When I think of John Motson, I don’t think of the sheepskin coats or the statto image. I think of John as the first broadcast journalist in football commentary.
When you’re recalling the great voices of television in sport in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there were richer voices with richer vocabularies. But John was already moving beyond that style to accuracy in his preparation and identification during commentary.
He built contacts as a journalist would in order to get to the story of the game that he was covering. He was as well connected as he was researched. And managers trusted him like viewers trusted him with information on their teams and tactics prior to games.
