TV Review - Saturday 12th June

"It's a tournament of such prestige they named a currency after it" The BBC know how to start a show, and here's no exception as, with the aid of the satellite picture showing the location of the ground that appears to be the intro to the stadium picture for their live games this tournament, there appears to be a massive zoom-in to Gary on a rooftop. The titles, using a completely unmemorable mix of Basement Jaxx's Good Luck, feature players running between buildings and lots of flashing lights in lines, which appears to be the big new graphics trick this year as they turn up in UEFA's tournament ident and ITV's coverage too. Eventually we get to the studio, after a Euro 2004 Top Trumps graphic, to find Alan, Peter and Ian looking hot, Wright apparently wearing a painter and decorator's trousers. After Gary's asked Peter about public opinion in Portugal, a country he left in 2001, we cross to Barry for the opening ceremony. Now David Coleman's in retirement nobody does an opening ceremony like Barry, as he's always keen to tell us every detail he can lay his hands on and everything going on, hence his notification of "various things to do with navigation" appearing and an invocation of Vasco de Gama. The explorer, not the Brazilian team, obviously. Perhaps fortunately he chooses not to comment on the kid standing in front of Luis Figo giving a peace sign to camera. Rattled by the lack of team captions that stay on screen for a period of time whereby he can read them, he then appears to make a comment off-mike between describing the first Greek goal and Lawro chiming in. Mark does go on to set an early high water mark for the earliest reference to an awkward pronunication of one of them foreigners of eight minutes in, while Barry sets Clive Tyldesley a target to aim for by referring to Man Utd's Champions League win after 12 minutes. This is a rare excursion into modern thinking for Barry, who at one point complains "how many years down the road will they be playing with a beach ball?" "You know Greece are doing well because Big Phil's got the pout on" - yes, Lawro, and because of the scoreline too. At half time you can tell Wright wants to improve his public image but is still hampered by details such as not knowing the names of the players - "what do you think of Charisteas?" "The number nine?... the number 15, he's not bad", although he's not so enamoured of the Spanish player who "in the warm-up I was caning him". Barry seems to expect fireworks only when Cristiano Ronaldo enters the fray, only to become annoyed at cross after cross being left ("yet again!"), although given Pauleta was unmarked at the far post for one cross only to run *away* from the ball it's hardly surprising. One habit of the local producers that will annoy over time is the cut straight to a crowd or bench shot immediately after a goal or goalmouth action. Show us the player reaction first! What Lawro perhaps overstatingly calls "arguably the best result ever in any competition" isn't derailed by Portugal's consolation goal, Barry apparently not knowing who'd scored until the replay. Back in the studio Alan gleefully tears Ronaldo's crossing apart even though there's not that much wrong with it apart from players in the centre not having a clue, while Gary worries that "they might knock the Olympic stadium down" celebrating in Athens. "Portugal have discovered it's very hard to remove Greece" is clearly a line been working on for some time to close game 1.

We return 25 minutes later to find someone's stuck a board in front of the studio window. "It feels like we're in a giant Outspan" Gary comments, to which Alan replies "it's an expensive business". Er, yes. An early moment of confusion comes when Canizares is pinpointed as key to Spain's chances only for Peter to point out Casillas is playing in his stead. In the commentary box Motson is effusive in welcoming Mick McCarthy into the TV team for a major tournament again. It was McCarthy's man-management skills that got Ireland as far as they went in 2002, and they're ably demonstrated when he retorts to Motson making the point that Raul Bravo's form improved after he left his loan spell at Leeds with "my career would have got a revival if I'd gone to Real Madrid, I think." Tell that to David Beckham. "The fans are wearing red, the steward is wearing yellow and his flag is red and yellow!" provides a moment of amusement to Motty, who's soon distracted by an Abramovich cutaway - is this the Premiership again? - and Mick slagging off the tannoy announcer for not speaking Russian. He then decides to make sport of Sergei Ovchinnikov's ponytail, only to be brought short when Motty reminds him "there is another keeper even older with a ponytail who we know about". We've always thought Motson's reliance on statistics was an overplayed gag, but he does worryingly get obsessed by relative players' ages at one point in the second half. This sidetracking may explain why he refers at one point to the Soviets and feels it necessary to point out "you have to call him (Xabi Alonso) that, it's his name". Ah, that'll be it. When Spain have a goal disallowed neither man seems to be able to agree on whether it was for handball or a foul on the keeper, although both know that both occurred. Mick then comments on a Kariaka shot being ambitious as "he's got 20 players in front of him", to which Motty commends him on doing "well to count them all", which leads him to cod-sheepishly admit "I was wrong, there was 19". "I didn't dare say it, mate" Motty somewhat overfamiliarly responds, before getting completely thrown by the sending off incident - "is that Smertin? No it's not, luckily... oh, it's red". Lucky, eh? The analysis centres on replaying the 36 seconds between Valeron's substitute arrival and his goal before Gary chances his arm with his public: "it's England v France tomorrow, but we've got the big one, Croatia v Switzerland - join us, please." Oh, go on then, you've twisted our arm.