There are few voices that are instantly recognisable: the late Queen Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill, Alan Carr. Some were a fixture of life, some have immense historical significance and some are just so unique that they could not be anyone else.
Clive Tyldesley, for a certain age of football fan, is all three. For me, his slightly nasal timbre and high-pitched excitement will always remind me of Liverpool’s run to the Champions League title in 2005, no moment more than his inimitable “hullo… hullo…” when Steven Gerrard sparked the Reds’ comeback with a looping header. Hullo indeed, Clive.
It is inaccurate to suggest that Tyldesley has been ever-present on our screens; working for ITV for over two decades, he was not part of the constant cut-and-thrust of the UK’s Premier League coverage. Instead, like a favourite grandparent or that uncle who is much more fun than the others, he would only turn up for the big occasions: Champions League, FA Cup final, the World Cup.
But when he was dropped as ITV’s lead commentator in 2020 (he finally left the broadcaster this summer) there were outpourings of emotions that bordered on grief; our favourite uncle had been made persona non grata.
The UK’s loss is America’s gain: for the last three years, Tyldesley has been a regular commentator for the US Champions League broadcaster Paramount, often flanked by former England goalkeeper Rob Green, whose most famous moment in an England shirt – spilling Clint Dempsey’s shot over the line at the 2010 World Cup – was commentated upon by the man who now sits next to him.
But Green is not the classic Tyldesley co-commentator, and Amazon Prime Video producers knew what they were doing for Leicester vs West Ham on Tuesday night. It was the former ITV man’s first outing for a UK broadcaster since Germany vs Denmark at Euro 2024, and pairing Tyldesley with Andy Towsend, with whom he is so synonymous that his autobiography was called Not For Me, Clive, a catchphrase often trotted out by his partner in crime, was the only appropriate selection.
Even that phrase speaks to the regard in which Townsend holds his long-time colleague. Tyldesley has never played the game, while Townsend is a veteran of over 600 league games and 70 internationals. On a footballing matter, Townsend is the expert whose opinion is by far the more credible, yet if he does disagree with the amateur, he prefers to do so diplomatically, rather than simply saying “no, that’s wrong, here’s what actually happened”. Tyldesley earns a place at the footballing top table through sheer weight of research.
You only have to listen for a minute or two to understand the depth of Tyldesley pre-match groundwork. There is the usual “Leicester haven’t won in six” and “West Ham have only two away wins all season” which can be Googled in a second or two, but then there is mention of the two Arthurs, Chandler and Rowley, the only men to have outscored Jamie Vardy for Leicester; Chandler was a star of the pre-War years while Rowley left the club in 1958.
For Clive, football did not just start in 1992 and you will rarely hear him say “in the Premier League era”. He’s a “top-flight history” man, whose history book starts with the formation of the Football Association in 1863, if not earlier.
His notes are stuff of legend. He manages to condense days or weeks of research onto one side of A4 paper, neatly divided into sections for each player and with the most important fact for each player written in an urgent red.
I don’t know if Clive Tyldesley does the crossword, but I’m virtually certain that if he does, he uses a Stanley knife to remove it forensically from the newspaper and then secures it to a clipboard for convenience.
In fact, his commentary charts are so iconic that you can buy copies of them from famous matches, blown up and framed, as souvenirs of your team’s biggest wins. But most already have their Tyldesley souvenir, tucked away in a corner of their memory.
Ask any Manchester United fan for their lasting impressions of the Champions League final in 1999 and they will probably screw their face up and in a high-pitched voice squeak: “NAME. ON. THE TROPHY.” Even those who were in Barcelona that night, and never heard Tyldesley’s utterance after Teddy Sheringham’s equaliser at the time, have assimilated the moment with those four words.
Tyldesley insists these phrases are never pre-written and come to him off the cuff, and who are we to disbelieve him – although surely ideas have been bouncing around in his head. He wouldn’t be human if they hadn’t. But the little moments are as important as the big ones, and it is in mundanity, frankly, that Tyldesley really shines.
Modern football punditry lacks understatement and subtlety: executives want their pundits to produce moments they can clip up for social media and that news websites can blow up for hundreds of thousands of page views, advertising money can’t buy for Roy Keane and Jamie Carragher’s “hilarious” “confrontations” every Sunday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Tyldesley is contentedly musing that Leicester City play “When You’re Smiling” before kick-off at home games, and that West Ham are desperately looking for something to smile about, or pointing out that Stockley Park, home of VAR, is not a park, “it’s just a collection of industrial units by Heathrow airport”.
Perhaps his best quality though is his ability, ironically, to not talk. As well as anyone, he understands the power of silence, something which the modern motormouths could do well to learn. The absence of words makes them more powerful when they do come, and Tyldesley’s narration does not lack for power.
Don’t get me wrong, Tyldesley is not the reason to tune into a match, no commentator is. But are there many more becalming phrases than “and now we go to your commentators for tonight, Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend”? Beyond Stanley Tucci himself whispering “I think we’re going to be okay” in your ear, I can’t think of many.
When a graphic came up telling me how “to listen to the match without commentary”, I nearly spat out my tea. It would be like watching a ballet without an orchestra: a lot of banging, grunting and ultimately not a lot of satisfaction.
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