Each to their own, I personally think talkSPORT have assembled their strongest commentary line-up yet for a major international tournament and are more than a match for Radio 5 Live. In Proudfoot, Parry, Taphouse and Anderson they have four experienced football commentators who've covered the sport extensively on both broadcast mediums, plus in McKenna and Pearson two commentators who've always impressed on the station.

It's a shame that Nigel Adderley appears to have missed out on making talkSPORT's World Cup team - I wonder if he opted to work elsewhere considering that he's tweeted about travelling to Brazil for the tournament. Regardless of that, I hope he gets to commentate on at least one of the end-of-season finals for talkSPORT this month given that he's been the station's second most prominent commentator on club games this season.

I think Heart FM and Radio 4 Extra will be a Football free zone.

I agree up to a point. I think they have more to offer than just Parry and Proudfoot. Aderley is a former 5Live commentator and, in my view, is on a par with the likes of Bruce-ball and Overend. as you say Parry and Proudfoot are great commentators and Gary Taphouse is a regular on things like the premier league world feed and sky sports so he's no novice. I'm personally not sure about Andrew McKenna and John Anderson as commentators (though I suspect Anderson will be off-tube and only heard for a few games). Andrew McKenna who I've posted about before on the other thread-- though I must admit he is improving each time I hear him now! If I were TS programme controller though I'd maybe have puthim in the England camp as their reporter (a role I think he'd be very good at) and have the vastly more experienced football commentator Ian Danter in the commentary box. Anderson is another who is a quality reporter but, on the admitidly few times I've heard him commentate, is weaker than the rest of them IMO.

All-in-all though, I think both stations have got excellent teams covering the tournament.

On talkSPORT's coverage, we know Jim Proudfoot and Andrew McKenna will be on-site in Brazil and it seems highly likely that Gary Taphouse will be as well given the number of games he's scheduled to be doing.

It's been confirmed tonight that Proudfoot will be doing 16 games, we know Taphouse will do "around 15" matches, so presuming McKenna does a similar number of fixtures - that will leave about 16 matches to be split between Alan Parry, Nigel Pearson and John Anderson, eight of which will surely be the clashing fixtures during the final round of the group phase which will be carried as live commentaries on talkSPORT's online platforms only.

Given his other commitments, Pearson will almost certainly be working off-tube as he has done during previous tournaments and I think that Anderson and Parry (given his age and how he appears to be winding down now - he didn't follow an English team abroad in the UEFA Champions League for Sky Sports this season as he has done previously) may be as well. But if so, you are only looking at quarter of the fixtures from the tournament maximum being covered off-tube, half of which should be those eight clashing final group games that talkSPORT will not be able to accommodate on their main AM platform.

As for the commentary pairings: in Brazil it should be Proudfoot and Stan Collymore as their leading pairing, with McKenna and Stuart Pearce being the secondary team (this clearly seems to be the plan given how they've been frequently matched together during talkSPORT's FA Cup coverage this season) leaving Taphouse and Ray Parlour to team up, although I suspect there might be a little bit of mixing and matching during the group phase.

I'd guess all three of those pairings will get at least one quarter-final each, with Proudfoot and McKenna getting a semi-final each, Taphouse finishing with the third-place play-off as we know and then Proudfoot and Collymore getting the final. Perhaps Parlour could get the second semi-final if Pearce has to leave the tournament early due to his managerial commitments at Nottingham Forest.

If neither Parry or Alvin Martin head out to Brazil - or even if both of them do - it would fitting if they are paired together given that they were Talk Radio/talkSPORT's lead commentary team either side of the station's rebrand at the turn of the millennium.

Nigel Adderley's twitter page says he is working for HBS at the World Cup.

A couple of 5 Live bits from twitter, Conor McNamara will be joined by Tony Pulis for Spain v Holland and interestingly Simon Brotherton said in addition to his tv work he is doing France v Switzerland for 5 Live.

Ian Brown confirmed commentating 0ff-tube on the smaller games. Not travelling to Brail.

Here are BBC Radio 5 Live's commentary teams for the opening couple of days of the World Cup:

Brazil v Croatia - John Murray and Chris Waddle
Mexico v Cameron - Darren Fletcher and Robbie Savage
Spain v Netherlands - Conor McNamara and Ally McCoist
Chile v Australia - Ian Brown (presumably off tube from the UK)

Amended...

Gary Taphouse has tweeted that he'll be commentating on Nigeria v Iran for talkSPORT.

Here's a thing, BBC national stations (aka not the English regions) take 5 Live's programming from midnight to 5am-ish most nights. As some games are at 11pm would they then have do extend their regular programming?

BBC Nations and Regions may take the BBC World Service or BBC Radio 2 whilst the World Cup is on.

I think most actually finish at 1am - they certainly do in the Midlands, East and London.

I also believe Ray Stubbs will be part of talkSPORT's presentation team for the World Cup - whether he's in Brazil or London is a different matter.

It also looks like talkSPORT's live coverage will be from 4pm through until 2am during the group phase when the the first game is at 5pm and the last one at 11pm.

I wonder if Radio 2 and 1 - Global group, Bauer are doing anything special for world cup?

I think R1 have a Brazil themed program at some point. Not much else though. Very different from the last 2 World Cups where in 2006, Moyles was in Germany for 3 weeks and in 2010, there were the brilliant alternative commentaries from Chris/Dave.

R1 now doesn't really have a football fan in the daytime line up (I think Greg James pretends to be)

As has been discussed in the other thread, it seems strange that neither 5 Live or Sports Extra are providing commentary of one or two matches in the group stage.

I'm not that surprised, simply because, in the ads I've heard for the tournament from the commentators trailing their coverage, they haven't sayd they would be doing commentary on all games, they've got some nonsense about '24 days of live football'. To me, if they were planning commentary on every game, they would just say so. all that said, it is disappointing. It may be that these get pencelled in later and just haven't been confirmed yet?

Who defines which the 'smaller games' are? I think Chile v Australia looks an attractive fixture full of goals.

Ian Brown has tweeted that he is covering 7 matches, working with Steve Claridge, John Hartson and Malky Mackay.

... Steve Claridge... thank god for talksport!

To be fair he can be excellent. Last 15 minutes of Palace v Liverpool - superb analysis of Liverpool's flawed tactics after conceding the first goal.

I agree Clalridge can be really be intriguing to listen to at times, but usually he just seems to be a rent a gob type person.

well, everyone except Brendan Rodgers could see what was happening in that game and knew what Liverpool should do about it so I'm not going to give Claridge too much credit for that. Pains me to say that as Rodgers was a terrific manager for us. I actualy prefer Claridge in a studio role rather than a commentary role.

I'm not a Claridge fan either

The game at 2am is understandable for no commentary but the game after the Ur/Eng game is a bit poor

Fair play to Mark Chapman, he's presenting RL on Sunday afternoon on BBC2 and then from Rio on Monday evening on 5Live!

6Music are doing a few Brazilian/South American themed shows over the coming weeks.