CBS Sports owned the conversation on a night of Champions League controversy

As the scope and significance of the Champions League match between Benfica and Real Madrid became clear on Tuesday evening, the two men in charge of CBS Sports’ coverage made a decision.

Pete Radovich, the coordinating producer of the broadcaster’s UCL Today show, and line producer Matt Curtis decided the post-match section should run longer than its usual slot of around an hour, extending it a further 30 minutes to end shortly after 6.30pm ET.

The call was made because Thierry Henry, Micah Richards and Jamie Carragher, the show’s pundits, had lucid thoughts and raw feelings they needed to share. They were speaking in the aftermath of the Madrid forward Vinicius Jr’s allegation that he had been racially abused by Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni. The Argentine subsequently denied this, and was defended by his club, but the matter is now the subject of a UEFA investigation.

In these moments, as the world’s gaze fixes on the Champions League, CBS increasingly dominates the global conversation. Across Tuesday and Wednesday night, clips from UCL Today combined for over 20 million views across platforms, but also set the tenor of the debate across the English-speaking world.

It is, in many ways, a curious phenomenon. It is only available to viewers in the United States (via the CBS Sports Network and the Paramount+ streaming platform) and, in truth, it is not the most convenient slot in the week for many Americans.

As Champions League games take place in the European evenings, it translates to various times in the afternoon in the U.S. depending on one’s location within the country. Many people are still in their workplace, others are commuting by the time matches end at around 5pm ET, but it is a good time for children returning home from school, especially on the east coast. The precise numbers of people who actually watch the matches are not often disclosed, a common trait across streaming platforms.

Yet while this is a show made for a U.S. audience, in many ways modelled on Inside the NBA, its reach and influence are much broader. That, in itself, is a strange and remarkable thing, because any match action itself is geoblocked, meaning CBS Sports cannot share its match analysis on social media outside of the United States.

Yet this show’s unique blend of hi-jinks, sincere friendship and agenda-setting discussion means that the action is not a required ingredient for global virality.

UCL Today, it should be said, is not always to everyone’s taste. One viewer’s ‘fun’ may be another’s roll of the eyes, and it is true that some of the show’s most-viewed content on YouTube includes a guest appearance by IShowSpeed and a compilation of schoolboy giggles about the club from the French city of Brest who played in the Champions League last season.

But it is perhaps because the show is so often light-hearted that it then becomes appointment viewing when the most serious matters come into play.

The sudden solemnity that gripped the four protagonists — Henry, Richards, Carragher and host Kate Scott — on Tuesday evening was striking, with much of the post-game show reserved for news, reaction and discussion from the game in Lisbon.

CBS Sports demonstrated the importance of investing in a product, because the post-match position taken up by pitchside reporter Guillem Balague illuminated the tensions between Benfica and Madrid after the final whistle.

From his station near the locker rooms, viewers could see scuffles breaking out between rival club employees, with Benfica’s president Rui Costa somewhere in the thick of it. Balague gamely requested an interview every time Costa passed by, albeit unrequited, and wondered whether UEFA would rather all this wasn’t being filmed.

Broadcasters are not always so challenging when these events occur. At times, they see themselves less as information platforms and more as partners, or even advertisers, of the product they have acquired.

This was how it felt when DAZN broadcast the FIFA Club World Cup last summer and supplied little immediate analysis or scrutiny after Real Madrid’s Antonio Rudiger alleged he was racially abused in a game against Pachuca of Mexico (that case was ultimately dropped due to a lack of evidence). Yet that has never been the approach on UCL Today. Memorably, during the Champions League final in 2022, the CBS studio team, led by Scott and Carragher, challenged the UEFA narrative by revealing the mistreatment endured by Liverpool fans who were attempting to attend the match against Madrid at the Stade de France in Paris.

A word on this occasion, too, for Clive Tyldesley, the experienced 71-year-old British commentator. Both he and co-commentator Rob Green handled the event with calm authority. They did not rush to make judgments. They used an old trick: simply saying what they could see.

“You can see what Vinicius Jr wants to happen here,” Tyldesley said as the Brazilian exited the pitch following the incident with Prestianni. “He wants everybody off the field because if he has been racially abused, this takes this moment to a whole different level.”

