Battle of the Broadcasts: Reviewing TNT, CBS Sports' Champions League final

New York Times

4 days ago

Paris Saint-Germain's historic 5-0 thrashing of Inter in Saturday's UEFA Champions League final was a sight to behold — and to viewers either via TV or streaming on either side of the Atlantic, they were treated to quite the range of viewing experiences.
There's never a shortage of former players-turned-pundits when it comes to Champions League coverage, and this was no exception. Where networks can meet the moment on big occasions is where they can separate themselves from the pack, and it's clear that one rights holder succeeded in that regard, while the other may have played things a bit too much down the middle.
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To that end, Tim Spiers assesses TNT Sports' presentation in the UK, while Pablo Maurer takes on CBS Sports' version in the U.S. — with a focus on the 'Beckham & Friends' simulcast that accompanied the live match:
'It's the Champions League final, where Munich is the backdrop and either Inter Milan or PSG will be crowned the best team in Europe.'
And so begins TNT Sports' coverage (on Discovery+) of the final, anchored by the safe, warm hands of Laura Woods.
There are two hours of build-up on the way, so what have TNT got in store for us? Must be something good. Big name guests? Special features? Searing, in-depth analysis? Well, no, not exactly.
For starters, what they do have is a lot of people (11 hosts and/or pundits) and a lot of talking.
First up, Woods is joined by Rio Ferdinand, appearing on TNT for the final time ('one last dance for Rio,' as Woods puts it) dressed in full suit with a white shirt and tie. Flying under the radar as usual.
Next to him in the centre circle is Steven Gerrard, who has gone for a tie-less suit in a look that screams 'uncle at 10pm on the wedding party dance floor'. Within four minutes, Gerrard is talking about the miracle of Istanbul.
'We're all excited and can't wait for the kick off,' Gerrard then says, in a typically dour, stunted tone that suggests he's being held at gunpoint and forced to read a script.
To be fair to Gerrard, saying you're excited is the theme for the show.
He, Ferdinand and Karen Carney either say they can't wait, or they're excited, or that this game is the pinnacle, on six occasions combined in the opening 10 minutes. Later, Ally McCoist teases us by stating he 'cannot tell us' how excited he is.
Carney is pitchside with host Reshmin Chowdhury and Owen Hargreaves. There's more pinnacle chat and more talk of what it's like to win the Champions League.
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Then it's time for the star turns of TNT's coverage; Julien Laurens and (The Athletic's own) James Horncastle, and their exceptional knowledge and relaxed delivery provide the perfectly cooked meat on the thin TNT bones.
Laurens hosts a segment in which he talks of how much winning the Champions League would mean to Paris, how children will play football on the streets after the match and how the sport is ingrained in the city. Sprinkled with mini PSG interviews, it's good content.
Pitchside, with Gerrard and Ferdinand, boyhood PSG fan Laurens will show that you can have an allegiance to a team and not have to come across as a fanboy, or one-eyed, or biased (to be fair his giddy post-match chat will address the balance of this somewhat).
In Milan, Horncastle is essentially interviewed by Hargreaves in an earlier recorded segment, speaking of Inter's history from the 1960s, Jose Mourinho's treble and of Inter's determination to right the wrongs of 2023.
Aside from this, TNT's build up is just very, well, meh. The three presenters (Jules Breach being the third) are excellent, but in terms of previewing a match, there are no delving into histories or narratives, no proper interviews, no special features, no big names and nothing especially funny, just the predictable dressing room banter around Carney having tipped Inter to win it all year, or Ferdinand being unable to pronounce Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
What there is, is a lot of basic chat. About how loud the fans are going to be, about PSG being an unstoppable force and Inter an immovable object. And then two minutes of Linkin Park. Shame.
One thing TNT isn't short of is opinions. Even the commentator, Darren 'Fletch' Fletcher will readily chime in with his thoughts and judgments. And anyone who watched the closing stages of Manchester United's incredible victory over Lyon in the Europa League will attest to how biased he, Ferdinand and Robbie Savage were towards United, in commentary that even MUTV would have cringed at.
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It's actually a good thing for the bulk of TNT's match coverage and analysis here that there is no English team involved; no bias at all and everyone involved has had to do some research to fill the five hours of coverage. During the commentary, cringe moments are kept to a minimum, other than Ferdinand's in-joke about 'Fletch' eating lots of profiteroles in Paris.
McCoist is his usual wide-eyed, engaging, cheery and very listenable self, eulogising over PSG's masterclass. The bombastic Ferdinand certainly isn't to everyone's tastes, and while there are a couple of lines that people will have taken straight to social media to regurgitate ('do you know what, I just got chills' and 'privilege to be here, guys') he mostly gets the tone right here, lambasting Inter's creaking defence and praising PSG to the hilt, in particular Desire Doue.
