Righteous bother
World Cup , Issue 1678 THE World Cup has seen repeated studs-up tackles by the Daily Mail on the BBC’s director of sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, or as the paper’s headline called him in a full-page denunciation on 13 June, “The insufferably woke boss who lost the World Cup for the BBC”. (Spoiler alert: he didn’t, with more than half of the tournament’s games being broadcast live on the corporation’s TV channels.)

The BBC’s UK-based broadcasting was, however, derided as “underwhelming”, “unglamorous” and “far from glitzy” – a far cry from past World Cups, which traditionally see the Mail attacking the broadcaster for using licence-fee cash to send large numbers of staff to the host country.

Kay pop
The worst criticism was, however, retained for Kay-Jelski himself, who was apparently “known for being soul-sappingly righteous” and, according to unimpressed colleagues, making “bonkers and quite unbelievable” claims and “talking rubbish”.

Which seems somewhat harsh on a man who learned his trade at the... Daily Mail, where Kay-Jelski spent eight years working his way up from sub-editor all the way to sports editor.

Ghost of Gary
When Kay-Jelski negotiated the initial departure from the BBC of the paper’s other bête noire, Gary Lineker, in November 2024, the Mail frothed that he had been “described by former colleagues as a ‘no-nonsense kind of guy’” and enthused: “What a coup for him.”

But you’re only as good as your latest result, and when Lineker appeared (briefly) on rival ITV’s coverage on 20 June, the Mail on Sunday devoted another full page to sneering how this “adds salt to the wound... as the Beeb’s coverage of the tournament is being lambasted not just by viewers and the football world, but by its own staff... Had he not been given his marching orders by the BBC, he would now be stuck in Salford hosting the tournament from a barren studio.”

Where Lineker also wasn’t was anywhere near the game being played between Germany and Ivory Coast that night – that was going on in Toronto, meaning the BBC’s Salford crew could have got there on a direct flight from Manchester in eight hours, the same time it would take ITV’s pundits to drive there from their Brooklyn base.

And Lineker didn’t hang around for the actual game either, only popping in to ITV to bag some headlines and plug his own rival coverage on Netflix!