By contrast, former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg issued a statement to apologize on Wednesday after saying on Amazon Prime’s UK coverage that Vinicius had “not helped himself”.

“I got it wrong, I’m sorry,” Clattenburg wrote. “It was live TV, my job is to respond in the moment, and the words I used were clumsy and not right.”

Tyldesley instead pointed out that Prestianni had been smiling, but warned that it would be the “content” of what was said from behind the shirt collar the Benfica player had used to cover his mouth that would define the moment. “Somewhere in the midst of his celebrations, something has been said to him (Vinicius) that has raised his temperature beyond boiling point,” he added.

Opinion was largely deferred to those in the CBS studio.

Henry, usually a beacon of cool, appeared highly affected, transported back to past traumas from his own playing career at teams including Arsenal, Barcelona and the French national team.

Both he and Richards, as former Black professional footballers, knew the script. They empathized with the isolation that grips those who have encountered abuse. They also knew that the intricacies of the moment — most specifically that Prestianni had covered his mouth — may complicate any investigation. They knew some form of victim-blaming would ensue.

“I can relate to what Vinicius Jr is going through,” said Henry. “I’ve been there, I feel so sorry for the guy. That happened to me so many times on the field. I’ve been also accused of looking for excuses after games when that happened to me. At times, you feel lonely, because it’s going to be your word against his word… You feel like you don’t know what to do anymore.”

Richards veered between anger and an air of resignation. “The one that gets me is, like, ‘Oh, they’re playing the race card again?’ What do you mean, playing the race card? It’s so difficult to talk about and articulate how you feel to someone who does not believe or feel what you feel at the time.”

He continued: “Prestianni is a coward… No one will ever know what he said, only him and Vinicius Jr. But to pull your shirt over your mouth and now we’re having a conversation about, ‘Did it happen?'”

In this instance, Carragher’s strength was his self-awareness. He recognized the power of saying less when his Black colleagues could say so much more. Henry and Richards had the lived experience and were best placed to take center-stage.

Carragher came into his own on the following day’s show, reflecting on his own experience as a player at Liverpool when that club rallied in support of his Uruguayan team-mate Luis Suarez after Manchester United’s Patrice Evra had accused the forward of racially abusing him. Carragher apologized to Evra for Liverpool’s behaviour years later while presenting for UK broadcaster Sky Sports, acknowledging that Liverpool had got things “completely wrong”.

He also intervened on Tuesday night after Benfica head coach Jose Mourinho appeared to suggest that Vinicius Jr., in some way, invites trouble by expressively celebrating his goals.

“Anybody can celebrate how they like and you should not get racially abused for it,” Carragher said. “The Mourinho stuff… this is a guy who celebrates and antagonises the opposition more than any coach has ever done… It’s a bit rich coming from him. Vinicius is entitled to celebrate how he likes.”

By this point, Richards appeared deflated: “I’m just disappointed with the whole thing. Mourinho is someone I absolutely love as a coach… I expect better from him, because he is a powerful person within the sport and a lot of people listen to what he says. I just feel a little bit let down.”

Amid high tensions, Scott chaired proceedings with trademark skill, cutting between what was being said in the London studio and the stadium in Lisbon. She also provided live, second-by-second translations into English for the viewers of highly newsworthy interviews by Mourinho and Vinicius Jr’s French team-mate Kylian Mbappe. With sensitivities spiking, the potential for legal difficulties in any misrepresentation of those post-game interviews, and all the pressures of live television, Scott’s performance cannot be underestimated.

On Wednesday, in the cold light of day, Scott opened the show with a monologue which, by midnight ET, had recorded almost 1.5 million views on Twitter and Instagram alone.

“Jose Mourinho is an iconic figure in world football,” Scott said. “Yesterday, he switched the focus from what had actually been said to whether there was provocation for it. He essentially told us that Vinicius Jr was asking for it. That is a damaging narrative from a man who is considered a leading figure in the global game.

“Investigation and due process will have to occur, but whatever the results, we hope that football becomes a better platform, where hatred is met with more than nominal fines and partial stadium closures, where diversity is truly celebrated not just tolerated.

“The racial diversity on a football pitch in the Champions League is the representation of the global love for this game, and the global belonging in this game. This is the very spirit of football. And if you don’t agree, then respectfully, you are the one who doesn’t belong.”

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