Soccer AM: It will be missed, but not by many and not for long

AXED: Soccer AM presenters Tim Lovejoy and Helen Chamberlain during the 2004/05 edition.

So farewell Soccer AM. 28 years have passed since it was launched on Sky but the news that it is set to be axed as viewing figures dwindle surely surprises no-one. 

Pioneering in its time by virtue of having a female presenter who loved football, this progressive move was, of course, counterbalanced first by Russ Willams and then, for the ‘glory years’ 1996-2007, by Tim Lovejoy, a man whose monumental self-regard had the gravitational pull of a small planet. Safe to say he was everything some people detest. 

Forever smirking his way through the show, all too pleased with himself, but with absolutely no cause to be. A man whose appalling book inspired the most delightfully excoriating review in ‘When Saturday Comes’.

But for all this, some people loved Soccer AM, for a while anyway. 

Partly, this was because it was about football and in the second half of the 90s there was still relatively little football broadcasting, apart from the live games. And partly because it was dumb hangover TV for students that demanded little from you as you slumped on the sofa, mouth agape as they interviewed Rick Witter from Shed Seven.

It employed someone called Tubes who was basically the lad at school who would do anything you told him to do, just to get a laugh. It made uncomfortable viewing.

The programme started in the era of the ‘laddette’ where women were vaunted for aping the worst male behaviour. Soccer AM plugged into that culture with glee. 

Easy to say its politics belonged to a different era, but features like ‘Soccerette’ with its faux post-ironic knowingness were always some flavour of despicable and would surely horrify most born after the year 2000. That the feature continued until 2015 was shameful. And even then it was only removed because of complaints, not because they thought it horribly sexist.

When Lovejoy left he was replaced by that fella with the eternal Oasis haircut, Andy Goldstein. It wasn’t an upgrade. Things got better when eager puppy Max Rushden sat next to Chamberlain but still the tone was one of over-fawning to often relatively inarticulate footballers who largely talked in clichés. 

A tone of laddish banter, which always was and still is, a euphemism for the kind of toxic masculinity that makes life worse for everyone.

Chamberlain eventually left in 2017, other males came and went but you knew it was on its last legs when in 2017 they employed Jimmy Bullard to grin from under his ponytail, as one last throw of the banter dice. 

Its current iteration looks as dated as Joe Bloggs jeans, still laughing too loud about things that aren’t funny, always one push in the solar plexus away from ‘can’t you take a joke, mate?’ It survived for so long because it wasn’t all bad. 

In the plus column were things like ‘Crossbar Challenge’, ‘the car park game’ and ‘Unbelievable Tekkers’ and basically anything else which involved kicking a ball. But while they diluted the more poisonous bits, gradually its audience grew up and had other stuff to do on a Saturday morning and were not replaced by younger people.

Latter-day attempts to inject a bit of seriousness into interviews looked like exactly what they were, a tacit admittance that times had changed and left the show behind. But if you want an in-depth interview with a footballer, would Jimmy Bullard really be your go-to man for such a job?

Once upon a time it lasted for 240 minutes but as it has fizzled out, it’s down to 90. And even that is too much for Sky’s bosses now. It isn’t hard to see why.

That this creation lasted for 30 years is little short of incredible and is perhaps a testament to the conservative nature of Sky and of some corners of football culture. It will be missed, but not by many and not for long.