33 years ago, James Richardson went from an unknown TV producer to one of the most beloved presenters in English football almost overnight.
Born in Bristol, England, Richardson wasn’t initially drawn to football and instead attended a rugby-focused school. Similar to others like Guy Branston and Gareth Southgate, Richardson grew up in an era where England was considered the ‘sick cousin of Europe’, with its club teams banned from taking part in UEFA competition after the 1985 Heysel Disaster, as well as its national team struggling to make an impact on the biggest stage. It’s why, when he did eventually take up football as a passion, he started following Serie A instead of the First Division. After buying a satellite dish in 1989, Richardson began keenly following the Italian top-flight, and he also became enamored with a number of Italian stadiums during the 1990 FIFA World Cup.
Shortly after, Richardson started dating a girl from Rome, convincing him to not only start learning Italian (eventually becoming fluent) but also to start supporting Roma, a passion that has remained to this day. This, combined with his brief experience in TV production, convinced Channel 4 to hire him as a producer alongside English football icon Paul Gascoigne, following him from England to Rome after he made the move to Lazio in 1992. But whilst he initially looked set to play a backseat role, Richardson was forced to step into the driver’s seat when Gascoigne regularly missed recordings, seamlessly stepping into the void and emerging as the voice and face of Italian football for millions of English viewers with his work on Gazzetta Football Italia and La Partita e Mezzanotte.
“I still meet people who used to watch the Italian football show Gazzetta on UK TV station Channel 4 back in the 90s, and they have such nice things to say about it, and how much they enjoyed watching that show, and I’m pretty happy with these things,” Richardson tells WFi. “Even if it all stops tomorrow, that was really nice to be fortunate enough to work on a show that made a lot of people happy on a Saturday morning. They used to look forward to watching it, and I’m really touched when they tell me that. I feel really lucky to be involved in something like that. If people remember me as a nice guy that they enjoyed hearing from, then that would be terrific.”
After a decade in Italy, Richardson returned to London, where he has remained ever since. He worked on Eurosport’s live coverage of Serie A before anchoring Bravo TV’s Football Italia Live as well as the reboot of Gazzetta Football Italia, but his Football Italia journey came to an end in December 2006.
Nevertheless, Richardson was able to adapt to a heightened focus on the Premier League and world football, co-presenting Setanta Sports’ The Friday Football Show and Football Matters shows with Rebecca Lowe between 2007 and 2009 before presenting the BBC’s Late Kick Off for the South West region, followed by a stint with ESPN.
He then joined BT Sport (now TNT Sports) in 2013, where he hosted live Serie A matches and UEFA Champions League coverage, as well as the Fantasy Premier League Show by Premier League Productions. However, his main 9/5 gig isn’t in TV presenting, but in podcast presenting with the Totally Football Show.
“I started podcasting in 2006, and for the next 5-10 years, if I told anybody what I did, I would then have to explain what a podcast was most of the time. I work on the Totally Football Show podcast, and the majority of what we’re doing is talking about the Premier League, so in that case, it’s natural for me to get completely caught up in those stories as well. I’ve really enjoyed the Premier League. I enjoy watching, when I do, whether it’s LaLiga or Bundesliga. Football is football, and if you enjoy watching that sport and if you enjoy football stories, then it doesn’t really matter what country they’re coming from.
“I love Italian food, but I love Japanese food as well. I love the J-League. I don’t think you can not like the Premier League, because it’s so exciting to watch in terms of the skill level of the players and the teams is unparalleled anywhere in the world, but also the way that it’s presented on television, I think it’s been so far out in front for so long that it’s great. And I live in London, so I get caught up very naturally.”
Whether it’s discussing the latest in the Premier League, analyzing the reasons for D.C. United’s slide, or eyeing up the recent transfers in the Bundesliga, or previewing the upcoming Scudetto showdown, James Richardson is capable of delving into just about every single football league. And one league that he shares a burning passion for is Japan’s J-League.
“I’m kind of obsessed with Japan, and so when I’m over there, I like to go and see games, and it’s fun, because it’s just football, but in Japan, but the atmosphere’s also amazing. Every stadium will have a hardcore section, and sometimes there’ll be flags, sometimes there’ll be chants…the J-League fans are incredible. 90 minutes of non-stop noise, an entire end of the stadium with drums, with these incredible banners going round and round. And Japan’s such a formalized society, by many other countries’ standards, that to see that level of free public expression is really, really refreshing. The football’s not always the greatest; I went to see Urawa Red Diamonds play in Northern Tokyo just before the Club World Cup, and thought, ‘Wow, these people are going to be at the Club World Cup with some of the greatest clubs in the world, and it didn’t work out too well for them there, as we know.”
“The football’s not always the top standard, but one thing I think that’s really interesting about J-League, and Japanese football in general, is the way that they have created something where, organically, it wasn’t there in the early 90s, and it’s become, along with South Korea, the dominant Asian league. In terms of the national team, it’s just extraordinary…they literally sat down and went, ‘We’re gonna win a World Cup in 100 years, and based on their performances in the last few World Cups, they’re way ahead of schedule. So I think it’s really interesting the way that they have approached things, and in classic Japanese fashion, and are making an extraordinarily successful job of it.”
As he approaches 60 years of age, James Richardson has done just about everything there is to do in sports presenting, from darts to sumo to cycling to more niche competitions like The World’s Strongest Man and The Great Model Railway Challenge. However, one sport that he hasn’t yet managed to break into is the NFL, even though American football provided him the breakthrough into the sports industry.
“There’s now a professional American football league in Europe now under the NFL’s umbrella, but going way back in the 1980s, when Channel 4 first became our fourth channel in England, they showed NFL on a Sunday night, and I got obsessively into it. They started playing it all over; there were a lot of amateur teams all over England and across Europe. The team that I followed, a local team called the London Ravens, who were always winning all the time, they even beat American Air Force base teams…they were that good. They were in this amateur European Championship called the Euro Bowl, and my first job in TV was doing live commentary on Channel 4 on the final of that tournament, which, sadly, the London Ravens weren’t in, but it was the Amsterdam Crusaders against the Helsinki Roosters. That’s how I got my start in TV.”
