Michael McCann is quickly becoming the voice of women’s football, impressing fans with his informative and insightful commentary.

Often heard on Women’s Super League, Liga F and Champions League matches across both the FA Player and DAZN, McCann also has professional experience commentating on other women’s sport, including cricket, hockey and tennis, and as a commentator, voiceover artist and presenter on men’s sport too.

He sat down with GiveMeSport Women to discuss his career so far, the importance of ensuring his commentary accurately reflects the women’s football community, and inclusivity in sport.

McCann became interested in commentary from a young age, joking that he felt bad for those watching sport with him at the time. He would sit close to the TV due to poor eyesight, embarking on his own stream of dialogue.

“They’d just mainly see the back of my head, and have to listen to me just wittering on,” he laughed.

McCann watched both men and women’s sport as he grew up, noticing quickly that it was much harder to follow the latter due to a lack of media attention.

He decided he wanted to be “a tiny part of changing things”, and worked across both men and women’s football as he started his career in sports media.

While there was initially little opportunity to commentate on women’s football matches, this changed when the FA Player was introduced in 2019. McCann was tipped for a role, and the rest is history.

He has now commentated professionally on more than 100 women’s games, with his words often used on BBC's Football Focus over the past year.

“It’s been a hell of a lot of fun so far,” he said. “I hope there are a lot more chapters left to write, and I’m just very grateful to all the people who've given me the opportunities.”

McCann’s work has become extremely popular on social media, and he actively seeks to engage with women’s football fans to ensure his commentary accurately reflects what’s being discussed in the community. This ranges from the light-hearted to the more serious.

“To me, any commentary is about getting under the skin of who's playing, who they're playing for,” he explained. “And then on a wider level, that club or player’s fan base.

“But I think in women's football, that’s even more important. It’s a growing space, and you’ve got a responsibility to highlight things going on around what’s changing, and needs to change.

“It’s important to try and reflect the wider women's football community and current discussion points.

“Things like research into ACLs, the move away from white shorts, discussions around menstruation and endometriosis, player mistreatment scandals and positive examples of LGBTQ+ visibility.”

Michael McCann commentating on cricket at the Oval

McCann argued that commentators have a responsibility to use their platform for good, while also finding the balance between catering for women’s football newbies and those who are watching their 1000th match.

“You can't just cater to one of those markets. You've got to try and sort of do both.

“So that means that occasionally at some points, you might explain something that a regular viewer might be like, ‘well, I already know that’. But you have to, because that new viewer needs to be brought with you.

“Whilst at the same time, hopefully, across the 90 minutes you've dug out enough nice little news lines and bits on a player that the regular viewer didn't already know, rather than the basics.”

McCann is often praised for his efforts to pronounce players’ names correctly, particularly those not from England.

“Let’s say one of the written journalists missed out a name, or did a match report and they misspelt every non English player's name,” he said.

“And they just lazily said ‘well, you know who I'm talking about, you can sort of see from the name, you can guess’. People would rightly be up in arms.

“To me, we need to have the same energy and attitude on commentary. You'd write the name as it’s spelt, and the same applies to pronunciation. So, for me, it's a core part of the job. It's really important. It's respecting culture, heritage and history.”

A recent example of McCann’s dedication to the correct pronunciation of players’ names involves Frida Leonhardsen Maanum, the Norwegian midfielder who is currently having a brilliant season with Arsenal.

After revealing on the Their Pitch podcast that she wanted to be known by both surnames – Leonhardsen Maanum – and that even the only one currently used – Maanum – was often mispronounced, McCann made an effort to ensure he was saying the player’s name correctly while commentating.

Arsenal fans have now devised and started using a new chant that includes the correct use of both surnames, while other commentators have picked up on the accurate pronunciation.

“It's pretty mad to think that all that can come from just a person saying a name into a microphone, but it was great to see something like that, which will hopefully start a largely positive conversation,” McCann said.

“To me, I honestly consider it nothing special at all. I think it's just part of doing the job as best I can and respecting the players as best I can.”

Women’s football does indeed pride itself on being as inclusive and respectful as possible, which is important to McCann, a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

“Women’s sport was a big reason why I came out,” he said. “If my work hadn't been balanced with women’s sport, I don't think I’d have come out, due to the amount of homophobic attitudes that you get working in men's sport, and I’ve sadly faced homophobia in it since doing so.

“In women's sport, you will have open, interesting, nuanced conversations with people about their experiences, which is lightyears ahead of men’s sport.”

Rainbow flag for a Women's Super League match

But McCann warned that there was still plenty of work to be done.

“Women's sport is not totally immune to issues in wider society. The general attitude can’t be that women’s sport is so much more inclusive than men's sport, so therefore, it's all good.

“That, as a bar, is horrifically low in terms of genuinely being a space for everyone.

“So to me, women's sport in terms of its diversity as a place to work, cannot and should not measure itself against men's sport. Because men's sport is sadly no measure – it's so far behind in terms of the need for more education.

“There's always things that can be worked on and changed and pushed forward.”

McCann hopes to improve the inclusivity of sport himself, mentoring young people from diverse backgrounds who hope to have a career in broadcasting.

“I still have a hell of a lot to learn myself. I’ve only been doing this professionally for nine years, and it's a long old career. But I hope I can pass on some things that will be useful.

“It’s really important that we make the whole industry genuinely have the whole of society represented in it. The industry will be better and stronger for it.”

In the short-term, McCann is hoping to commentate at the Women’s World Cup, which is taking place in Australia and New Zealand this summer.

He is confident the next 12 months will prove to be another significant year for the women’s game, full of record attendances and increased media coverage.

“It’s a bit like a snowball rolling down a hill,” McCann laughed. “And that's very exciting to be part of.”

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