It was the way Emma Hayes dropped an expected assists metric into the early stages of Spain v Croatia that told you this was no ordinary co-commentary.
Jose Luis Gaya had been selected ahead of Jordi Alba by Luis Enrique once again and, though this was something Hayes quite clearly took issue with, she was not prepared to foist her subjective interpretation on us after 10 minutes of a football match.
‘It’s been a surprise to see Jordi Alba left out of the Spain side. He registered the third most expected assists in La Liga last season,’ she casually observed.
Emma Hayes has provided incisive insight while working as a TV pundit at the Euros
Karen Carney provided some fascinating insight on Instagram recently into the work Hayes puts into her analysis
Given that expected assists — ‘xA’ to the initiated — have not exactly been core vernacular for any of the British Euro 2020 commentary teams — and Graeme Souness was watching back in the studio for ITV — this observation carried risks.
When Alex Scott endeavoured to talk about the ‘low block’ on Sky Sports a few years back, Souness took her to task. ‘What is a low block? This modern terminology…’ he interrupted, fixing Scott with a stare.
But the Chelsea Women’s manager did not break her stride. By the time she ventured into this Gaya-Alba dialectic, Hayes had already painted a more detailed picture of the game’s initial tactical patterns than the Parken Stadium’s battery of TV cameras could provide.
From Cesar Azpilicueta’s higher starting position than in Spain’s previous game, to the demands on Bruno Petkovic to link play in the absence of Ivan Perisic’s superior pace, she told you how the mechanics of this game were working.
It is fair to say the TV offering has moved on slightly from those days when pundits masked their ignorance of the foreigners by having a good laugh at their own calamitous efforts to pronounce the names.
But Monday’s game, as much as Hayes’s explanation of Robert Lewandowski’s need to ‘cover the pivot’ against Slovakia, has taken us well beyond ‘best chance of the match, that’.
Hayes provided a refreshing voice as co-commentator during Spain’s victory over Croatia
In the parallel Twitter universe, where misogyny lives and breathes, one intellectually-challenged soul complained that Hayes was reading from a PowerPoint presentation. Another, male, struggling to keep up, suggested she should not speak so much.
The rest rejoiced at co-commentary which opened up dimensions of a game that would otherwise have been lost, in terms that viewers understood. The research leavened the commentary.
Hayes’s unmistakable enthusiasm for the game of football and what she was seeing also helps. ‘What a pass. You felt your jaw drop.’ And: ‘I love watching Rebic play. He’s brought that pace and energy that I worried wasn’t there.’
There was empathy, too, for Unai Simon, when he had neglected to watch the moving ball that rolled under his foot and into the net against Croatia. Hayes saw the Spanish players gathered around the goalkeeper — something else the cameras did not detect.
And yet, there was also the decidedly unsettling sense of how it feels to mess up when playing in her Chelsea team.
How, commentator Joe Speight asked Hayes, might she approach Simon in the dressing room at half time after a disaster like that? ‘Ignore him. He’s got to get on with it. He’s a paid professional.’
It is easy to understand why Hayes has enjoyed so much success as Chelsea Women’s manager
Petkovic departed after half-time, having failed to do precisely what Hayes had suggested he must.
Pedri — a ‘lovely player, fifth most passes in the final third’ — flourished in the way she had suggested he might.
‘Croatia’s switch to a high press, engaging further up the pitch, created the opening for Spain’s goal by exposing a double-up on their left back,’ Hayes related, as effortlessly as a Sergio Busquets pass into a pocket of space.
Quite how she has managed to become the tournament’s breakout pundit having picked up her microphone a mere 26 days after Chelsea’s Champions League final in Gothenburg is unclear. But her clarity, wisdom and sense could help in all of our lives when this tournament is over.
And, before then, it could ease us through the unbearable tension of whatever lies in wait for England.
So, then — let it be said, here and now: Hayes for the final.