• Vasily Utkin was watching Barça play Bayer Leverkusen • ‘It just so happened that at the end of the first half, I was talking in my sleep’

Some pundits have described the current Barcelona teams as the best of all time but even watching the likes of Lionel Messi and Neymar was not enough to keep one Russian TV commentator awake.

Vasily Utkin – one of the lead commentators for the new Russian state sports broadcaster Match TV created by President Vladimir Putin last year – was watching Luis Enrique’s side face Bayer Leverkusen in a Champions League tie in December when he accidentally dozed off at the end of the first half of the 1-1 draw. Utkin has now been suspended despite the fact that he claims to suffer from a chronic sleep disorder.

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“I am convinced that [the suspension] is due to this commentary in the game between Bayer and Barça. But I wasn’t spoken to just about this game,” he told the TASS agency.

“I can explain what happened in the match. For a few years, I’ve been suffering from chronic sleep disorder. It just so happened that at the end of the first half, I fell asleep and I was talking in my sleep.

“Naturally, it is very easy to understand that this is the case, because in the second half there were no problems at all.”

Utkin, 43 is a controversial figure in Russian football known for his outspoken comments. Last year, he openly criticised Match TV’s lead producer Tina Kandelaki on Twitter and said no one in Russia spoke about sports more “tritely, lamely and detestably.” Kandelaki responded by calling him “a fatso” before the pair eventually made up.

Match TV is owned by the state energy giant Gazprom and recruited the producer Charles Coplin, a 52-year-old former executive for the NFL, NHL and ABC Sports, last year for its launch.