“When Rupert Murdoch decided to pump billions into the Premier League, it did not go ahead until I gave it the thumbs up,” says Geoff Shreeves.
“When Rupert Murdoch decided to pump billions into the Premier League, it did not go ahead until I gave it the thumbs up,” says Geoff Shreeves.
You may remember him merely as Sky Sports’ touchline reporter but apparently he was also a fearsome power broker. “That is the truth… The detail is I was the floor manager for the first live televised game, Forest vs Liverpool in August 1992, and I cued the referee to kick off.”
30 years ago today, as a rookie floor manager, was the start of the most incredible, exciting, privileged journey. I know how incredibly lucky I have been thanks to @SkySportsPL and countless individuals in all that time. Cheers, Geoff. pic.twitter.com/hz5zUgNaex
— Geoff Shreeves (@GeoffShreeves) August 15, 2022
It is some claim to fame and in a rare category for Shreeves, best known for things people said to him rather than his own words and deeds. He speaks to me from across the Atlantic in Stamford, Connecticut, about an hour’s drive from Midtown Manhattan and the offices of his new employer CBS.
Shreeves left Sky after 32 years in the summer of 2023 and is taking to American life enthusiastically. He has adopted the New York Giants as his NFL team and already been tailgating (a pre-game gathering of fans) in the parking lots of MetLife stadium, which will host next summer’s World Cup final. He has also fulfilled a lifelong dream of attending an event at Madison Square Garden. “Of course you hope it’s going to be the heavyweight championship of the world. I went to see professional bull-riding.”
But it was football and Sky Sports which made Shreeves’ name, so it may come as a surprise to learn he fears the sport is reaching saturation point. “There is so much football on television, they’re going to kill it. That might sound quite hypocritical, somebody who earns their money from talking about football but the reason that gold is precious is because there ain’t too much of it.
“My argument isn’t with TV really, it’s the football calendar itself. There’s too many matches with expanded competitions, World Cup, Club World Cup, I don’t think in life in general more is necessarily better.”
These days you will see Shreeves in a variety of roles across CBS’ football coverage, plenty of which is consumed in the UK via YouTube and social media accounts. The company reminds him of his early days at Sky, where he worked largely behind the scenes until assuming his familiar pitchside position in 1999.
His first job was as an estate agent. “People are quite often sniffy about it, but the reason I was a good estate agent is I’m a good listener. If you listen carefully you do a much better job when you speak. I see countless interviews where the person has got a clipboard and the next question lined up. They’re not listening.”
Sky and the Premier League, he says, felt different from day one, even if it might have looked to us like Division One with cheerleaders. Not everybody was keen. “People were outraged, they said we were ruining football. We needed to get the players onside because the public were still suspicious.”
So Shreeves used every encounter with a player or manager to enhance his and his channel’s amenability and trustworthiness. “Probably the best example was getting Steve Bruce onside.”
Manchester United knew they could win their first title for 26 years without kicking a ball in 1993 if Aston Villa failed to beat Oldham at home. Shreeves knew that Bruce lived close to several team-mates, including Peter Schmeichel and Paul Parker. They would likely be watching the Villa game together at chez Bruce, so Shreeves asked the United captain if Sky could send a camera on the night. He promised not to transmit any live pictures, just to “get a few shots” if it was the night when United won the league.
“Bruce said ‘No Fergie [Sir Alex Ferguson] will go mad.’ I said ‘He won’t know! Unless you are the champions we will not show a single shot.’ ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but be discreet’.
“The phone goes on the Sunday,” and here Shreeves adopts a higher-pitched Wearside accent “‘Shreevesy! Shreevesy! My driveway looks like f------ Jodrell Bank. Technicians, lorries, people, wires, Fergie will go f------ mad!’
“I said ‘He’ll never find out’.
“‘He will, he finds out everything!’”
Did he? “He didn’t care by then, they’d won the league. You don’t get that unless people trust you.”
Ferguson certainly seemed to, often capping Shreeves’ interviews with two words: “Well done”. “I didn’t like it,” says Shreeves. “I thought ‘why is he saying that, is it a bit patronising?’ Then somebody said to me ‘what he’s actually saying is ‘you’ve asked decent questions and haven’t tried to make your name off the back of me. You’ve challenged me but you’ve been respectful.’ It was a verbal handshake.
