In all honesty, I haven’t watched a minute of Match of the Day this season. The simple reason for this is because I didn’t have to.
In addition to showing Match of the Day, the BBC’s streaming service, I-Player, now provides separate highlights of each individual match played, presumably the same length (around seven minutes) and footage shown on Match of the Day for each game. These segments are uploaded at 8pm on Saturday (with the exception of the match commencing at 5:30pm), at least two and a half hours before the live broadcast of the highlights on Match of the Day.
To their credit, the BBC have moved with the times in doing this, as the Premier League’s official YouTube channel was already offering similar footage, also from 8pm Saturday. The BBC had also done similar with their FA Cup footage, in particular in the earlier rounds, in recent years, so this was the natural progression.
It does beg the question, though, as to if there’s any real purpose to still having a highlights show on live TV on a Saturday night. The only coverage missing from the highlight segments are the post-match interviews, which, unless there has been an exceptional incident in the game, are largely banal affairs showing media-coached players talking in cliches, and managers towing the party line in not being critical of the players or boardroom, and unable to criticise officials for fear of repercussions.
Also missing is the analysis, and of course a presenter to mediate with the pundits and introduce and bridge these games together – more on that later, all I’ll say for now is that, in keeping with the times, there is arguably more insightful analysis available on various podcasts and online channels – certainly those in the MOTD studio now could make their opinions on the weekend games known on these platforms too, if they so wish.
When introducing these streamlined highlights to i-player, one can therefore ask why they haven’t gone the whole hog and just scrapped Match Of The Day altogether, especially given the cost to license fee payers and the controversies surrounding their previous presenter (especially the chaos cause to the BBC as a whole in March 2023).
The big argument will probably be that it’s tradition – that the show has been a BBC institution since 1964. It hasn’t been a constant though, having shared coverage with ITV for much of the 1970s and 1980s, and leaving our screens altogether between 1988 and 1992, and again between 2001 and 2004.
The return in 2004 was part of a new package that also saw live TV matches at lunchtime and teatime almost every Saturday, along with an increasing number of games postponed to the Sunday due to the Thursday night UEFA Cup in the preceding years.
This presented the BBC with a major problem.
I believe the programme’s previous run, from 1992 to 2001, was the golden age of Match Of The Day. As with their footage in the 1980s, there would be extended highlights (“extended” as in approximately 20 minutes long) of two matches, with a full camera crew and commentator at the game. However, where in the 1980s that would be the extent of their top flight coverage (they would then just read out the other results), in the 1990s there would be a TV camera at every game, so they would single out the most eventful of the remainder of the day’s matches and show a few minutes of highlights, with replays of the goals only shown by this main camera and with some, at times dubious, dubbed commentary recorded after the game but before broadcast. The rest of the games would be covered in the goals round-up.
This format must be embedded in the public psyche, as being shown last on Match Of The Day is still considered a huge dishonour, despite the change to format meaning being last on doesn’t mean what it used to!
And this old format also worked because, even with Sky’s coverage and Monday Night Football, usually there would still be nine matches scheduled to take place on Saturday at 3pm for the first couple of years of the Premier League era. Even when the Thursday night Cup Winners Cup was introduced and the Premier League reduced to 20 teams in the middle of the decade, and some matches were moved to Saturday lunchtime as the decade progressed, there would still be around seven matches in the traditional timeslot.
That had all changed by the time Match Of The Day returned in 2004. The return was part of a new package that also saw live TV matches at lunchtime and teatime almost every Saturday, along with an increasing number of games postponed to the Sunday due to the Thursday night UEFA Cup in the preceding years.
Despite BBC Chairman Samir Shah’s comments in March 2025, about how there should be fewer highlights and more analysis, one only has to read the comments on the BBC’s own article about this to deduce that the main reason most have for tuning in to MOTD is to see footage of the games for the first time. Until 2001, they had plenty to show. In 2004, not only were there now fewer matches to show on a Saturday, but two of the matches would have already been broadcast live, and more often than not, even those who hadn’t seen it live could have seen the goals and any other flashpoints on the news. Furthermore, with so many live matches now being shown, any game worth anything, especially in the latter stages of the season, would be moved for live TV coverage, meaning the only matches taking place that MOTD could show exclusive coverage of were mid-table clashes that were of little consequence.
