“We’re off to Fratton Park where there’s been a red card. But for who, Chris Kamara?”
Unless you discovered football in the last month, perhaps as a result of the halcyon days of giant inflatable World Cups and Chesney Hawkes, you know exactly what comes next. Jeff Stelling, the indefatigable host of Soccer Saturday throws it over to Chris Kamara. The permed reporter looks disconsolately into the camera lens. His next words pass almost immediately into immortality. “I don’t know Jeff. Has there?”
Kamara spins round, head on a swivel, looking for a replay that won’t come. You’re at a live game, Kammy. They won’t show it again. “I must have missed that!” he replies to Stelling, as the Sky Sports studio breaks out into uproarious laughter. Matt Le Tissier is in tears, a position he would later return to when someone told him to get the Covid vaccine. Jeff explains the red card that happened at a game he’s not been watching, to the man who has been watching it. Paul Merson is rolling about laughing. Chaos. They don’t make football television like this any more.
They don’t make broadcasters like Kamara any more either, more’s the pity. ‘Kammy’ as he is known by his adoring public sadly departed Sky Sports at the close of the 2021-22 season. For 24 years fans had enjoyed, and repeated, his iconic “Unbelievable Jeff!” catchphrase. In many ways, Stelling and Kamara were football’s Morecambe and Wise. To watch them back now is a reminder of a simpler, less vicious time.
Kamara’s ilk have been replaced by the professional outrage merchants. Less easy banter with the host, more “He can’t be doing that, for me”. In bitter, post-pandemic Britain, anger sells in a way kind-hearted humour never could. But Kamara worked as a presenter because he was genuine. While you feel some pundits harvest the attention that a smouldering hot take on a player will bring them, ‘Kammy’ was never that calculating.
He turned up and reacted to football with the same wide-eyed wonder we all did when we first watched the beautiful game. It might be a rainy 3pm kick-off in League One between the 16th and 23rd placed sides. It might be 0-0 with one shot on target to show for 80 minutes of inaction. But Kamara would deliver his report with such enthusiasm, you’d think the game had been torn from the pages of Roy of the Rovers.
@chris_kammy | @JeffStelling
Like most who find themselves paid to talk about football, Kamara had once played the game with distinction. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not use his time at the likes of Brentford, Leeds United and Luton Town as a pedestal from which to rain thunder. His 773 professional appearances informed his journalism, rather than defined it.
Kamara’s good-natured humour and easily-imitable voice saw him transcend the sport. Even those who consciously avoid football would have encountered him somewhere over the last two decades. 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Tipping Point, Emmerdale, Cash In The Attic, Ted Lasso, Loose Women. At this point it would almost be quicker to list the British television programmes not to have featured Chris Kamara.
But when we picture the great man, Soccer Saturday is what we think of. ‘Kammy’ in his big coat, a lower-league football ground providing the backdrop as he reels off the hits. Stelling giving him the perfect set-ups for his material to store. Football reportage with a smile. It’s a dying art and Kamara was one of its masters.
It is a tragic irony that a man who became a national icon for his voice now suffers with speech apraxia. The condition affects the speech pathways between the brain and mouth, leaving sufferers sometimes unable to construct sentences. Kamara has brought awareness to the disease and has remained in the public eye as he fights it. Chris hosts a podcast with Ben Shepherd called Proper Football, while the same partnership also fronts Ninja Warrior UK.
For a generation of football fans, Kamara is an inextricable part of their upbringing. A man who turned an on-the-job mistake into a cultural moment simply by being an utterly lovely bloke. A man who turned two words, “Unbelievable Jeff”, into the widely-accepted vernacular for football enthusiasm. A giant of a footballer. A giant of a broadcaster. A giant of a man. Unbelievable.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject To Change
