Ally McCoist and Jon Champion: World Cup 2018’s commentary dream team The chemistry between a commentator and co-commentator is both a fine art and a strictly governed practice. Traditionally, the only […]

The chemistry between a commentator and co-commentator is both a fine art and a strictly governed practice. Traditionally, the only things they may share a joke about, during any brief lull in a game, include (but are not limited to): each other’s driving ability, dress sense, golf handicap and taste in music.

A World Cup, you are quadrennially reminded, can be a long few weeks for players and their attention spans. We’re less concerned with how commentary teams make their travel plans, but it is safe to assume that these partnerships must also be strong enough to handle the cabin-fever of short-haul flights and four-star hotel breakfasts, let alone the matches themselves.

All set in Kaliningrad. First worked with Ally McCoist on WC98. Delighted to be reunited with this bundle of energy and enthusiasm! #CRONGA live on @ITV pic.twitter.com/3mhwYOFdnS The i newsletter latest news and analysis Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription. — Jon Champion (@JonChampionJC) June 16, 2018

So far – from Moscow to Sochi, via Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Kazan, a total of nearly 4,000 miles – the dream team of Jon Champion and Ally McCoist have kept each other company. That’s a sixth of the way around the earth for ITV, covering a distinctly second-tier but compelling set of teams – Croatia, Poland, Senegal, Peru among them – while maintaining the bouncy camaraderie of two teachers (Champion: physics, McCoist: definitely, definitely PE) finally allowing themselves some free time on a foreign exchange trip.

This sort of cheery co-existence, on the mic and off, is not always the case, as Guy Mowbray and Mark Lawrenson might attest after their curiously passive-aggressive moment during the 2010 World Cup:

It feels like a disservice to call the Champion and McCoist twosome a “cult hit” or “breakthrough stars” – such are their respective CVs – but they have occupied an unquestionable niche during this World Cup. Clive Tyldesley and Glenn Hoddle may get the headline gigs, but Ally & The Champ are happily ferreting away between various Russian oblasts. The positive feedback they have received should not be a surprise, once you examine their credentials.

We ought to start with McCoist. The Oppenheimer of modern football banter. A footballing sex symbol of yesterday, a grinning reminder of the distant, genuinely cheeky, pre-“Daws and Tuffers” glory days of A Question of Sport and, lest we forget, a film star.

“He is a truly remarkable talent,” Kevin Costner once actually said out loud about Alistair Murdoch McCoist, the central figure in 2002’s football-themed romance-redemption flick A Shot At Glory. “It’s rare that sportsmen can act, but Ally McCoist is a natural. He has an Olivier-type quality”, Costner added, while co-star Robert Duvall acclaimed him as “80 times better for this part than [original choice] Russell Crowe”.

McCoist’s sex appeal may have been weathered by the two decades since he hung up his boots, plus a thankless three years as manager of an imploding Rangers, but few if any co-commentators boast such a glint in their voice. Some attempt to lay big-game gravitas on with a spade, while McCoist just skips through his observations with glorious abandon.

There have been rave reviews of the omelette cooked for him by the Swedish team chef and bite-size reviews of Russian outposts as if they were football clubs that have bounced back from relegation.

“It’s unbelievable, Jon”, he beamed during Poland vs Colombia. “If you put me in a corner and nailed me, it’s probably my favourite place on the trip so far, Kazan. It’s come a long way since it fell to Ivan the Terrible in 1552.”

En route to Sochi via Moscow for #AUSPER – but for Ally McCoist the research just never stops! @itvfootball pic.twitter.com/Vm7JWcp4GJ — Jon Champion (@JonChampionJC) June 25, 2018

As for the football, he’s unwaveringly impressed by all of that too. “Fair play to the medical lads!” he exclaimed as South Korea’s team doctor did some emergency patching-up of a head injury against Sweden, while his wistful lament for Polish talent of yore ended with a charmingly innocent mid-sentence realisation of “Kazimierz Deyna! Ah yes…tragically got killed, didn’t he?”

Viewers claim to want insight from their co-commentators, but it’s really by sheer enthusiasm that a connection can most effectively be established with us back home. It is slightly entitled of us to insist that our commentators must sound like they feel lucky to be doing what they do (a demand that partly explains the criticism that Lawrenson attracts) but McCoist still delivers that in buckets. Most interjections are suffixed with “it really is” or “I’ve got to say”, the embellishments of a true, professional bluffer, no matter how much reading he might have done at the airport.

Champion: “You are trying to tell me that in Brazil, in Germany, in every country around the world, UNIVERSALLY, Archie Gemmill’s goal for Scotland is considered the best World Cup goal?” McCoist: "If they're going to be honest with themselves, yes" McCoist > all other pundits — Oldfirmfacts (@Oldfirmfacts1) June 26, 2018

McCoist’s boyish awe might not work with any commentator, but Champion is the most reliable of sounding boards. Far from one-club man in the commentary game, he is as BBC as he is ITV in people’s aural memories, lending him an independent air; following the football wherever it takes him.

With the voice befitting the son of an independent school headmaster, he still switches between gravity and levity with rare ease – truly football’s embodiment of holding and giving, but doing it at the right time – and McCoist, like a second striker working off a target man, is able to feed off the scraps.

“…over to your commentators Ally McCoist and, first, Jon Champion…”

So goes the unofficial slogan for the 2018 World Cup.

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