Alan Hansen: Player and Pundit BBC 1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0499fb1/alan-hansen-player-and-pundit

On the eve of the World Cup finals this is a hagiography of a football player and pundit. The latter is easy to deal with. He talks shite for a living. There wasn’t an aha moment. He’d been offered the Liverpool manager’s job after his mate Kenny Dalglish had left and he didn’t take it. With a wife and two kids, he contacted Sky(BSport) about commentary work and ‘fell into’ the role of pundit with the BBC.  People like Des Lynam lined up to to say how great he was. Scoles, Giggs and Neville Neville said what a great analyst he was. This was a little dig at the joke that made him ‘that kids never win anything’. We learn that he was ‘devastated’ that  Ferguson left him out of Scotland’s 1986 World Cup squad.

    ‘Alan, there’s people dying out there,’ a supporter told him at Hillsborough in 1989, after running onto the pitch.

    The Heysel Disaster four years earlier was a European Cup Final in which the score didn’t really matter.

    Alan Hansen was a classy player. He played in one of the best English teams of all time. And he’s smart enough to jump before he was elbowed out. Mark Lawrenson his defensive partner at Liverpool and fellow pundit is not so smart. Mourinho lauded Hansen’s analytical skills (why didn’t they ask Sir Alex?) He wasn’t scared to criticise individual player’s performances or managers - with one exception: England. His career wouldn’t have lasted long if he said England are pish. And as a fellow Scot that’s annoying. Alan Hansen will have a few quid and it won’t be foodbanks. Best of luck to him.

I’ll try my luck as a pundit. The World Cup Final to go to penalties and Germany to win.