Gabby Logan’s ‘disappointment’ as BBC World Cup schedule confirmed | Football | Sport
Gabby Logan has received her schedule for the BBC’s World Cup coverage, and there is a bittersweet twist to her very first match in the studio. Logan, whose father Terry Yorath both played for and managed the Welsh national side, will front the broadcast of the Group B fixture between Canada and Bosnia and Herzegovina on June 12.
Yet had it not been for play-off heartbreak back in March, it could well have been Wales lining up against the co-hosts instead. Logan said: “My first game is a personal disappointment because it was supposed to be, in my mind, Canada-Wales. And then I thought maybe it would be Canada-Italy. So although I’m excited about Canada-Bosnia and Herzegovina, that wasn’t the game that I thought I’d be doing when I first got presented with my schedule.”
BBC matches will be divided amongst Logan and fellow Match of the Day presenters Mark Chapman and Kelly Cates, alongside former England women’s international Alex Scott. While no announcement has been made regarding who will host the final, all four presenters will have no shortage of fixtures to cover.
Wales finished as runners-up in their qualifying group behind Belgium, earning a play-off berth. Had Craig Bellamy’s side navigated their way through to the tournament itself, they would have been pitted against Qatar and Switzerland, as well as co-hosts Canada.
They booked their place at the 2022 World Cup through the play-offs but fell short this time around, losing on penalties to Bosnia and Herzegovina after Edin Dzeko’s late equaliser wiped out a Dan James goal. Sergej Barbarez’s side then prevailed in a second shoot-out against Italy, once more following a 1-1 draw, to secure their qualification.
Logan also confirmed she will front England’s group stage fixture against Ghana. However, the BBC’s presenting team will kick off the tournament in the studio in Salford before flying out to North America only for the later rounds.
“I think we’ve done a lot of tournaments like this now,” Logan said. “We did the Women’s World Cup like this, we did the Women’s Euros [in 2025] like this.”
She added: “There’s lots of good reasons why we do that and I think our coverage has been exceptional on those tournaments and award-winning in the case of last week’s BAFTAs. So I don’t think it’s harmed our coverage to not be there for the whole tournament. We will have people on the ground, obviously we’ve got reporters and we’ve got commentators who are there. So we will very much have a feel of people being there.
“And even when we have done tournaments where we’ve been based in one place, whether that’s Paris and the Euros or going back to Brazil, in Rio, that was one studio in one place with everything else going on around. So I don’t think it actually affects or diminishes the experience of the audience at all.”
