Commentary has turned into reading numbers aloud

Stats teams feed the box more than a broadcast can absorb, and play-by-play now sounds like a spreadsheet with a voice.

There is a moment in a lot of live coverage now where the ball is in play, something is developing on the far side, and the commentator is telling you that this is the fourth time this season a particular side has conceded from a set piece in the opening quarter of an hour.

Nothing wrong with that fact. Everything wrong with when it arrives.

The pressure is easy to understand. A modern commentary position gets a live feed of every conceivable number from a stats provider, refreshed constantly, and there is an implicit expectation that this expensive resource gets used. Nobody ever got a note from a producer saying you used too few statistics. The result is a commentary style where description has become the filler between numbers, when it should be the other way around.

The best commentators, the ones people remember, mostly do one thing. They tell you where the ball is and who has it, in a tone that tells you how dangerous the situation is. That is a much harder skill than it sounds, because it requires knowing the shirt numbers of two squads, tracking a game at speed, and modulating your voice honestly rather than shouting about a hopeful cross.

A statistic earns its place when it changes what you expect next. If a full-back has been beaten on the inside three times in this half, tell me, because the next time the winger receives I will be watching his feet. If a team has scored eleven league goals from corners this season, tell me as the corner is being taken, not while the ball is in the net. Anything that would work equally well read out at any point in the match is not commentary, it is a page from a media guide.

Radio, again, has the healthier culture, because radio physically cannot afford dead description time and a listener who does not know where the ball is has lost the game entirely. So radio commentators say where the ball is roughly every four seconds, and it is oddly gripping.

The thing I would remove first is the pre-loaded milestone. A player reaching an appearance number is not sport. It is a birthday.