“I get asked to shout two things in the street,” Martin Tyler says wryly on a drizzly afternoon in Surrey. “The first is ‘And it’s live!’, which I do, while the second is the Agüero moment which I don’t do because you need to go somewhere special for something truly extraordinary.”
A moment that perhaps best captures the addictive drama and madness of the Premier League came in May 2012 when Manchester City needed two goals in stoppage time to beat QPR and win their first league championship since 1968. When the ball fell to Sergio Agüero, and he struck the winner that meant City had clinched the title on goal difference from Manchester United, Tyler’s gloriously strangled cry of “Agüeroooo!” echoed around the world.
The 78-year-old commentator has now found a private space at the back of a cafe in Oxshott to reflect on his public role in voicing the unstoppable rise of the Premier League. For 33 years, until Sky Sports chose not to renew his contract last summer, Tyler’s commentary had been the soundtrack of many footballing lives.
Tyler is too grateful to football, for his past work at Sky and his current freelance commentary, to resent the requests to emulate such delirium in the street. “The joy is still there,” he says. “And the luck of having a football life that continues – like the added time now being increased in Premier League games. I’m very grateful.”
This week Tyler commentated on a Champions League match between RB Leipzig and Real Madrid while last week he worked at the Premier League game between Brentford and Manchester City and Chelsea’s defeat of Aston Villa in an FA Cup replay. “I love doing it,” he says, “and the one thing that upsets me a bit is people saying you’re retired. That word was never mentioned. I’m happy to be available as a gun for hire.”
Even before this rare interview, Tyler made it clear he had no desire to say anything negative about his former employer. When I ask towards the end of our two hours together if Sky’s decision came as a shock, he says: “I really don’t want to talk about it.” Did he consider stepping away from commentating after Sky’s decision? “I didn’t. I felt there was more in the tank, but it’s for other people to judge whether that’s the super grade or basic running fuel. I’ve not got a bad word to say about the people I worked for at Sky. But this feels like a new beginning for me.”
Tyler began working in television as an editorial assistant at LWT after Jimmy Hill persuaded him to take the job, even though it meant he had to stop playing as a striker in non-league football. He was initially involved in tactical analysis and, before video recorders, liaised with artists who sketched scenarios to show how a move unfolded. His break came almost 50 years ago when he was offered his first game as a commentator – Southampton v Sheffield Wednesday in December 1974.
Tyler pauses when I ask how, in a different century, VAR now impacts on his work. Has the spontaneity of describing a goal been diminished by the probability of a protracted VAR check? “It’s a really good question and the commentators got together and said: ‘What should we do?’ You could quite legitimately say, every time, ‘Well, it’s a goal but we’ll wait for VAR.’ We decided as a group, rightly, that wasn’t the way to go.
“If there’s any pride involved, swallow it. Call the goal. Shout the goal. Make it stand out, as you normally would. Then, if you have to go, ‘They’re checking it,’ you might get a second shout because it is a goal. So I don’t think it affects commentary. I’ve done a few goals before VAR where you’d go: ‘Oh, he could be offside.’ That uncertainty was there before VAR.”
Does he get frustrated by the often clumsy use of video technology? “Not really. These things should be tried and some will work. I think VAR will work in the end, even if it’s still got a way to go.”
For Tyler, the key to commentary is to “get the smell of a fixture” and “watch the game”. He adds: “That seems obvious but I mean watch the game after clearing your mind of preconceptions and see what actually happens with the flexibility and tactics employed by coaches these days. With experience you get the confidence to do that.”
Yet, as Tyler says: “Even now I’ll come away from a game and go: ‘I could have said this, why did I say that?’ Many of the best lines are conceived as you go home. That’s part of what you need – a thick skin for everybody else, but a thin skin for yourself.”
Of course, many supporters have complained bitterly that Tyler was biased against their club. “After the 2017 League Cup final,” he says, “when Manchester United beat Southampton 3-2, a broadsheet printed two social media comments saying: ‘I’ve never heard a more biased commentary in favour of Manchester United’ from a Southampton fan and ‘I’ve never heard a more biased commentary for Southampton’ from a United fan. Those two sentences summed up the difficulty.
“A Manchester City fan said to me: ‘You shouted too loudly when Jamie Mackie scored in the Agüero game.’ I said: ‘They’re trying to avoid relegation and QPR go 2-1 up with a good goal’. He went: ‘Well, you shouldn’t have done it’. But that’s a fan talking. I smiled and said: ‘Just think about what happened after that.’”
