It’s the ongoing winter holidays around the world and yet there is no slowing down for the Premier League matches. Football fans have seized their time off to enjoy some high-profile English football matches from their couches.
Amidst this, Amazon Prime has arrived as a Santa Claus for football fans by announcing the broadcast of over 10 hours of football on Boxing Day – and a total of 10 games through December 28.
As scheduled, Amazon Prime broadcasted the Boxing Day match between Liverpool and Burnley, which has become a topic of discussion and for all wrong reasons. The topic of conversation isn’t the 2-0 victory of Klopp’s men or any technical glitch but rather commentary issues.
The 19th Premier League match of Liverpool was scheduled to be commentated on by Guy Mowbray as the main commentator and Lucy Ward as the co-commentator. Apparently, Lucy’s unprofessional commentary style hasn’t sat well among the Premier League fans.
Lucy Ward is a former English footballer who played for Leeds Carnegie in her early days. Since 2007, she has switched to a role as a co-commentator for broadcasters such as BT Sport, BBC, Talksport, Channel 4, and Sky.
However, something quite unexpected happened during her recent venture with Amazon Prime. She acted rather like an amateur and has been heavily criticized on social media for making rookie errors.
Speaking about her unprofessionalism, let’s begin with multiple pronunciation errors she made while naming the Merseyside players.
Gone are the days when a commentator actually did their homework before commenting on a match. Otherwise, who would dare pronounce Van Dijk as ‘Von Doyck’?
Moreover, this is not an isolated case. She was also heard referring to Dominik Szoboszlai as ‘Soboshly.’
We understand it’s challenging to pronounce Szoboszlai, but there’s no excuse for mispronouncing Gravenberch as ‘Kkkhavenberckkkkk’ or for pronouncing Joe Gomez as ‘jogomez.’ or Jarell Quansah as ‘Kansa’.
This level of accuracy is the least we can expect from a commentator on Amazon Prime.
Now, let’s talk about her numerous contradictory statements that the viewers have highlighted, which were both funny and too casual from the commentator.
A user on X.com has rightfully pointed out how she commented that “Liverpool will give you loads of chances,” only to contradict her own statement within 20 minutes by saying, “You have to take your chances against Liverpool; you won’t get many against them.”
Another contradictory incident arose when she commented, ‘Burnley have all the answers against Liverpool’s defense,’ just after a Burnley attack was stopped before the 18-yard line.
She seemed confused throughout her time, as another incident came to light when Elliott was flagged offside.
However, just because the camera panned to Nunez, she was captured on commenting about how Nunez was rather offside, whereas Nunez was far from it.
We can’t be sure if she was nervous, but her commentary surely left the fans confused.
Moreover, she also demonstrated some rookie mistakes throughout the game. People have criticized her for commenting about a shot from Salah.
The 39-year-old commented: “The ‘finish’ when Salah shot and the keeper saved it”.
People have taken to social media to remind her that a ‘shot’ is not a ‘finish’ when it is saved. You don’t expect something so silly from someone who has a prior record of playing on the field, now, do you?
Moreover, the casual tone of her tagging the Burnley winger as a ‘bottle of pop’ has not resonated appropriately with the audience.
People are completely distressed over her awful style of commentating and have labeled her as ‘irritating’ and ‘terrible’ and ‘boring’.
A user on X.com even compared her voice to an AI-generated one with an English accent. They even referred to the English lady as the female ‘Michael Owen‘ or ‘McManamans,’ both infamously reputed for their poor style of commenting.
Former Manchester City player Joe Barton recently faced a lot of backlash for his sexist remark on social media, claiming that women ‘shouldn’t be talking about the men’s game’ and that men who listen to them ‘need their heads testing.’
With the recent incident it makes us think, was Barton actually right in his way of thinking?
Let’s not open that door of sexism; for gender has nothing to do with having a poor day at the job.
Many male commentators have also previously been heavily criticized for their poor commentating style.
It’s just that when you are working for Amazon Prime and delivering for millions of live audiences, the least we can expect is the bare minimum of professionalism.