“I had a great relationship with Fergie, he would give fabulous interviews, brilliant soundbites. Equally you could fall out with him, which I did on a couple of occasions spectacularly. One nearly turned physical. That doesn’t make him a bad interviewee, because he’ll give you gold dust as well.”
Sir Alex Ferguson shoulder barges Geoff Shreeves. pic.twitter.com/0SyBiQBMMf
— Sky Sports Retro (@SkySportsRetro) November 2, 2022
There is an art to the post-match interview, when managers arrive somewhere between euphoric and furious, with insufficient time to moderate their emotions. Shreeves would assess body language as his subjects approached to inform his line of enquiry. He compares it to a bowler sizing up a batsman and choosing the right delivery.
“I’ll tell you who is a difficult interviewee and it is not about the person, it’s for a technical reason, Mikel Arteta. He has very little inflexion in his voice, so you can’t tell when a sentence is coming to an end.”
Another difficult interview came after Chelsea reached the Champions League final in 2012 and Shreeves asked questions to Branislav Ivanovic, the club’s right-back. During the semi-final against Barcelona, shortly before Lionel Messi hit the bar from a penalty, Ivanovic was booked for scuffing up the spot. This was missed by the cameras but would cost Ivanovic a spot in the final.
Branislav Ivanovic is BACK in the Premier League after signing for West Brom 📝
— Soccer AM (@SoccerAM) September 15, 2020
Which could mean his reuniting with Geoff Shreeves 😂 This moment still breaks our hearts 💔 pic.twitter.com/3hUhW8sGVU
Shreeves had no idea if he had been booked, so had to ask live on air. Ivanovic had not been reminded before the game that he was on a yellow, as Roberto Di Matteo did not want it to affect his players’ performances. “There’s a very technical television phrase that explains the circumstances surrounding it and the resultant broadcast. It’s what we call a s---show.
“If I say to him, ‘Brilliant, you were fabulous, are you looking forward to the final?’ He would say ‘what are you talking about you prat, I just got booked’. Or I say ‘you’ve been booked, you’re not playing in the final he would say ‘What are you talking about? I wasn’t booked.’
“I could have been a bit more subtle, but there was no problem at all in the moment. It was only when I was walking back to the hotel I realised there was an issue, after Lee Westwood sent a tweet saying ‘Geoff Shreeves has just told me I’ve never won a major.’ I’m now the person who’s shot Bambi’s mum.”
Ivanovic, thankfully, did not hold a grudge, and few of Shreeves’ interviewees ever did. “When there’s an interview which looks a bit frosty or there’s a bit of a glare, virtually every single one ended with a handshake.
“Countless times we were invited into the office for a glass of wine, Fergie would invite us in, Luca Vialli, Roberto Mancini was a great host. At City the Gallagher brothers would come in, Mike Summerbee. How can you not enjoy those days? To nick a line, sometimes I’d look around the room and I was the only person I didn’t recognise.”
There is no bitterness about how his time at Sky ended. “Are you joking? They were brilliant for me, they were the best years of my life, easy.” He left around the same time as Jeff Stelling and Martin Tyler, thankfully avoiding any part in the sexist leaked videos which did for Richard Keys and Andy Gray in 2011. “If you look back at what was acceptable to say and do, and I’m not saying that anything was acceptable, but societies change. Words and expressions you can use change.”
"Cheers Geoff!" 👏 pic.twitter.com/K2LOu3srRd
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) July 4, 2023
He is full of praise for Patrick Davison, his successor as pitchside reporter, and I notice during our conversation that Shreeves often still refers to Sky as “we”. Has he kept all of his old Sky-branded coats? “My family used to look forward to whenever the new one came, they would line up to have the old one. When we were together at Christmas we used to go on a dog walk to the pub and you could see us in the coats from the different seasons. There were some lovely waxed Barbours, tartan-lined but a very discreet Sky logo.
“The early ones, between your shoulders, there was this great big Sky logo. There were a few people who didn’t like Sky very much so you were literally walking around with a target on your back.”
Let’s hope CBS, which has a similarly target-like logo of an eye in a circle, is providing more low-key outerwear. Although it sounds like Shreeves is now ready for some of the focus to fall on him.
Category: General Sports
