John Walker Motson was an English football commentator who was BBC’s voice of football for almost 40 years, covering more than 1,000 matches, including nine World Cups, nine European finals and 29 consecutive major cup finals throughout his career. Motson's career began as a newspaper reporter in Chipping Barnet and the Sheffield Morning Telegraph where he first covered football in the 1960s. In 1971 after he had participated in a local radio experiment for the BBC covering football, tennis and... moreJohn Walker Motson was an English football commentator who was BBC’s voice of football for almost 40 years, covering more than 1,000 matches, including nine World Cups, nine European finals and 29 consecutive major cup finals throughout his career. Motson's career began as a newspaper reporter in Chipping Barnet and the Sheffield Morning Telegraph where he first covered football in the 1960s. In 1971 after he had participated in a local radio experiment for the BBC covering football, tennis and boxing he was offered a year’s trial on Match of the Day by Sam Leitch who ran BBC Sport. His big breakthrough came in 1972 when he was assigned to cover an FA Cup replay between Hereford United and Newcastle United for Match of the Day. His commentary on Ronnie Radford's equalizing goal is what led to him to sign a three year contract with BBC. Motson was regularly voted the nation’s favorite commentator and he became the voice of every major final on the BBC up until 2008. He was a commentator for the FIFA video games series by EA Sports and retired from live commentary in 2018 with his final game for Match of the Day was Crystal Palace v West Bromwich Albion.
