Media Career
After rejecting the idea of management, when he retired from football in 1991 he planned to take three months off. After his wife pointed out that during his rest period, the telephone had not rung once, he started calling the networks. Sky Television employed Hansen as a pundit and summariser almost as soon as he ceased playing, and soon he had established enough of a reputation as a considered observer and thinker within the game for the BBC to approach him. He began working for BBC Radio 5 Live before moving on to Match of the Day.
For more than a decade, Hansen has been employed as the main pundit for the BBC's football coverage (rights to show matches or highlights permitting) and he is known as a calm, authoritative, and rational analyst of the game who is particularly keen on highlighting the triumphs and "shocking", "poor" or "diabolical" mistakes of defenders and commenting on "mediocre" performances.
Hansen is also known for coining the phrase "you can't win anything with kids," having made the remark following Manchester United's 3–1 defeat to Aston Villa on the opening day of the 1995–96 Premier League season. After selling three high profile players Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, and Andrei Kanchelskis in the summer of 1995, United had introduced several youth team players including Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Gary Neville into the first team, yet proved Hansen wrong by winning a league and cup double that same season. Hansen still continues to this day to repeat these facts, for humorous effect.
Away from football analysis, Hansen is a keen golfer, and he is a member of Hillside Golf Club playing off a handicap of three and regularly returns to the town of his birth near Alloa in Clackmannanshire, Scotland to participate in celebrity golf tournaments in aid of various charities. He has hosted documentaries on the sport and worked at the Masters Tournament for the BBC. He has also presented programmes on the rise in status and wealth of the modern footballer and appeared in television commercials, such as Carlsberg and Morrisons supermarkets.
He is a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, Telegraph.co.uk and the BBC website on football issues and has also worked as a motivational speaker.
Read more about this topic: Alan Hansen
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