Roy Keane and Ian Wright set for showdown in World Cup of Pundits finale
The final votes are in. Roy Keane will defend his title as World Cup of Pundits champion in a white-hot finale against the ever-popular Ian Wright.
Keane continued his streak of swatting aside his punditry colleagues with unblinking concern and the Manchester United legend’s place in the WCOP championship showdown should come as a shock to absolutely no one. Keane was made for this competition – or, really, this competition was made for Keane: blunt yet impassioned; bellicose yet faintly debonair. A serial winner with a vocabulary that does not entertain guff.
That the reigning champion would arrive at the showpiece event for a second consecutive season is the kind of reliable inevitability that a football season is built upon. Sure, there’s an argument for surprise to be made regarding the manner in which Keane unequivocally trounced his semi-final competitor Gary Neville. Keane guzzled a whopping 82.4% of the vote in comparison to Neville’s princely 17.6% (roughly the possession percentage Swansea City relished in their 5-0 beating to Manchester City in 2018). But are we really surprised? The Overlap can only do so much.
Keane’s procession to punditry’s pinnacle has hardly been tested, but that might change with this year’s final opponent in Wright. Filing Wright under ‘underdog’ feels inherently wrong, but his place in this year’s crescendo attempts to offer a smidgen of spice in what could very well be another episode of “Roy Keane Wipes Floor with Fellow Pundits”.
Wright defeated Jamie Carragher by taking home 63.5% of the vote, leaving any hope for a Neville-versus-Carragher finale shrivelled up in the bowels of the semi-finals.
But a Wright-versus-Keane collision has all the punditry quality to make the sort of high-stakes championship that the competition deserves. Will Keane’s ferocity outweigh Wright’s poise and dedication to the job, or will Wright ultimately suffer the same Keane-subjected fate that has befallen the rest of his associates?
Semi-final results
Roy Keane 82.4% vs Gary Neville 17.6%
Ian Wright 63.5% vs Jamie Carragher 36.5%
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