At half-time, Gerrard, Carney and Hargreaves identify Inter's problems.
'Show (Federico) Dimarco where the shower is,' Gerrard says, harshly but fairly. 'They've got to change tactics and personnel. Get it wide and cross the ball, it's the only success they've had.'
'They've got to get tighter to Vitinha,' Carney adds.
'Inter need to start winning second balls,' Hargreaves concludes.
Simone Inzaghi isn't tuning in. He changes very little and things only get worse.
'As a young coach or player watching that, that's the go-to game,' Gerrard says. 'All over the pitch, in possession, out of possession, that's the perfect performance.'
Gerrard has a knack for summing up a team or a player. He's passionate, concise and knowledgeable. He also has an unfortunate habit of contradicting himself, like here when he says of winners PSG: 'They are littered with superstars all over the pitch, they've got four or five players that would walk into most teams in Europe.'
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Just three hours earlier, before kick-off, it was a different story: '(PSG said) let's become a team, let's work hard for each other, there's no ego here, no superstars.'
Hmm. Anyway, there's a lot to say in five hours, these things happen.
Meanwhile, McCoist has got his calendar out: 'Fifty-third minute, 22nd of January in Paris, that's when it turned for me; 2-0 down they were, Haaland scored, and in the remaining half-hour they've scored four goals. They have not looked back since those four goals.'
It's a suitably praiseworthy post-match show, which includes a nice on-pitch interview with Vitinha ('it's our dream, it's my dream, it's everyone's dream') and, very late in the piece, former PSG midfielder Jay-Jay Okocha joins the panel.
Disappointingly, there is barely a word to be said on PSG's spending throughout the whole five-hour show, no mention of them being the third-highest spenders in the world in the last three seasons, nothing about them being a Qatari state-owned club. It's part of the story, but it wasn't told here.
What was told though, poignantly, was the unfathomable tragedy of Luis Enrique's daughter Xana, who died in 2019 aged just nine. Woods sensitively brings the subject up on three occasions, once before the match and twice after.
'It is absolutely heartbreaking,' she says after PSG's beautiful tifo tribute has been unfurled. 'He (Luis Enrique) has one of the most incredible attitudes, when you hear him speak about his daughter and how special she was to him.
'One of the things he said which really choked me up is; 'I'm grateful for the time I did have with her'.
'For any parent watching who has children, or perhaps who has lost children, what a heartbreaking but heartwarming moment.'
Woods is clearly emotional herself at this point. It's the most human moment of the evening, delivered impeccably and tactfully.
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It's a real shame TNT's coverage lacks so much depth and heart elsewhere.
It's just all very safe. You wouldn't call it innovative or groundbreaking, there are no boundaries being pushed, it's not particularly deeply informative for the tactical geeks, it's not especially entertaining or fun for the casual football viewer, it's not even controversial for the social media clicks and views.
Perhaps it's just a personal opinion, perhaps the comments section below will be full of people praising TNT's magnificent coverage — and they did put on a decent show here. They got nothing wrong. They just didn't — Woods, Horncastle and Laurens aside — deliver anything to marvel at.
Sky Sports undoubtedly do football better. So do Amazon. Considering the expense of subscribing to TNT (£30.99 per month), viewers deserve more.
It feels fair to say, at this point, that CBS has pumped more resources into covering European soccer than any other network has in the history of American television. CBS is, at this point, the gold standard in the U.S. in terms of talent and production, and the network had that on full display for the Champions League final.
The network's first-choice lineup — Kate Scott, Thierry Henry, Micah Richards and Jamie Carragher — headed up the on-site coverage. With that group, CBS has successfully done what many other broadcasters in the U.S. have tried and failed to do: emulate the vibe and energy of 'Inside the NBA,' TNT's wildly successful basketball studio show.
The network shipped Henry off to Italy to film a video feature with Inter striker Marcus Thuram, and the famously affable Henry got a great interview out of it, pushing Thuram to open up about the pressure he feels following in the footsteps of his father, legendary French footballer Lilian Thuram. CBS's entire pregame experience had the 'big game' feel required for a Champions League final.
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Scott tapped out towards the end of the pregame broadcast, though, and headed for a suite above one of the endlines for the network's alternate broadcast: 'Beckham & Friends Live.'
For these purposes, we are focusing on the watchalong and not CBS's primary offering; that booth was manned by Clive Tyldesley and Rob Green. Altcasts, as they've become known, are almost always a mixed bag, and 'Beckham & Friends Live' certainly wasn't any different. CBS stuck David Beckham alongside one of the only people who might approach or surpass Beckham's fame, American actor Tom Cruise. The duo had some compelling moments, but for the most part it was an odd fit.
