Football coverage no longer stops after the final whistle. And in this new era, the former Liverpool defender reigns supreme
Jamie Carragher’s legs were aching. He had been speaking to a Sky Sports cameraman for 25 minutes. Usually for a news interview it’s just 10, but today called for something more. Reports were coming out that Trent Alexander-Arnold, who inherited Carragher’s mantle as the local mainstay of Liverpool’s defence, was about to announce his long-expected departure from his boyhood club, and so, as sure as day follows night, a camera crew had been hastily dispatched to Carragher’s whereabouts to find a quiet spot, hit record and get his opinions out to viewers before they’d had a chance to fully form their own.
How much was there to say about a subject that had already been talked about all season long? Quite a lot, it turned out. Like a hunter-gatherer extracting a week’s worth of food from a seemingly arid wilderness, Carragher – occasionally prompted by a Sky Sports anchor in the studio – launched into nearly half an hour of pure, free-flowing, agenda-setting football opinionating. From this monologue, Sky would carve out a TV report, YouTube interview, news article and three short-form videos. When Carragher says something – about Alexander-Arnold’s future, Arsenal’s attack, Chelsea’s owners or Fifa’s executives – we tend to hear about it very shortly after.
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