Football commentator Darren Fletcher: I'm not the most confident person with words

Like most commentators Darren Fletcher has his rituals. He re-watches every game he works on, ideally before bed on the same night. That is his intention for Saturday when he covers his eighth Champions League final, despite a 10pm kick-off in Istanbul.

There is another tradition before European Cup finals. “I spent a lot of time as a kid with my granddad, he was the person that always took me to football” he says. Grandfather Horace, who died nearly 20 years ago, never missed a broadcast when Fletcher was in his radio days. “When I was starting off doing the job that I did, he was the proudest man, anywhere.

“On Champions League final day, I always go to the commentary position a little bit earlier than everybody else and just sit and have 10 minutes with him.” Here his voice catches and he seems as if he could cry.

We meet in an expansive gastropub outside Nottingham where Fletcher knows the owner and the menu. It is the sort of place which does a high-end ham egg and chips (Fletcher) as well as a spinach and butternut squash gnocchi (Gibbs, I panicked.)

He speaks with the precision you would expect of BT Sport’s main voice since its launch a decade ago, and a remarkable ability to restart exactly where he left off when interrupted. Yet he does not rate himself in one important area. “I’m not the most confident person in that regard. I’ve not got a great command of the English language, I’m quite a normal comprehensive kid.

“If I could improve myself, it would be that. But I don’t think I have that skillset.”

Despite that or possibly because of it he finds a way to nail football’s biggest moments. There have been plenty during his and BT Sport’s time covering the Champions League. Liverpool’s comeback against Barcelona, Spurs at Ajax, Chelsea’s run to the final in 2021. Fletcher was there for all of them and his commentary has an unpretentious edge over peers who can seem more contrived.

Consider his treatment of Lucas Moura’s winner for Spurs in Amsterdam in 2019, a moment which did not require any adornment. (Click on the video below to play the commentary.)

“Here’s Dele Alli, here’s Lucas Moura,” then shifting into a higher register he has never reached since “oh they’ve done it! I cannot believe it! Lucas Moura with the last kick of the game. The Ajax players collapse to the ground. Tottenham Hotspur are heading to the Champions League final.”

“I just didn’t anticipate that happening at all,” he says. “But if I could go back and do it again I wouldn’t do it like that.” What would he do differently? “Probably use better words. Probably be better.”

“That had been a really emotional year for us because of what happened with Glenn,” he says, referring to Hoddle who had a heart attack at the BT Sport studio earlier in that season. “Glenn was with us that night in Amsterdam  and subconsciously, I must have realised how important it was for him when the goal went in. I had Jermaine Jenas next to me who’s Tottenham, his emotion was raw, he was in tears. And I was just shouting like a madman.”

Few changes are expected in the short term when BT Sport rebrands to TNT next month and Fletcher has only praise for his colleagues Steve McManaman (“One of my best mates, an absolute joy”), Lucy Ward (“A revelation this year. She’s been superb.”) and Robbie Savage with whom he formed a double-act on 606 and the Soccer AM rival Fletch and Sav. “Anyone who’s been around me and him has always been on the verge of an argument with one of us.”

His job has brought him close to garlanded players, useful for son Luca who is 14 and on the books of Nottingham Forest. He was struggling to learn a skill his coach had named after Frank Lampard, so Fletcher introduced them at a game and Lampard showed him how to perfect it in the carpark.

More recently Luca wanted to improve his heading and Fletcher senior was able to ask Rio Ferdinand. “He said ‘when I played with Vidic this is what he did. He never thought about the opposition. He used to get his starting position right and then he only saw the ball.’

“Luca tried it and he’s hardly missed a header in his own box and scored three goals in five games.”

It sounds like spectacular parenting, something Fletcher feels was improved by his own father’s absence. He left his family when Fletcher was five and Fletcher speaks about his feelings with candour. “It made me angry as a teenager. It probably robs you of a bit of your self-security, makes you a little bit more vulnerable. I think it made me a better father and a more loyal person. But I think it gives me a harder exterior. It makes it more difficult to get in with me.

“When someone like that hurts you in that way the door comes down. But there’s people in the world that are in worse situations than me, and that pillock not being around.“

That is hard-won perspective which informs his outlook. He tells me repeatedly he does not need compliments from other people, but it should be noted that he is a man at the top of his game.