“Euro 2024, we’re going to experience it together on TF1, here we go!“. Grégoire Margotton commented, this Friday June 14, 2024 in Munich, on the opening match of Euro 2024, Germany/Scotland, won without difficulty by the host country. With Bixente Lizarazu, the journalist will once again take his place in the cabin this Sunday June 16 in Gelesenkirchen, for Serbia/England, and especially this Monday June 17 for the entry of Didier Deschamps’ Blues into the competition in Düsseldorf Kylian Mbappé and his teammates will face Austria.
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“I never bend the match to my will and I try to adapt to what passes before my eyes”
“I will leave Paris for Germany with a notebook in which I will have prepared what I call the sheets of all the matches“, anticipated Grégoire Margotton, during our meeting at TF1 on April 8. “What I generally do is that I prepare the sheets for the first three matches two to three weeks in advance then I update them with the latest information the day before, the same day, at 1 hour before the match“, he confided.
“However, a Euro is easier to prepare for than a World Cup. When you have to comment on Qatar/Ecuador (opening match of the 2022 World Cup, editor’s note) or Russia/Saudi Arabia (first poster of the 2018 World Cup, editor’s note), then you have to work“, he assured. “In these cases, I prepare and brief Bixente. I don’t count on him to be the Qatar specialist“, he smiled about his on-air partner since 2016. “I’m not either but I try to be at least for one match“.
This meticulous work of preparing matches contrasts with the spontaneity of live action. “The only thing I write in a match is my starting board, the first 30 words. ‘Hello everyone, welcome, we’re here and we’re going to see a great match’… For the rest, I don’t write anything. This is clear, sometimes it comes out well, sometimes less well“, he analyzes. “It’s impossible for a commentator to prepare short sentences. On the contrary, I never bend the match to my will and I try to adapt to what is happening before my eyes“.
“Commenting remains something that women still see as a distant island reserved for men”
A discipline that Alexandre Araujo, winner of “Au micro”, will perhaps endeavor to respect. Like the participants in this competition, launched this season by Canal+ to find the football commentator of tomorrow, the TF1 team around the matches is made up almost 100% of men. He was until the withdrawal of Youri Djorkaeff, replaced at short notice by Sabrina Delannoy in the second team of commentators.
Grégoire Margotton sees at least two main reasons for this under-representation of women in match commentary: “This can be explained by the reluctance of channel bosses and by the glass ceiling that women still place in this exercise.“, he believes. “Women feel completely legitimate to talk about sport and football in particular. But the comment remains something a woman still sees as a distant island reserved for men“.
Optimistic, Grégoire Margotton is convinced that this configuration will evolve. “Candice Rolland is a pioneer in sports commentary on the L’Équipe channel. I tell myself that if there is one Candice Rolland, there will be two in two years, ten in ten years. And I also tell myself that, although I will commentate for a few more years, the person who will succeed me at TF1 will be a woman. I hope so“, concluded Grégoire Margotton, to whom he “don’t miss anything at all“to be fulfilled if not athletics, his”heart sport“.”Yes, I miss no longer commenting on athletics (he commented on the discipline for ten years on Canal+, editor’s note), especially with the Paris Olympic Games approaching, but that’s how it is, we can’t do everything to have“.
