Commentating veteran Tyler marvels at "breathtaking" Messi
Martin Tyler's first World Cup as a commentator was 44 years ago in Argentina
His Argentina memories run from Kempes to Maradona to Messi
Tales of how commentators used to get information in the past
Martin Tyler is telling a tale which highlights not just his devotion to his craft, but also his sheer longevity as a football commentator.
Tyler, the longstanding voice of Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage in the United Kingdom, is working on his 12th World Cup here in Qatar, commentating for SBS Australia. Right now though, we are back in his first, reliving a visit to Argentina’s training camp in 1978 ahead of their second-round meeting with Brazil.
Tyler, who was 32 at the time, recalls: “I went to see Argentina at their training camp and they said, ‘Sorry it was yesterday’. I was thinking, ‘I’ve missed my big chance’ but I went around the back of the training centre where there was a hilltop and a fence.
“I snuck around to the fence but [Cesar Luis] Menotti, the coach, saw me watching and sent the heavies up to remove me. I was still looking when these two guards came up with batons drawn.
"I hadn’t much Spanish and I said, ‘Solo comentarista, Inglaterra … amigos’. They got on their walkie-talkie and I was allowed to stay.
“Forty years on in Russia I met Mario Kempes and I told him what I’ve just told you and he said, ‘I remember that. Training was stopped and we were looking up to see what was happening with this silly guy looking down on our training’. I said, ‘Meet the silly guy’.”
As it happens the silly guy who risked a beating in the name of research 44 years ago has a connection with more than one Argentinian football hero. After all, there is his famous “Aguerooo” cry from the day in 2012 when Sergio Aguero scored the goal that won Manchester City’s first league title for 44 years.
He says: “It was his moment. I was lucky to be holding the microphone. Commentating like football is not about moments really – it is about consistency and doing it over the 90 minutes – but we do live in a society where soundbites matter and I suppose that is my contribution to the soundbites.
“I gave him my original notes and signed them,” he adds of a subsequent encounter with Aguero. “I got them framed. He was just about to leave Manchester City. He was charming. He showed an interest in it and put it out on his social media feed.”
The question today, as he sits speaking to FIFA+ outside Souk Waqif in Doha, concerns Aguero’s great friend Lionel Messi – and whether there will be an “Aguerooo” moment from Argentina’s galvanic No10.
“What’s going to happen with Leo and the final, who knows?” he begins. “But I won’t script anything, I promise you. It will be what I feel at the time. People ask me how I do it; I just do it by being me. You know how much I love football.
“I remember him coming off after losing in 2018 and thinking the baton is passing to Mbappe but maybe Mbappe is struggling to hold on to it because Messi wants it,” adds Tyler, who has marvelled at the 35-year-old’s contribution to Argentina’s run to the final.
"I thought it might be a case of creating a World Cup team in which Messi was just another part, an important part, but what he’s done here has taken our breath away really. I’ve done a lot of their games and he’s just got better and better.
"He is the sort of player who should be coming off after an hour at his age, but he doesn’t, and I just hope he is 100 per cent right for the final.”
Tyler has been intrigued by Messi’s changed role on the pitch with this Argentina team, noting how “the kind of positions that Leo operated in earlier in his career require a lot of tracking back and clearly they need him to play in the right part of the pitch, so they’ve got a role for him where when he gets the ball he might not quite be in the attacking third but he’s close to it and a couple of shimmies and he’s in the attacking third and there's a pass or a shot or he gets fouled.
“It is a clever way and the others respect that and protect the areas he cannot protect. That’s not a criticism because his moments win matches. He is no fading star here. He could have been, but he's a bright star shining as brightly as he’s ever done, in a slightly different way.”
From Messi adapting, we move on to how his own job has changed across the years – cue an insight into how the TV commentator gathered information about players from far and wide in the pre-digital age.
“It was easy – you just went up and spoke to them,” he says. “There weren’t so many closed training sessions and one thing we used to do when the teams flew in [for the World Cup] was we went and saw them at the airport.
“When they were hanging around getting their bags you could speak to them and ask how to pronounce their names which was a very important part of it. I went up to Michel Platini [stressing the a] who was called Platini [with stress on the first i] in England. This was in 1982. I went, ‘Michel, I’m really sorry but how do you say your name?’.”
At the next World Cup in Mexico in 1986 he was at the Azteca Stadium commentating for ITV on Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal against England. “I’m pleased to say that although I didn’t see it actually as it happened, I knew something had happened. I had [then Tottenham manager] David Pleat alongside me and we worked it out between us.”
Maradona then, he adds, was a man on a mission, not unlike Messi now. “The similarity is the sense of purpose and the No10 shirt,” Tyler reflects.
The joy of listening to a man like Tyler is feeling his undimmed enthusiasm for the game. To underline the point, English football’s most venerable commentator still coaches too, spending his free time as assistant manager to Alan Dowson at non-league Dartford.
For him the sight of supporters mingling happily in Doha has showed that football can be “a force for good”. And he believes this has been a “truly watchable” World Cup. “I’ve been to over 20 games and watched as much as I could and there’s been so much jeopardy in matches which is what you want as a football fan, as a viewer, as a lover of the sport.”
And how about England? Of their elimination by France, he points to the display by goalkeeper Hugo Lloris – “the best I’ve seen him play ever” – and ponders the significance of Harry Kane’s penalty miss.
“If Kane had scored, France might have gone on and won it but it clearly would have taken the wind out of France’s sails so soon after they’d regained lead.
“My feeling was that this is a very watchable England team and it has got the power to get better. It has produced Jude Bellingham in this tournament who will be a leader, I’m sure, for the national team for many years and World Cups to come hopefully.”
He adds that under Gareth Southgate, England’s improved tournament performances are “bricks in the right structure”, affirming: “I hope Gareth stays. I think there’s another tournament in him. He has orchestrated not just the team but the system.
"They’re a likeable team with their football and the personalities of the players and that stems from Gareth’s influence as a man of huge integrity.”
We end by returning to Sunday’s final – a match staged 10 days before the 48th anniversary of his first commentary, a match between Southampton and Sheffield Wednesday in the old English Second Division on 28 December 1974. Amid the inevitable Messi v Mbappe focus, he wonders whether a different hero will emerge. “My experience of finals is it might well be something from outside that narrative who we’re talking about at the end of day,” he says.
Yet if it is Messi, this old romantic will savour the moment. “As a broadcaster and an impartial observer I have to say I wish everybody well in the final. But I’ve got a heart as well as a head and I can’t promise there won’t be tears in the eyes if he does win it.”
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