“You can see it’s difficult to break down Cape Verde,” said USWNT manager Emma Hayes, stood by a blackboard, chalk in hand. “One of the ways to do that is the wide rotations, making sure the timing of their opposite movements are such, especially in this area.“The wide player for Cape Verde is always going with the full-back – you’ll see that in the clip that’s coming up – so it’s making sure you don’t allow them to come into the back line to form a back five or six.”Hydration breaks are annoying, either for fans in the stadium, for TV broadcasters not filling them with adverts and certainly for viewers at home. While some, like the BBC, have plugged the three-minute gap with chat from the commentators, replays of earlier action and shots of players having a drink, ITV got innovative for the Cape Verde-Spain match on Monday, with Hayes filling the dead time with genuinely insightful analysis.UK readers watch here:
"It's taking a while for Spain to be patient in what they're doing" ☝️
Emma Hayes makes use of the first hydration break with some Spain analysis pic.twitter.com/WJBJ4sPUKi
— ITV Football (@itvfootball) June 15, 2026The World Cup debutants claiming a draw against the 2010 champions was an early high point of the tournament and it also reflected ITV’s high-water mark in their coverage of the opening days of the 2026 World Cup.Hayes was in the studio alongside former Spain international Juan Mata and ex-Australia manager Ange Postecoglou. After Cape Verde pulled off a miracle, it was Postecoglou who masterfully summed up a remarkable achievement.“A couple of things; LinkedIn should throw a massive sponsorship deal towards Cape Verde,” Postecoglou grinned, referencing Roberto Lopes’ extraordinary journey to the Cape Verde team.“More importantly… the greatness in sport and in football still lies in the intangibles. There was something inside those Cape Verde players that wasn’t going to let them yield today. We sat here, we analyse the teams you say: ‘Well, Spain should really win this comfortably.’“But we don’t have down there what they’ve got inside them, in their heart. There’s a small nation of people now who proudly say, ‘I’m from Cape Verde’, and there’s a recognition from everybody in the world about who they are.”What an extraordinary, off-the-cuff synopsis of a huge sporting moment. It took punditry far beyond throwing whiffy banter at the glum-looking Mata, like so many would have done, and looked beyond cliches.ITV are getting a lot right at this World Cup and as they prepare for their biggest game so far, England’s opener against Croatia on Wednesday, the question can legitimately be posed: are they beating the BBC in the broadcast wars?
