Player ratings in BBC and ITV’s daily showdown

For more than a month now, they have brought us this World Cup in the face of frequently unenviable circumstances. But which of television’s big-name players have truly gone the extra mile on our behalf? And who still has work to do?

Wayne Rooney

So much did Rooney like the Mauricio Pochettino touchline look (navy Hugo Boss relaxed-fit overshirt with matching trousers) that he adopted it. This was endearing and modest, in keeping with much of Rooney’s work this past month, and much wiser than coming in like Ecuador’s Sebastián Beccacece and resembling a session keyboard player on a Def Leppard tour, circa 1989. Anyway, Rooney confessed that he had balked at rolling up the overshirt’s sleeves, as Pochettino does. He should back himself. He’s earned the right at this tournament. 7/10

Jon Champion

He was perhaps unnecessarily panicked by a passing helicopter during France vs Norway; like police horses, commentators ought really to have had these reactions trained out of them by the time they take to the streets. Yet, with the sharp end looming, his xg rating (expected gaffes) remains impressively low, and he is football’s most sonorous commentary voice, even though ITV don’t seem to think so. 8/10

Gabby Logan

Kelly Cates earns plaudits for wrangling those late-night storm delays, but after an exemplary month up front, it will surely be the BBC’s Logan that the nation looks to for poise and clarity when push comes to shove. 9/10

Roy Keane

We’ve seen, and welcomed, a more relaxed Keane beside the Brooklyn Bridge this summer. However, we drew the line at those shorts, which could only awaken dormant memories of Brazil 2014 when ITV went al fresco on Copacabana beach and Adrian Chiles’s considerable knees periodically filled the screen. Shorts cannot be tolerated in the punditry workplace. 3/10

Gary Neville

In a world where Fifa offer us stats on “possession control” (or, as we used to say, “possession”), there is clear need for a relentless straight talker from Bury to cut through the blather. Nevertheless, given the prevalence of Neville’s voice during the regular season, would it have destroyed you to learn that he was taking the summer off or, like Darren Fletcher, going to a place where we wouldn’t be able to hear him for a while? (Fox Sports, in Fletcher’s case.) Mixed feelings perfectly possible here. 5/10

Joe Hart

Ange Postecoglou had a crack at it with a learned meditation on “half-spaces”. But it was Hart who graduated as the Stephen Hawking of this World Cup after his dissertation on the aerial behaviour of the Adidas Trionda ball. It was the lack of spin, Hart maintained, that was deceptive – which would have been more compelling if in other tournaments goalkeepers hadn’t complained that the ball was difficult to read because it was spinning. Still, Hart had the rare achievement of saying something during a football broadcast that generates a broader ­discussion. 6/10

Thomas Hitzlsperger

Uncontroversial opinion: Thomas Hitzlsperger’s English is better than Olivier Giroud’s English. But that’s an unfair comparison, maybe because Hitzlsperger’s English is better than most English people’s English. Bad tournament for Germany, good tournament for the former Aston Villa midfielder. 7/10

Emma Hayes

Moving into the space opened up by the abominable hydration breaks, Hayes has supplied tactical analysis from a position of unarguable authority, while using traditional, analogue tools, though stopping just short of salt and pepper pots. Plus, purely by virtue of being a woman, she appears to annoy the kind of people we’re perfectly content to see annoyed. The hydration breaks won’t continue, but Hayes’s gig offers in punditry will. 8/10

Ian Wright

We have no hesitation in ranking Wright as this tournament’s most reliably entertaining screen presence, narrowly ahead of Gordon Ramsay in those Uber Eats ads. 9.5/10

Photographs by Harry How/FIFA via Getty Images; BBC