33 years ago, James Richardson’s life changed forever.

Born in Bristol, Richardson spent his entire childhood in England (apart from brief spells in Lebanon and Kuwait) but never quite took a liking to soccer until he purchased a satellite dish in 1989, allowing him to watch Serie A matches and the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy and stoking the flames of a burgeoning passion for calcio. Richardson became obsessed with the Italian championship – the preeminent league in world soccer at the time – and began supporting Roma and learning Italian thanks to his girlfriend, a Roma supporter from the Italian capital. Whilst they didn’t end up tying the knot, this relationship proved instrumental for Richardson, who quickly became fluent in Italian. This, combined with a fledgling career in TV production, prompted British network Channel 4 to hire him as a producer for their new program Football Italia.

Initially, Richardson looked set to play an auxiliary role to Paul Gascoigne, the biggest English talent of his generation, who had made the move from Tottenham Hotspur to Lazio. However, when Gascoigne started missing appointments with regularity, Richardson was forced to step up and deliver as the voice and face of the Football Italia program and ensure that Channel 4’s investment didn’t go to waste. Almost instantaneously, Richardson went from an unknown 26-year-old producer to one of the most beloved TV presenters in the game alongside the likes of Dave Johnson and Leonardo Bertozzi. Whether scaling the steps of an Italian stadium and previewing the upcoming weekend fixture, or chatting to a star player or manager, or sitting back and enjoying a cappuccino outside of a picturesque café, Richardson brought millions of viewers to the front and center of the game and proved instrumental as countless English soccer fans became enamored with the Italian game. This decade-long spell in Italy paved the foundations for a legendary broadcasting career that has seen its fair share of twists and turns.

“There have been lots of surprises. FIFA finally got rid of Sepp Blatter and got somebody who's materially worse, so that would be probably a big surprise,” stated Richardson in an exclusive Protagonist Soccer interview. “There have also been a lot of nice moments; meeting Roberto Baggio for the first time was great, because he was always such a legend and hero to me. Most of the things that stick in my mind are the things that went spectacularly wrong like trying to do a live link-up for the BBC and their 1998 World Cup coverage, where we'd spent a week setting up this halftime segment with me and a group of French fans who were going to discuss their team's performance. We go live, and suddenly, none of them can speak English anymore, so that was a really painful four minutes. It went back to Des Lynham, who was the main host. He was a legendary figure in England and had a very dry sense of humor, and he had a bit of fun with it, but I never worked with the BBC again after that. I'm not saying the two things are connected, but I don't think it was a gateway to success.”

“Forgetting the name of my commentator in the first live link I ever did on TV, that was great. He was a really famous English footballer who had played at Milan as well, a lovely guy called Ray Wilkins, and when I was presenting, I said, ‘Ok, let’s go across to our coverage with Peter Brackley and with Ray….and the name's just gone. Luckily, the director saw the look of panic in my eyes and just cut to the shot of the stadium ready for kickoff, so you couldn't see me with my career flashing before my eyes. That was the first link I ever did, and it was fine, nobody remembers it apart from me, but it did mean that, from then on, I always had that slight kind of Tourette's fear in the back of my head, thinking that I’m going to forget their name. Every time I introduce somebody now, or every time I mention somebody's name that I'm with on air, I always have that voice in the back of my head: ‘Do you know this name? Are you sure?”

Richardson returned to London in 2002, where he has remained ever since, presenting Eurosport live coverage of Serie A before anchoring Bravo TV's Football Italia Live and the reboot of Gazzetta Football Italia. He was forced to bid farewell to an epic 14-year chapter with Football Italia at the end of 2006 but landed on his feet by co-presenting Setanta Sports' The Friday Football Show and Football Matters shows with Rebecca Lowe between 2007 and 2009 followed by a stint with BBC’s Late Kick Off. He then worked with ESPN and BT Sport (now TNT Sports) and presented both Champions League and Serie A action, in addition to hosting the Fantasy Premier League Show by Premier League Productions.

Whilst Richardson boasts over 120,000 followers on Twitter, he is more of a regular on Bluesky. On both platforms, he goes by ‘AC Jimbo.’ “That's complicated,” says Richardson of his name. “I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think that a few years ago, around 2009, a magazine called Four Four Two did a thing called My Perfect XI, and at the last page, they’d get various sporting people to come up with their XI, like an Arsenal player coming up with his dream Arsenal XI. Once they'd used everybody good up, somebody asked me, ‘James, can you do us an 11 of your decade in Italy? I thought long and hard about this, and I produced a dream team of players who featured in Serie A from 1992 to 2002, and in my little blurb at the top, I said, here's my dream team, call it AC Jimbo. People called me Jimbo, and so, instead of it being AC Milan, they called it AC Jimbo. And for some reason, the guy who was my boss at The Guardian just started calling me, ‘Hey, AC Jimbo. I really don't know why that became my nickname, but it did.”

One of the biggest highlights of his career came on September 20, 2024, Richardson and Serie A journalist James Horncastle were honored by Italian Ambassador Inigo Lambertini, who honored them with the Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy for their great contribution in promoting Italian football and strengthening the cultural ties between England and Italy. The following summer, Richardson was sent to the United States as a member of the joint DAZN / 5 presentation team for their coverage of the first-ever 32-team FIFA Club World Cup.

“I’ve met pretty much all the best footballers from the 1990s, and years later, I came back to England and started doing shows with English players who were playing back in the ‘90s and used to watch my show. I remember, growing up, before we went out to play, we’d watch Gazzetta on a Saturday morning, that was what we did. To understand that my show had a role in their enjoyment of football was really nice to hear. The Italians actually gave me a medal, which was crazy. Last year, myself and James, who lived in Italy after I did but knows a billion times more about Italian football than I do, we both got knighthood by the Italian state for services to Italian culture and received these medals. How cool is that? That was really nice, but awkward as hell. I thought, ‘Holy cow, the sportsmen go out and do all the work, and you just have to say what they did, and people will go, ‘Well done. I felt like I’m cheating a little bit to have gotten a medal for talking about what other people had done, but anyway, it was a lovely moment, and it was very kind of them.”

As he approaches 60 years of age, Richardson shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down. Today, Richardson spends the majority of his time hosting The Totally Football Show, which was incorporated into The Athletic’s podcast network in 2020, and which sees Richardson expertly weave between a number of subjects alongside veteran journalists like James Horncastle, Raphael Honigstein, Julien Laurens, and Alvaro Romeo. Whether discussing the Scudetto race or discussing the relegation battle in Germany or analyzing Shakhtar’s dynasty under Sergey Palkin or previewing the upcoming marquee match-up in the Premier League, there isn’t a single topic that Richardson shies away from. Moreover, there also isn’t a single sport that he shies away from, presenting Bravo TV's first live PDC darts coverage in the 2010 European Darts Championship as well as Eurosport’s Tour de France cycling coverage between 2005 and 2013. Since 2011, he’s hosted the World’s Strongest Man in a number of different locations from the USA to China to Malaysia to Botswana to the Philippines, whilst he’s also been co-presenting The Great Model Railway Challenge on Channel 5 with Tim Shaw since 2018. And last month, he presented The Grand Sumo Tournament at London’s Royal Albert Hall between October 15 and October 19.

- by Zach Lowy