Why have ITV put Emma Hayes in a World Cup kitchen?

Emma Hayes is the best of ITV’s pundits at this World Cup. She is surprising in a way that overexposed Roy Keane and Gary Neville can no longer be. She is tactically incisive in a way that Ian Wright is not in the US to be. She is excited in a way Lee Dixon (doing more droning than Volodymyr Zelensky over Moscow) has chosen not to be. And the other day, she upset all the right people by calling Cape Verde’s draw with Spain “a victory for immigration”.

So why on earth have ITV decided to put her in a kitchen?

Image: Cristo Foufas/ X

The conceit of the channel’s World Cup studio on the banks of the Hudson River in Manhattan is that it is a penthouse lair for soccer bros – a big dinner table where analysis can be hammered out, with Mark Pougatch making sure everyone gets their say, and a little-seen fake chill-out zone in the corner.

And then there’s the fake kitchen area – or rather a counter built upon a wooden cabinet with loads of drawers, which looks decidedly fake in Full HD. On the fake wall there’s a blackboard of the kind you see Kirstie Allsop and George Clarke installing on their home makeover shows, quickly filled with ingredients to buy from Ocado. This is the bit of the set they have made Emma Hayes stand in, and it’s not right.

The production staff have sent Hayes, a trophy machine as Chelsea women’s coach and now boss of the US national women’s team, over there to sketch out Xs and lines of movement on the blackboard. We are then shown corresponding video images of what she is talking about – in the case of England’s victory over Croatia, Hsyes was thrown to in the second half hydration break, and demonstrated how a tighter shape had allowed players receiving the ball two choices of easy short passes, as well as the more risky option of a trying to hit a runner moving into advance positions.

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This wasn’t the most surprising of revelations, but it was explained well, and both England’s second-half goals arrived in the fashion Hayes described. So why not ditch the kitchen blackboard, and just have her drawing her Xs and lines on a screen, in the manner of the late NFL commentator John Madden? Or dragging images of players around to show movement, as is familiar to anyone who watches football on Sky Sports? Or using a whiteboard with the pitch markings on it, as this astute serial winner does day-in, day-out to explain ideas to her players?

I’m sure ithe kitchen blackboard sounded great in the meetings. And yes, it fits somehow with the fake-Friends vibe that ITV have gone with.

But it’s allowed idiots threatened by an opinionated woman who knows more about football than they do to generate images of her standing in front of an oven in the ITV studio, or doing the ironing in her kitchen corner. And it’s demeaning to Emma Hayes. So stop it now.