The World Cup commentators on CCTV1, CCTV5 and 上海体育台 (CCTV fraudulently claim to be "独家" unless they actually own 上海体育台) all offer lots of insights, analysis and tidbits, even more so, dare I say, than the (I think) British commentator on the satellite South African channel that all the bars here in Shanghai use. On the other hand, there are those who argue that commentators should not detract from the game with factoids and etc. They have a point, but I still think some on-the-fly discussion and analysis at the right level adds depth to the audience's understanding, as long as it doesn't detract too long from the ongoing action.

In today's match between Italy and Australia, the CCTV5 commentator went berserk. A literally last minute minute penalty kick by Totti brought victory to the Italians, who would otherwise have continued to be overstretched with one man short in overtime and would perhaps have been spared the fate of losing to the Australians during penalty kick.

An amazing finale, to which the the CCTV commentator (Huang Jian Xiang) started SCREAMING himself hoarse - on the top of his lungs, his voice painfully overwhelming and attenuated through the TV speakers:

"It was an undisputed penalty!* Grosso made it! He made it! Don’t give Australia any chance! Great Italian left defender. Grosso alone represents the long and deep tradition of Italian soccer. He is not fighting alone.

Totti! He is about to take the shot. He shoulders the expectations of the whole world.

It’s a goal! Game over! … Italy didn’t fall to Hiddink’s team this time. Happy birthday to Paolo Maldini! Long live Italy!"

*widely considered a pretty dubious penalty kick...
I'm OK with commentators siding with teams. In fact, it adds some excitement, but this was definitely over-the-top. At the end of the day, he was not commentating for an Italian audience, where it would probably be forgivable. But, I missed what he said after this and also during the post-game link-up, where he had a tirade against the Australian team:

"Go home! But they don't need to fly back to Australia which is too far away. Most of them live in Europe. Bye-bye.

...Australia reminded me of a lousy team which eliminated China in the World Cup qualifiers in 1981. Australia is just like New Zealand team that beat us in 1981.

It (Australia) is full of naturalized Australians who play and live in Britain. I don't care about the Australian team and don't want to see Australia have good results in the World Cup.

Australia (which has joined the Asian Football Confederation) now will fight for an Asian World Cup berth and it may not be good enough to handle South Korea and Japan. But it will very likely take advantage of the Chinese team. So I don't like it."

Now that type of biased comment is definitely unforgivable and what you could lose your job over. At least this commentator apologised.

UPDATE: As you can see above, I decided to replace my loose translation of what I remember with what was actually said. You can find articles reporting his pro-Italian outpour here and here.