Noel Gallagher suffers commentary debut own goal: ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so easy for City’

With more notable stadium gigs awaiting in 2025, Noel Gallagher swaggered into a new side hustle as a TNT Sports co-commentator and waxed lyrical with carefree abandon.

There were wisecracks aplenty before fellow pundit Ally McCoist could summon a punchline and, pre-match, insight on his “friend” Pep Guardiola potentially staying on another year.

But, unlike his exemplary work in the day job, fate would ensure the quick-witted wordsmith fell short of hitting every right note as the action unfolded in Manchester City’s match at Sporting Lisbon.

“I wasn’t expecting this to be so easy,” would be a sentence Gallagher would live to regret almost as much as some of his infamous rows with his brother. At the time, of course, his beloved City side had been in firm control since his favourite player Phil Foden had put the team in front after four minutes.

But within 90 seconds of his sly dig at Sporting – and in particular Manchester United’s manager-in-waiting Ruben Amorim – Gallagher’s words came home to haunt him as Viktor Gyokeres grabbed the equaliser.

The game was about to swing dramatically in the Portuguese club’s favour and the army of retired footballer-turned-pundits breathed even easier after half-time as Gallagher, with City level at 1-1, appeared to predict more comfort. “I think there’s more goals,” he added. There were – but only for the home side.

In fairness, every commentator endures the odd Colemanball. In almost every other respect, this A-list rock star demonstrated he was a genuine football man with some accomplished observations. Midway through the second half, he corrected Darren Fletcher on Erling Haaland’s prowess from the penalty spot. After the Norwegian missed, he pointed out his placement of the ball had been worrying.

Prior to the match, he also spoke engagingly about his relationship with Guardiola as well as the manager’s impact on his club and the wider game in England.

“When he got here, we just scraped top four... he said to me, before the [next] season started, we were going to win the league,” Gallagher said. “I was thinking ‘that is a big shout’. But he did the 100 points. He’s a wizard... The players are completely under his spell, and they run through brick walls for him... He’s got it all.”

He later added that: “I personally think he’ll stay for one more year because it gives everybody a chance to breathe and reflect on what he did.”

Unsurprisingly, Gallagher’s genuine fandom as a City follower meant that he was significantly more forthcoming before the Sporting goals came flooding in.

“Some writing genius wrote once, we see things they’ll never see – and that’s Guardiola for you,” Gallagher said while extolling the virtues of the form over the past year of Josko Gvardiol.

The jokes dried up as City’s performance disintegrated but Gallagher maintained some engagingly forthright opinion, wading into the row on player burnout.

“I know footballers do get a lot of ridicule when they start talking about tiredness, but there are too many games of football... it’s exhausting for fans even.”

Anything but a Champagne Supernova night for Gallagher or City, but this rock-star cameo was fun.