Originally Posted by Ian Cleverly:
“There was a big AFCoN preview on the World Services Sport Today, er, today, where it was mentioned that the main commentary team would be Steve Crossman and Matthew Kenyon. Coverage would be limited (like it usually is however) to the World Service Africa 'section'.
Whilst I'm at it, what with the Asian Cup going on at the moment, Mani Djazmi is there doing daily updates for the World Service.”
I've just caught up on ITV4's Africa Cup of Nations highlights from over the weekend today, so I'm gearing myself up to catching some live action from my favourite biennial post-Christmas football tournament.
Hopefully the BBC World Service's commentaries on games from the latter stages of the tournament (last time it was both semi-finals and the final) will be simulcast on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra where possible. This happened in 2013, which was a welcome development - although it did beg the question why they haven't done this consistently since the 2004 tournament (although I remember the 2006 final being broadcast on 5 Live, during a Friday afternoon edition of Drive bizarrely. The scheduling of this commentary was said to have received a lot of complaints at the time - which I guess might have contributed to the BBC's reluctance to interrupt Drive in order to broadcast 6pm Europa League games or Champions League matches played in Eastern Europe these days).
It'll be interesting to look back on all of the various people who've commentated and reported for the World Service at Cup of Nations finals down the years. Alan Green was involved in that 2006 final, but mostly it's been people who are primarily heard on Sportsworld. Among those who have been heard at previous tournaments have been Richard Fleming, who is now the lead commentator on Alititude TV's local television broadcasts of Major League Soccer team the Colorado Rapids; Richard Connelly, who is now a regular voice on Sky Sports 5's (and the international feed's) Eredivisie coverage and on talkSPORT Live; and Piers Edwards, who also featured on talkSPORT Live in its first season but doesn't any more. Instead I've noticed that Piers has been working as a written journalist for the BBC Sport website at both this and the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations.