Humphrey responds after Neville slams BT Sport Champions League final coverage

Gary Neville criticised BT Sport for their coverage of Saturday’s Champions League final and lack of live reporting amid the chaos outside of the stadium, prompting presenter Jake Humphrey to respond

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Champions League final: Tear gas used following match

Chief BT Sport presenter Jake Humphrey has responded to Gary Neville ‘s criticism of their Champions League final coverage.

The Manchester United legend, who works for rival network Sky Sports, hit out at the broadcaster for not having a reporter live on the scene as Liverpool fans were tear-gassed, stranded in queues for hours and attacked by riot police prior to their side’s deflating 1-0 loss to Real Madrid.

Amid the match being delayed three times due to issues with fake tickets – at least according to UEFA ‘s second statement after initially blaming “the late arrival of fans” – Neville quoted a tweet which read: “Surprised BT Sport don’t have a team on standby outside of stadium, getting little to no sense of the major story from the broadcaster.” The ex- England international then remarked: “Are you surprised? I’m not. They can’t react or aren’t agile to things like this happening.”

Humphrey, who anchored BT’s five-hour show, took to his LinkedIn page to share his team’s side of the story in response to Neville. “Possibly one of the hardest sports events I’ve ever covered. And I’ve done some tricky ones,” the former face of Formula 1 on the BBC wrote to more than 50,000 followers.

“We had limited information about what was going on outside, my talkback (the umbilical cord to my production team) suddenly stopped working, the TV compound was impacted by the tear gas so our production team were barricaded in their trucks. And many of us had friends and family at the game and we had no idea if they were even safe.

“And amongst all that we were trying our best to get the tone right, under the scrutiny that seems exclusive to live football. Hopefully you wouldn’t have known too much about all that, the BT Sport production team are up there with the very best I have ever worked with.”

Have your say! Did Real Madrid deserve to win the Champions League? Let us know your verdict in the comments section.

Neville continued to slam the lack of coverage by retweeting and liking a plethora of scathing posts. “Fair to say BT Sport and their lightweight team are totally unsuited to covering an event like this still chatting football 5 Live covering what is happening properly,” was one shared by the Sky pundit on his Twitter account.

Another tweet which he appeared to endorse read: “You’d have thought BT have enough cameras to send someone outside and film the carnage to inform viewers. Prattling on with pundits and waiting for an opening ceremony is reminiscent of the tone-deaf TV coverage in build-up to Euro 2020 final amid chaos outside.”