The most famous chunk of commentary in Premier League history begins simply as, with the blue shirts pouring forward in the 94th minute, Tyler says: “Manchester City are still alive here … Balotelli … Agüeroooo!” He now says: “I knew, when Agüero took a touch, he would score. I put some air in my lungs, shouted his name and kept going. It’s probably not in my nature but if I’d said something else it would have been lost in the noise. Mark Hughes told me: ‘That’s the loudest football noise I’ve ever heard’. And that’s after his career at Manchester United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and being a manager.”
Tyler looks pleased when I mention the power of his silence, after the scream, as the footage cuts away to Agüero running and twirling his shirt and Joe Hart celebrating wildly in the City goal. “This is wonderful,” Tyler enthuses. “That’s nothing to do with me. It’s the razor-sharp reflexes from a wonderful match director, Tony Mills, who made such a difference. When I worked for ITV, you’d do a midweek match and the director would have been doing Coronation Street the day before. You didn’t have that woomph. Once Sky Sports started, the people technically involved in every aspect love and understand football as much as we do. I’ll take Tony Mills cutting away to those pictures of Joe Hart with me on my dying day.”
Tyler nailed it when, after nine seconds of silence from him on commentary, he captured the incredulity and magnitude: “I swear you will never see anything like this ever again. So watch it, drink it in.”
Tyler is self-effacing and says now: “There is a lot of luck in this. The luck is being asked to do the game. Kenneth Wolstenholme got to do a home World Cup final win in 1966, Brian Moore did Anfield in 1989 [when Arsenal beat Liverpool 2-0 to win the league in added time of the last game]. My moment came with Agüero.”
There must have been a real sense of professional pride that night? “Well, we had a meal in Altrincham organised by Graeme Souness. I was one of the last to arrive and I saw they were all playing the goal. But then I realised they were listening to the goal as well. That was the moment when I got a little caught up in it.”
A couple of months later, in pre-season, Tyler recalls: “A Premier League manager came over and said: ‘Well done’. I replied: ‘It’s Man City and Agüero’s moment.’ He said: ‘No, you could have fucked it up’. I went: ‘Fair enough, I’ll accept that.’”
For Tyler the game belongs to the players. “We’ve gone far too mad about the managers. The game is about the players. I loved playing football, and being a commentator is not far behind, because you’re close. Being a coach is way behind. With playing and commentating you are controlling yourself. As a coach, you’re relying on other people.”
Tyler has worked as an assistant coach, to Alan Dowson, at five non-league clubs. His first game as a fan was in 1953 and he says: “It was Woking against Kingstonian, two clubs that I ended up coaching. Amazing, really. I’m a Woking fan and I was in my 70s when I finally got on the team photo [as assistant coach]. The players don’t smile on team photos. It’s not cool. My smile makes up for all of them not smiling. I was so chuffed.”
His coaching career began in 2005 when Dowson asked Tyler to become his assistant at Walton & Hersham. “I was amazed because my son played in a team he coached and I was the parent available for 5.30 training on a Thursday. We got on very well and, when he got the manager’s job at Walton, Alan said: ‘I need somebody to help me’. I thought he meant as media officer and I told him ‘I’ve got enough media work.’ But he explained it was as a coach.
“We’ve done 15 months at Walton & Hersham, six years at Kingstonian, four years at Hampton & Richmond, the best part of four years at Woking and 20 months at Dartford [ending five weeks ago when Dowson was sacked with the club seven points outside the National League South playoff places]”. Would he like to return to the dugout? “Yeah, why not?” Tyler says. “I haven’t spoken to Alan since yesterday, so who knows. But he’s a professional manager, so it’s his job. For me, it’s amazing to be included.”
Another hour flies past and I learn that Richie Benaud is his favourite commentator, the 1966 World Cup final was the game he would have most liked to commentate on and that, as he says with another laugh: “I just wish I’d been Marco van Basten. Playing was everything.”
It seems fitting that Tyler should finish by talking about Lionel Messi. “The person I would most like to meet is Messi. It’s distance and enchantment, isn’t it? So maybe somebody who reads this will think: ‘How do we get these two together?”
Tyler leans forward when I ask what he and Messi would talk about. “I’d ask him: ‘When did it start?’ The only player I compare him to in my mind is the Jimmy Greaves who started at Chelsea and glided across terrible pitches. I would also ask Messi: ‘What are you thinking when you’re on top of your game? What do you have to work at to make it look so easy?’ There have been a couple of Champions League nights with my commentary where he’s just pulled a hat-trick out of nothing and I run out of words.”
Tyler spreads his hands wide and smiles. In those moments of silence and awe, his love of football seems stronger than ever.
