ESPN's Gabriele Marcotti produced a fantastic moment of punditry on Friday's hour-long edition of ESPN FC, as he shot down suggestions that Manchester City players did not show the required amount of emotion after their losses to mid-table sides this season.
Having sat in the blazing sun for the best part of 40 minutes by that stage, a visibly agitated Marcotti opted not to merely dismiss the claim but to also have a dig at pundits 'usually ex-England players' in the media who harped on about body language on numerous occasions last season.
At one point it was as if Match Of The Day had dedicated a weekly segment for Phil Neville or Alan Shearer to express their disgust at players hugging in the tunnel, so Marcotti's mini-rant raised an interesting point regarding assumptions made as to how much footballers care.
This is where you get into the whole body language debate, and like, pundits, usually ex-England players, sitting there and like, you know, guessing what these people are thinking, and 'why don't they care about the shirt?'
I don't get involved in that. I'll leave that to you guys, I don't..
This idea that we, from afar, start arguing that these players don't care enough, or they're not motivated enough?
Come on now.
The man has a point. And, by the way, it must have been bloody difficult to keep calm in those conditions, it was an hour long show in the middle of the day in the US summer!
Dan Thomas bore the brunt of Marcotti's frustration as he had raised the issue initially, and it would have been a tough hour for the ESPN host after he was thrown a few death stares by Mauricio Pochettino for asking why he rested big players in Europe last season.
I end the Pochettino interview by thanking him for not punching me in the face. ESPNews 6pm ET.
— Dan Thomas (@DanThomasESPN) July 20, 2017
Still, it made for a very entertaining episode of the show as the ESPN crew set up shop beside Tottenham Hotspur's training base and thus had access to Pochettino as well as the likes of Hugo Lloris, and Jan Vertonghen, and you can catch more highlights over on ESPNFC.us.