Their response to this, helped by advances in technology, and also presumably a bigger budget, was to have a full camera crew and commentator at every Premier League game, and decide on the running order only after the games had been played and all the news was known. While they should be credited with quickly adapting to the changing environment, this new order hasn’t been without its problems – to paraphrase The Incredibles, if every match is special, no match is special. If every game is given the same amount of highlights, post-match interviews and studio analysis, it takes away from the games that are of greater importance or have had a far higher entertainment value. Another issue is that there are games in which it can be difficult to find seven minutes worth of highlights. This is a problem that has only increased as the years pass and teams become more possession obsessed and risk averse.
The biggest issue of all though, is that the previous format would have been untenable, especially on days when there were only three matches played, and the fact that the two most decisive matches of the day would have already been shown on live TV (at lunchtime and teatime respectively), has been the elephant in the MOTD studio for over 20 years.
I can’t help but wonder if, from 2004, they’d have been better off hosting Match Of The Day on Sunday night instead, that way they could show nine or maybe even all ten of the weekend’s games. There would be far more for the pundits to talk about, more crucially there would be far more football for the viewers to enjoy.
This leads to the second reason that, in my opinion, Match Of The Day has been dying a slow death for the last twenty years. There are several reasons for them not to take the above suggestion – maybe they wanted to keep the actual Match Of The Day on a Saturday night because it was tradition, maybe they thought only showing their footage almost 36 hours after the weekend’s matches kicked off was too late, and with this new show, maybe they wanted to differentiate it from the usual Match Of The Day, or maybe they wanted to compete with the zany alternatives on other channels, such as Soccer AM, but whatever the reasons, along came the imaginatively titled Match Of The Day 2, to show the increasing amount of Sunday action.
Presented by Adrian Chiles, with a rolling guest pundit each with and comedian by trade Kevin Day as a correspondent and/or studio guest, it certainly couldn’t be mistaken for Match Of The Day. In a way, the goals round up was back as they would show the goals from Saturday’s games too – unfortunately they were often from inappropriate camera angles, with Chiles making wisecracks over them and each game was visually introduced with flashing graphics that only served to give viewers a headache and I’m surprised didn’t induce at least one seizure. I appreciate it was their idea of a light hearted look at the weekend’s football as a way of unwinding on a Sunday night, with Adrian Chiles often signing off with “have a bearable week at work” showing a warmth and empathy for many viewers. Adrian Chiles’ impressive work on Match Of The Day 2 and on The One Show were enough for ITV to pay big for his services, keen to acquire them in time for the 2010 World Cup. However, while Chiles proved adept at presenting a quirky results show, it quickly became apparent that his style didn’t really lend itself to presenting live games.
This should have served as a warning not to allow the playful attitude of Match Of The Day 2 to drift into their more serious coverage. Unfortunately, the warning wasn’t heeded. Over the years, and perhaps due to some cross pollination between the two, the informal and at times unprofessional nature of the new Sunday broadcast has filtered into Match Of The Day itself, to the extent that, when Gary Lineker finally moved on, many were relieved – regardless of their views on his politics or on the intricacies of the BBC’s guidelines, the reason cited by many was that it had become too much of a boys club with in-jokes and attempts at “banter” replacing any insightful analysis.
Gone was the iconic and authoritative figure of Jimmy Hill, the suave smooth tones of Des Lynam, the informed views and polished voices of Alan Hansen and Trevor Brooking. Compare the suits worn by the latter with the casual clothes sported by today’s incumbents and, while superficial, it gives an idea at the levels of professionalism and seriousness between then and now.
Two weeks in and already there are murmurs of discontent from many viewers about struggling to understand a word their newest pundit says. This new pundit is allegedly on £800,000 a year, and on the subject of budgets, one also has to question if it has been an efficient use of licence payer’s money to be paying for two studios, two separate presenters and two lots of pundits to show football highlights during the same weekend. That’s another reason that one big Match Of The Day on a Sunday night would surely have been sufficient. Now, with viewers able to simply watch highlights of the matches on i-player, one has to wonder whether it’s needed at all.
In 2006, the BBC were aware enough and brave enough to take the decision for another iconic BBC institution, Top Of The Pops, to be discontinued.
Perhaps the time has come to do the same to Match Of The Day.