Sky Sports Football
First broadcast on 20 August 1994, the programme currently airs on Sky Showcase, Sky Sports Premier League and Sky Sports Football at 10.30am on Saturdays during the football season. As of 2010, it airs on a short broadcast delay in order to edit bad language and/or inappropriate content from guests.
Sky Sports Football
Its best-known presenters were Helen Chamberlain, who presented the show for 22 years, and Tim Lovejoy, who hosted from 1996 to 2007. As of 2019, its current presenters are John Fendley and ex-footballer Jimmy Bullard.
The challenge involves the fans attempting to kick a football through a number of holes within the sixty second time limit. The challenge has been renamed almost every season, along with the props and background music for the feature. The other studio guests all have the opportunity to attempt to score as well. Its various guises through the years include:
Shocker Saturday is a segment parodying Sky Sports News' Soccer Saturday, featuring Fendley playing the part of Jeff Stelling. The studio guests, standing in front of a green-screen in the studio, pretend to be match reporters. During his time co-presenting the show, Lloyd Griffith played a character named "Glen Stefani", an obvious reference to American singer-songwriter Gwen Stefani. Fendley and the "reporters" all typically link into humorous clips of various footballing antics, in addition to some non-football clips.
Sky Spoof News was a segment featuring Lloyd Griffith playing a Sky Sports News presenter named "Glen Stefani", typically alongside one of the actual presenters from the channel. The segment typically features blunders from presenters and journalists, as well as entertaining football clips. On occasion, Griffith also presented from other events such as the PDC World Darts Championship.
A nutmeg is the term applied when a player plays the ball between his opponent's legs and regains control of the ball after going round him. Another ever-present feature of the show, the weekly edition of "The Nutmeg Files" shows a clip from the previous week's football matches of a player being nutmegged, while the "nutmegger" is superimposed shouting "NUTS!", "Caňo!" (Brazil/Portugal), "Tunnel" (Italy) and "Petit Pont" (France), depending on which country the "nutmegger" is from. This feature is (very loosely) based on The Rockford Files.
Third Eye has been a feature of the show from its outset, and involves viewers sending in often-comical mishaps from the television (generally football matches) that may well have been missed by the majority of the viewing audience. These typically involve people falling over or being caught doing something stupid.
The feature Taxi!, accompanied by the theme tune of the US sitcom, consists of yet more clips from the previous week's live football. The clips chosen are typically embarrassing displays of showboating gone wrong. The embarrassed player's name is then suffixed to the voice-over phrase "TAXI FOR...". Concluding with the quote "Taxi is filmed in front of a live stadium audience."
Team Mates is the section at the end of the show where a player from a football team is interviewed about their teammates, being asked questions such as which teammate is the best trainer or has the worst dress sense.
The Crossbar Challenge is a feature that involves a weekly trip to the training ground of a British league football team. The entire squad, including willing coaching staff and managers, are filmed, one-by-one, introducing themselves and attempting to hit the crossbar of the goal from the halfway line. The feat is rarely accomplished - the majority of squads fail to hit the bar once. However, a successful strike generally provokes manic celebrations by the kicker and his teammates. The original background music is the instrumental "Seventeen Years" by Ratatat but this was changed to "Smiling" by The Beta Band.
A famous footballer is asked to name his three favourite goals throughout his career so far, and the choices are played (in reverse order) at various stages throughout the show. Notable appearances have included Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, David Beckham, and Ryan Giggs. Ruud van Nistelrooy in this section was only asked to pick his top three favourite goals for Manchester United. The song used during the older version of 'My Favourite Goal' is "Strange and Beautiful (I'll Put a Spell on You)" by Aqualung.
This sketch involves crew member Trev, dressing up in a builders outfit, sitting in a café and reading the newspaper (presumably tabloid) and giving us his account of recent events in football and footballers all over the world, in a parody of James Richardson from Football Italia. This is a skit on the typical lazy English builder, having lunch in a café. Our Man In A Caff ends with Trev signing out with 'Over an Out' plus an added sign off from somebody or from somewhere.
This weekly sketch involves two crew members playing the part of Ant and Dec in Australia as if presenting the ITV show I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, who introduce football clips from Australia's A-League, typically featuring former Premier League star Robbie Fowler, accompanied by a parody Australian commentary. While the football clip is playing, a guest attempts a "bushtucker trial" trying to find a star in "Georgie Thompson's box", a cardboard box with a picture of said Sky Sports News presenter on the front and shown to contain some form of unpleasant creature, a task at which the guest always fails. The end of the sketch generally sees "Ant" hit in the eyes by some kind of object or substance and shouting "I'm blind, Dec!", a reference to a scene from the teenage drama Byker Grove in which the real-life Ant and Dec first found fame.
The You Know The Drill challenge was introduced in 2015. It is also a pre-recorded section that involves a weekly trip to some training grounds and stadiums. Jimmy Bullard presents this part with willing coaching staff and managers to provide the demonstration to the ball shooting techniques before he challenges every members of a football team for a goal scoring battle. The end of the segment importantly, is the decision for the winner of this challenge, alongside a catchphrase of Bullard saying "Football's always the winner!".
When Tubes was unable to conduct an interview, Fenners would be on a set to have a chat with the biggest names in football, such as Pep Guardiola, Craig Shakespeare, Arsène Wenger, Marcus Rashford and José Mourinho.
Borne out of the link between professional footballers and golf, "The Ten-Yard Bucket Challenge" sees a professional footballer attempting to chip a golf ball into a bucket from a distance of ten yards. The football-golf link exists due mainly to the amount of free time footballers are allowed in the daytime after training sessions, and Soccer AM's homage to golf involves a single personality from the world of football who attempts the challenge. One notable attempt was from Ryan Taylor, then of Tranmere Rovers, who was not featuring in the challenge that week, but was accompanying teammate Jason McAteer. While cameras happened to be rolling, he had a go and accomplished the feat in a single attempt. Many overconfident amateurs have been known to run tallies of well over a hundred attempts. The background music to the challenge is "Ladyflash" by The Go! Team.
This was normally done - in the style of British gameshow Play Your Cards Right - by the presenters cutting oversized cards onto large holders, and turning them over one at a time to generate football matches. This process was overseen by an independent adjudicator from the Football League Stuart Trigwell, known to Soccer AM as 'face', ridiculing a column in the Daily Mail referring to him as the 'Face of The Football League'.
Abdo joined the network in 2005, translating stories from Spanish and German into English. As she rose up the ladder, she became a sports anchor for the programme - a post which she held until 2009 before joining CNN International.
Kate covered the iconic Transfer Deadline Day with zeal during its peak before being loaned out to Fox Sports in 2015. She has since gone on to interview the biggest names in football, including Pep Guardiola and Clarence Seedorf.
The successful afternoon of sports broadcasting also featured the octtish Premiership match between St Johnstone and Celtic, the Vitality Blast Finals day at Edgbaston and coverage of the Indian Premier League, as well as golf coverage across the European Tour, PGA Tour and the LPGA Tour.
Pressure is growing on the government, and in particular the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden, to reverse their decision to scrap fan pilot events as clubs and sports face financial ruin. 041b061a72