It is not the brightest moment for any commentator or analyst when one pronounces a player’s name wrong on live television, especially in a generation like ours.
Every little moment of embarrassment is slammed and scrutinized over and over again on social media – exactly what happened to Joe Cole when he pronounced Arsenal fullback Kieran Tierney’s name wrong while on coverage duty of Arsenal’s Premier League outing against Burnley at Turf Moor yesterday.
The ex-West Ham, Chelsea and Liverpool player was analysing the Premier League outing on BT Sport, when he mispronounced Tierney’s surname in very comical fashion.
Following the same trajectory when he called La Masia ‘The Masala‘ a few days ago, Cole butchered the Scotsman’s name on live television. The pronunciation was termed as shambolic by the football fraternity on social media and is not a moment that Cole will fondly look back at.
Arsenal drew the match at Turf Moor from a winning situation, much to the disappointment of both their head coach Mikel Arteta and their loyal set of supporters.
An early strike from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was cancelled out by an expensive individual mistake from Granit Xhaka – who slammed the ball into Chris Wood while trying to clear the ball off the face of his own goal, and the ball ricocheted off Wood into the goal to make the score level.
Arsenal had a penalty appeal denied late in the game as the match ended in a 1-1 draw – as Xhaka’s moment of madness got itself a contender from Cole for the most embarrassing moment of the day.
Hearing Joe Cole's pronunciation of Keiran Tierney's surname, just made me want to revisit this gem of Ashley Cole trying to pronounce Europa League club names…pic.twitter.com/RuEcDS5UzY
Before digital TV and YouTube, people would just have to trust that Joe Cole pronounced Tierney in that delightful way. Someone maybe could have gone to an unheated archive to hunt out the tape and Baddiel might have spun it a few times. Now we can just rewatch it all day
