There are few things in life more irritating than football commentators, and nothing makes them more so than their insistence on citing meaningless trivia and statistics while the game is in full flow. I can only imagine they do this because they have nothing else to say. When I was watching the EFL final on Sunday, the commentator decided to treat us to this (paraphrasing):<\/p>\n
And you would have to go back to 1972 to find somebody older than Zlatan Ibrahimovic scoring in a League Cup Final, when Jack O’Sullivan scored for Aston Villa against Charlton Athletic at the age of 35 years and 272 days, making him 29 days older than the Swede. Aston Villa went on to win the final that day by two goals to nil, beating a Charlton side that featured Jimmy Ramsbottom, who went on to play for Chelsea of course.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It was woeful\u00a0stuff, utterly irrelevant to the game being played and containing no information that anyone would find interesting. It’s not as if one can admire the commentators for holding this kind of knowledge in their heads, they’re sat there with laptops in front of them and probably a dozen or so of these idiotic trivia items lined up in advance. I suspect the commentators think it makes them look as though they have a deep understanding of the game and its history, as if anyone cares.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the week I was watching the Manchester City versus Monaco Champions League match on my computer, streaming it from an American channel\u00a0(naughty me). Whereas I confess my unfamiliarity with their style and simple prejudice makes American commentary on soccer games grate in my ears, I noticed that the statistics they were throwing out were at least relevant. Again, I paraphrase:<\/p>\n
John Stones is coming up for this corner kick, and we must remember that he is the highest scoring defender from set pieces in the Premier League season so far.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As I said, the style grates a bit, but American sports are conducive to being described in terms of statistics so it is hardly surprising that the commentators stateside have kept this approach when it comes to soccer. But at least the statistics being presented over there are relevant to the game at hand: when Stones came up for the corner I did keep an eye on him, thanks to the commentator telling me there was a chance he could score a goal here.<\/p>\n
This isn’t the only area where the Americans have the Brits beat when it comes to football. I think it was James Hamilton on his sadly defunct\u00a0More Than Mind Games blog who pointed out that the best websites discussing football tactics are American ones. Again, when you consider the American sports and their obsession with tactics (as opposed to woolly concepts such as pride, passion, and “character”) this is perhaps not surprising. The guy(s) running it don’t post on as many games as they used to, but Zonal Marking<\/a> was my\u00a0go-to place for football tactics for a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are few things in life more irritating than football commentators, and nothing makes them more so than their insistence on citing meaningless trivia and statistics while the game is in full flow. I can only imagine they do this … Continue reading