Cruise is a certifiable global megacelebrity, but many Americans have complicated feelings about him. He has, over the years, morphed from an easily-digestible, unquestionably talented actor into a polarizing figure. His association with Scientology and his dismissal of psychiatry and childhood vaccinations have understandably pushed many viewers away.
Cruise, too, has always felt a little … synthetic, and that certainly came across during Saturday's broadcast. His response to Linkin Park, who put on a pregame performance, was to say, 'I love live music,' the sort of analysis that feels a little unhuman. His response to PSG's opening goal was to simply say the word 'wow,' in monotone, four times. Asked if he had any predictions or whether he was favoring either team, Cruise simply said he admired all the athletes out there. Much of what he said felt like it had been generated by AI.
The Top Gun star is also on a global publicity blitz for Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. There are certainly people out there who still watch his movies — that film, the eighth in the series, earned some $70million on its opening weekend. Listening to Cruise talk about his latest film for 10 minutes, though, was likely not something anybody watching a Champions League broadcast signed up for. In some ways, the broadcast likely would've been served better by an A-lister who has a bit more of a football background.
Beckham was a breath of fresh air compared to his foil, and he and Cruise were joined by Henry midway through the first half, a very welcome change of pace. Beckham, a Champions League-winner in his own right, certainly added value during the pregame and opening moments by describing his own emotions before the 1998-99 final. Henry and Scott were also both typically superb, even managing to extract some decent moments out of Cruise. CBS eventually brought Richards and Carragher into the suite to do a little fanboying.
CBS certainly didn't bring Cruise in to analyse anything about the match, and it's good they didn't, because he added little value to the experience, at first confusing Inter and AC Milan and later acting utterly, completely confused at the mere idea of a short corner. Admittedly, his total lack of footballing knowledge was borderline endearing at times, and Cruise was never afraid to ask a dumb question — not really a bad quality at all.
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There were others who passed through: Tom Brady, along with PSG fan and NFL wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who confessed to having grown up playing as Henry on FIFA. Juventus legend and CBS analyst Alessandro Del Piero joined briefly as well.
Watching Scott alongside Richards, Henry and Carragher can sometimes feel like watching her herd cats, which is not always a bad thing given their overall energy. Her presence alongside Beckham and Cruise had a similar vibe — without her input, the entire experience might've devolved into watching two very famous, very well-groomed stars talk about how much they like each other.
Scott's only misstep was actually a hilarious one: after the group was joined by Brady, she congratulated him on his success with Wrexham. Brady, of course, is part-owner at recently-promoted Birmingham City, not Wrexham, which is owned by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. It's an easy enough mistake to make.
In the end, Beckham's sideshow wasn't bad, it just lacked a few compelling personalities. Beckham is certainly watchable, and as a former PSG player and Champions League winner has obvious gravitas, but paired with Brady and Cruise — two very dry and very polished figures — it at times fell flat. The bulk of the show's entertainment value, ironically, came from the personalities that CBS employs full-time: Scott and her crew.
That muscle was on display in the post-game, where the network was typically nimble. Another of CBS's regular analysts — Anita Nneka Jones — tapped in for Scott while she transitioned from the box to a pitchside role and carried the show seamlessly.
Along with the trophy lift, the broadcast brought us multilingual interviews with PSG captain Marquinhos and star winger Ousmane Dembele, both central figures in the game, along with English-language chats with French coaching great Arsene Wenger, PSG midfielder Vitinha and PSG president and architect Nasser Al-Khelaifi. It was an impressive haul.
Ousmane Dembélé pulls up to UCL Today fresh off winning the Champions League and shares a moment with Thierry Henry 🇫🇷🥹 pic.twitter.com/mIoH3Uhy2X
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) May 31, 2025
'It's an explosion of emotions.' 🥹
PSG captain Marquinhos soaks it all in after winning the UCL, shows love to Luis Enrique and even has jokes for @MicahRichards 😭 pic.twitter.com/oCnYnK5QRE
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) May 31, 2025
'The real work starts today.'
PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi reflects on what winning the Champions League means for French football and how much it took to get here 🇫🇷👏 pic.twitter.com/MIzRogdlnu
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) May 31, 2025
(We were also treated to Henry getting approached by an overzealous, pitch-invading PSG fan and kindly telling him they were live on air and he had to go.)
It certainly speaks to CBS's current place in the soccer landscape in America that they can pull names like Cruise, Beckham Jr. and Brady at all, and the ability to transition from less-serious to access-driven analysis on a dime speaks to the crew's versatility and range. Their everyday coverage of the game at home and abroad remains elite, a far cry from the phoned-in broadcasts that American soccer fans were force-fed for years.