England’s World Cup campaign has been hit by a fresh injury scare just days before their final Group L match against Panama this weekend. Declan Rice and Reece James will both be assessed, compounding concerns over the squad’s fitness as the knockout stage approaches.
The news arrives at a moment when English football’s relationship with the wider world has never been more open – a transformation embodied by James Richardson, the presenter who became the game’s great translator. Now 60, Richardson first rose to fame at 26 on Channel 4’s Gazzetta Football Italia, a show that ran for a decade from 1992 and was described by the Evening Standard in 1996 as one of the cult TV shows of the era, alongside The X-Files and My So-Called Life.
“Declan Rice and Reece James face fitness tests before England's final World Cup group game against Panama this weekend.”
Richardson, who has since worked for BT, ESPN and the BBC, hosting coverage of cycling, sumo wrestling, model-railway building and – for over 16 years – World’s Strongest Man, was dubbed “a balding Rome-settled schmoozer… living the Nineties café dream”. Rio Ferdinand later called him “quite cool” and “quirky”.
But the show’s origins lay in a darker moment for English football. “For so long there had been embarrassment and even shame about English football,” Richardson told the New Statesman, referring to hooliganism, stadium disasters and stodgy tactics. That changed in 1990, when the World Cup was held in Italy. Watching the BBC’s opening titles with Pavarotti singing Puccini’s “Nessun dorma”, Richardson thought it was “madness”. Then he succumbed. “It was a food you thought you never enjoyed,” he said. “Someone cooks it for you in a different way…”
England reached the semi-finals in style, then were knocked out on penalties. “Heartbreak which couldn’t have been more English. They were glorious failures. It cemented their place in our hearts,” Richardson recalled. Salman Rushdie said football “got to us as never before”.
Gazzetta was intended as a sequel to that tournament. While Sky was obsessing over the Premier League, Channel 4 picked up the rights to Serie A, bringing Italian football to a mainstream British audience. “It was a no-brainer, really,” Richardson said. The show began with footage of on-pitch skills set to a rapped “campionato di calcio Italiano” and a commentator crying “golazzo”. Richardson would then introduce highlights, run through stories from Italy’s specialist press and look ahead to the match he would present the following afternoon. He went CD shopping with the Parma team, induced Juventus winger Attilio Lombardo to dance the lambada and received visits from Elvis Costello and Bryan Adams.
Now, with England facing Panama in their final group game, the fitness of Rice and James will be critical. Whether the side can replicate the glorious failures of 1990 – or go one better – remains to be seen.