to her enormous credit. She must love me deep down or she couldn’t stand any more.”
“Greeny” can be grumpy, insightful and entertaining all in the space of a few words. He has the gift of the gab, and a deep passion for football. “I love the game. I’d miss the game.”
Alan Green has been one of the greatest, most distinctive commentators in the history of BBC radio. Sheer excitement fills his voice as he finds the perfect words, accelerating with the move towards the defining moment, especially in Champions League finals. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s winner in 1999 was
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