Welcome everybody to Soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and this week we are talking about a program that is near and dear to many British hearts, maybe a few over here as well. Less popular over here would be match of the day. Graham Ruffin, how do you feel about the lack of match of the day on American shores? It does feel like a very much missed opportunity from a lot of different angles. See, it was, hello, by the way, first of all, but it was shown on NBC or something, right, for a number of years. It did have some sort of American exposure, am I right in thinking? You are. I think they started off with that, and everybody was very hyped about that. I remember when Premier League coverage moved to NBC Sports and there was this enthusiasm for like, now we're finally going to get it. I remember Darrell being really excited to have the kind of highlights package at the end of the night where you could watch highlights, but you could watch analysis. I think that has kind of gone by the wayside, largely because I think it requires a lot of effort and a lot more maybe work from Rebecca Lowe and the studio team because because it doesn't seem like NBC wants to expand.

Pass that one.

We can talk about the future of Match of the Day, your favorite iterations and all that good

stuff, Graham.

But first, let's just talk about the program itself, because that's what we're here to discuss.

Match of the Day, what is it?

How long has it been going for?

So it is apparently the show that has the most recognizable theme tune in sports broadcasting

according to, exactly.

To a 2010 poll, Match of the Day came out on top.

I would have thought it would have been the TSS theme tune, personally.

Second, I think, on the list, yeah.

Two were Skyheads out there, I think.

Itch does out.

Match of Day's song is not about baking bread in the bakery. Shockingly. Although maybe, there's no words. Maybe that is the gist of that show. You've never heard the lyrics to it? Yeah, it's actually about, it is. It's about a cupcakeery, I think, is what they're focused on on that one. Yeah, but in terms of the show itself, match of the day is the weekly highlights package for the Premier League in England, primarily, also shown in the rest of the UK.

But, of course, it is Premier League football that it shows, doesn't show Scottish football or Welsh football or anything like that.

And that show name, Match of the Day, is used for other things. So when the BBC have a live FFE

Cup game or an England game or whatever, if it's a, like if it's a Euros or World Cup game,

the BBC will use the Match of the Day name for that for their broadcast. But when people

talk about Match the Day like we are today, they're almost always talking about the BBC show on a Saturday evening, which shows

shows all the Premier League highlights from that day.

And match to the day has been on the air since 1964.

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