Just discovered that 5Live aren't covering the Brazil game - unbelievable! I didn't even check the schedule - I just assumed it would be on. As you say, poor!

Haven't listened to TalkSport in years - not bad at all...

Totally agree about Mike Ingham. Simply great broadcasting voice.

Always wondered why he didn't venture into tv commentary at some stage.

That is strange, both Alan Green and Mike Ingham dislike commentating for BBC MOTD, all the other top radio commentators have, having said that at least Alan Green has appeared on BBC TV Sport shows, Ingham maybe a bit more modest?

Seeing that 5Live isn't doing commentary, Brazil are losing 2-0

Mark Pougatch reported on last night's match for 5 Live, but his contributions were more a general chat about the World Cup than an update on the match.

I didn't listen to their Third Place Play-Off commentary itself last night (although given Gary Taphouse and Alvin Martin's form throughout the tournament, I'm sure it was excellent), but I caught the pre-match and post-match hours anchored by Andrew McKenna and thought it was a really good listen.

I posted on here last night that McKenna was anchoring World Cup Live from Rio de Janeiro - from listening alone, to be brutally honest I'm not entirely sure whether Macca was in Rio or London. On the one hand, he didn't join the presenters preceding or succeeding their coverage in the studio for proper handovers, but on the other he didn't mention being in Brazil as far as I heard and said that Alvin (who we know was working off-tube) was "alongside" him at points. I'm now thinking he will have been back home as going by Twitter he doesn't appear to be involved in their coverage tonight.

After the sterling work he's done out in Brazil over the past month or so, it seems a shame that Macca - who will return to his weekday afternoon sports newsreading duties in the coming weeks and then hosting their Sunday night rugby union show Full Contact in September - isn't likely to be involved in talkSPORT's football coverage very much during the new season due to his other commitments. I expect he'll be their number one commentator on next year's Rugby World Cup though, should talkSPORT win rights to it, which should be some consolation, and it's probable that we'll hear him doing the odd commentary during Rounds 3 to 5 of the FA Cup.

Sunday 13th July - talkSPORT

Mark Saggers presenting World Cup Live from Estadio do Maracana alongside Stan Collymore and Ray Parlour

FIFA World Cup Final
Germany v Argentina - Jim Proudfoot and Stan Collymore (8pm commentary), with Ray Parlour providing in-game analysis, Ian Abrahams reporting and Mike Bovill and Dennie Morris producing

It's been confirmed on-air that Jim and Stan will be doing the bulk of the commentary, with Ray chipping into the match with his thoughts from time to time. There's no studio-based element to tonight's coverage with Adrian Durham as had erroneously been suggested in the Radio Times, instead they began their coverage at the Maracana from 5pm. Back home Jon Norman reported on the First Test between England and India with Jack Bannister providing end-of-session summaries, while Lisa O'Sullivan updated the ninth stage of the Tour de France.

yes, thanks for confirming, I heard this, but as you say, the reports were so general, I'm not going to count them in the 5Live stats I posted earlier as they were simply score updates during a general chat Pougatch had with Stephen Nolan.

on the subject of Pougatch (and the other presenters) I didn't keep records of all the 5Live presenters various matches to provide specific information, but I am 99 % sure that 4 presenters were used--- Pougatch, Chapman, Overend and, for one game, George Riley.

I have to correct myself here - contrary to the above, Ray Parlour was only involved in talkSPORT's World Cup Final coverage between 5-7pm BST before watching the game as a fan, so did not contribute to the commentary. Ian Abrahams reported from outside the Maracana talking to the fans before the match before he conducted interviews in the mixed zone post-match. talkSPORT's live coverage ran until 11.30pm BST due to extra time.

Back in the UK, talkSPORT had Warren Haughton reporting from the Bavarian Beerhouse in central London and Dom McGuinness reporting from the ITV Fever Pitch fan park in Manchester during their live coverage tonight.

Completely agree.I'm sad that Mike is retiring it's a big loss.
Do we know how often he will be popping up next season.?

To add more detail to the information Steve grabbed from the Radio 5 Live online schedule last week, Mark Pougatch presented from the Maracana joined by a number of different guests during their two-hour build-up.

Only the first hour has been archived to the iPlayer, but from that he was joined by Alan Green, Chris Waddle and Tim Vickery during the first half hour and then Mike Ingham, Danny Mills and Raphael Honigstein during the second half hour.

The commentary itself had Alan Green doing the opening legs of each half and then the first half of extra time, with Mike Ingham doing the anchor legs in normal time and second half of extra time. Danny Mills was their primary summariser, and going by my flick through of their iPlayer archive of their commentary I don't think Chris Waddle contributed to it - perhaps one of you who listened live can confirm that was the case.

