SEPP Blatter has finally acknowledged that extra monitoring is needed to regulate what comes out of football commentators mouths.
Key incidents during Euro 2012, such as every single thing that Adrian Chiles has said, have convinced the lunch-friendly FIFA president to examine methods of measuring whether opinions have crossed the line of idiocy.
Software developers have generated algorithms that detect key speech patterns consistent with commentator bollockery, such as the rising inflection whenever Ronaldo or Rooney kicks the ball in the general direction of the goal or a balding ex-player’s use of the word top more than twice in a row.
Pundits who talk shite will be penalised in the same way as players. Testing the system on old matches, it has been calculated that while Gary Neville might have been the subject of the occasional caution, Clive Tyldesley would not have completed a full 90 minutes since 1998 and Jamie Redknapp would have been banned for life three games into his punditry career.
Blatter said: It seems ridiculous in this day and age that we cant eliminate the pissy sarcasm of Mark Lawrenson or the numbskulled jingoism of Ian Wright from the game.
By the next European championships I want it made compulsory that every broadcaster has an official in their studio overseeing all the pre and postmatch analysis and they will be given authority to send anyone guilty of egregious horseshit off to Channel 5.
Blatter added: My vision for the beautiful game is to see an ex-geography teacher in black shorts blasting a whistle into the face of Lee Dixon and cautioning him for the repeated misuse of the word literally.
