An hour or so – or it may have been two hours or 12 hours or seven minutes – into the brain-clogging fug of sound and light and sullen football legend applause (a thing about football legends: they don’t really like clapping other people) that was the The Best Fifa Awards 2022, Jermaine Jenas made a mistake.
You had to watch carefully to catch it. And it should be said Jenas did pretty well overall in his role as co-host, alongside the agreeably brusque Samantha Johnson. True, Jenas did insist on calling Gianni Infantino “Mr President” and “President Infantino”, coming on like a lovelorn Marilyn Monroe in a chiffon gown under aggressively paranoid surveillance by the CIA. But he was genial and slick and essentially always the same substance, an unwavering stream of homogenised Jenas, the TV presenting equivalent of supermarket brioche.