In terms of the reporters who contributed to their coverage, as is usually the case for World Cup and European Championship Finals, they had reporters at fan events in the capital cities of the competing nations - Wyre Davies was in Buenos Aires and Steve Evans was in Berlin. They also had Bruce Douglas from the BBC World Service interviewing Jens Nowotny in the build-up and then reporting from the Copacabana fans park during their live coverage.

As for the final handover between Green and Ingham, here is what was said:

Green: "The end I'm afraid is near. Mike knows what I feel about him. He's been a wonderful colleague. He will be forever a great friend. I'll really miss you Mike. Really, really miss you."

Ingham: "Alan thank you, but you may have to do this again. We may well have extra time. Thank you for the days Alan, and who knows, we may have another 30 minutes here..."

Feel free to copy and paste the transcript above onto other threads or other forums if you so wish. I'm not a fan of Green's commentary work, but that was a really nice and fitting send-off to Ingham, you could tell it was really heartfelt. In characteristic style, Ingham was keen not to labour the point but to get on with commentating on the game, and he certainly had the foresight to see the match was heading to extra time!

Chris Waddle contributed a couple of times during each half of the final.

Like others I also thoroughly enjoyed listening to 'Mike Ingham The World Cup Years' and it was fitting that the winning goal last night fell during his commentary.

As promised, here are the details of the presenters, commentators, co-commentators and reporters used on talkSPORT's coverage of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

talkSPORT was the only UK broadcaster to provide live coverage of all 64 games of the World Cup, so the overall totals in the presenting and commentary categories should all tot up to 64. As I have done when compiling the final totals from previous tournaments, I counted the presenters hosting coverage from the final round of group stage matches as having hosted both games in each timeslot.* During the first two rounds of group fixtures, there were a few occasions when one presenter would link into live commentary of a match, only for a different person to then host the post-match coverage of that game. In these cases, I've considered the presenter on duty at half-time as having been the host of such matches. Without further ado, here are the statistics:

Presenters:

Mark Saggers - 29 games
Adrian Durham - 26
Dan Lobb - 6
Russell Hargreaves - 1
Andrew McKenna - 1
Ray Stubbs - 1

Commentators:

Jim Proudfoot - 15
Gary Taphouse - 15
Andrew McKenna - 10
Alan Parry - 10
John Anderson - 7
Nigel Pearson - 6
Richard Connelly - 1

Co-commentators:

Stan Collymore - 15
Matt Holland - 13
Alvin Martin - 13
Ray Parlour - 10 + 1 match as a Rio-based in-game analyst
Micky Quinn - 6
Stuart Pearce - 4 + 2 matches as a Rio-based in-game analyst
Alan Curbishley - 2
Danny Higginbotham - 1

I've included the commentary and co-commentary numbers from the eight final group games that were broadcast on the talkSPORT Extra alternative online stream (each match having been updated by those commentary teams on the main talkSPORT platforms) in the totals above, but have listed the specific details below.**

For those keeping tabs on the on-site/off-tube split, Ray Parlour did his first four co-commentaries from London before flying out to Brazil and doing his remaining six co-commentaries from the stadiums with Andrew McKenna. Parlour also provided Rio-based in-game analysis on the Netherlands v Argentina semi-final, plus Rio-based punditry on the Brazil v Germany semi-final and Germany v Argentina final. He replaced Stuart Pearce, who on top of his four co-commentaries provided Rio-based in-game analysis on England's matches against Italy and Uruguay.

Mark Saggers and Adrian Durham presented all of their live games from Brazil, mostly doing so from talkSPORT's studio in Rio de Janeiro. However, both hosted some of their matches from the stadiums staging them - Saggers was an on-site presenter at ten games, while Durham was on-site host at six.

Reporting-wise, Ian Danter provided pitchside reports and conducted interviews at all three England games from Group D. Ian Abrahams was in the mixed zone to conduct post-match interviews from all seven matches played at the Estadio do Maracana. Abrahams was also talkSPORT's roving reporter gathering reaction from the fans in and around Copacabana beach on almost every day of the tournament. Back in the UK, Warren Haughton gathered vox pops with fans in London during England v Italy and the World Cup Final, with Dom McGuinness talking to fans in Manchester on the night of the World Cup Final.

*Presenters during the final round of group games: Adrian Durham (3 groups), Mark Saggers (3) and Dan Lobb (2).
**talkSPORT Extra commentators: Nigel Pearson (3 games), Gary Taphouse (3) and John Anderson (2).
talkSPORT Extra co-commentators: Micky Quinn (3), Matt Holland (2), Alvin Martin (2) and Danny Higginbotham (1).