Colemanballs is back ... remarkable!

Standard Reporter12 April 2012

One thing World Cup fans can be sure of is that commentators will mark the tournament with inadvertently hilarious moments.

Football has traditionally provided some of the best of the worst "Colemanballs", the gaffestrewn broadcasting phenomenon named after veteran BBC commentator David Coleman, famed for his microphone blunders.

Now a volume of comments solely on the World Cup has been produced by satirical magazine Private Eye, which first coined the phrase.

Colemanballs comes in several forms. There is stating the blindingly obvious, as when John Motson announced: "The World Cup - truly an international event."

Sometimes commentators get carried away with the sense of occasion like John Helm: "This is the first time Denmark has ever reached the World Cup Finals, so this is the most significant moment in Danish history."

Often it is a schoolboy error in the commentary box such as this exchange between Ian St John and Bruce Grobbelaar: "It's a real battle tomorrow with Brazil against Spain. What do you reckon Bruce?"

"Well, I've got to go for the Italians on this one Saint."

England managers are well represented, with Terry Venables, Bobby Robson and Kevin Keegan all committing serious fouls against the English language.

The 60 quotes have been culled from 10 volumes of Colemanballs - an 11th edition will be launched in September. They are compiled from cuttings sent in by observant Private Eye readers.

Coleman himself only appears once in the collection - see panel right - which is with the current edition of the Eye. In fact he is known to be resentful of the infamy, insisting many of the slips attributed to him over the years were actually by other commentators.

In recent times, the man arguably born to Colemanballs fame is ITV summariser Ron Atkinson, with a treasure-house of inanity such as: "He is without a doubt the greatest sweeper in the world ... I'd say, at a guess."

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