Football journalism

That is spectacularly bad. ManC is of a different class this season. That leads to 70% or more possession most games. Taking effing Newcastle to prove a moot point.

"it is much harder now than it was even 15 years ago to bully creative players out of the game. The result is an era in which the likes of Xavi, Luka Modric and David Silva have thrived."

Oh noes brilliant players are ruining the game!

This article coming the morning after what was arguably the best game of the season, uhave2laff

man utd have not quite spent enough to ruin the spectacle of the game by forcing teams to be much worse than them, but at the same time it would be arrogant for us to insist upon enjoying the spectacle, after all, managers just have to win games (unless it's through possession football)

tbfttl, City-Newcastle was probably the most abject game i saw in 2017 and Pep's style has always been unbelievably boring to watch against anyone but a handful of elite teams. It's an issue with City, not the culture of the league as a whole, though. Spurs, United, Chelsea, etc have been involved in plenty of interesting / competitive games despite having over 70% of the ball.

Otm, it's City not the PL. Which makes stuff like this "The Premier League is walking in the shadow of the uncanny valley." utter nonsense (it's a good one for a new thread title tbf).

I love watching City idg the hate

I love watching them too, and don't find them boring at all.

when will pep stop doing it on a wet wednesday night in newcastle?

Perhaps i'm being unduly swayed by the Newcastle game but, having scored early, City seemed barely more interested in playing football than a Newcastle side that were in damage limitation mode from the kick-off. They had 73% possession and a single shot on target in the second half. They can demolish teams when they want to - and were great against Spurs - but they're often perversely negative for a team that has outscored everyone else by twenty.

the newcastle game didn't stand out to me for good or ill, mostly lost in the seasonal deluge of games so I might rewatch highlights, but in general I'd say city are as positive a side as I've seen in the league, not a lot of uninspired passing backwards despite their opponents

https://www.si.com/soccer/2018/01/05/us-soccer-election-president-candidates-campaign-funding

With the U.S. Soccer presidential campaign in full swing ahead of the Feb. 10 election in Orlando, SI.com highlighted the issue of campaign funding transparency this week by asking all eight candidates if 1) they have funded the entirety of their campaigns out of their own pocket, and 2) if not, who their top three funders are and 3) whether those funders have any business before U.S. Soccer.

While the football of this world cup has reached a dazzling pinnacle which promises yet more greatness to come, for its journalism, the opposite is true. Journalists have looked jaded, bereft of the sparkle that once lit up their prose as they wearily navigated their way through the highs and lows of the tournament with their increasingly rusty-looking apparatus. At times it felt like they might suffocate under the weight of their own bloviation, but whether through tenacity or just a lack of other ideas, they held true and saw it through to what feels like an unedifying end.

How did it come to this? It wasn't so long ago that we crouched over our screens in hushed reverence as we let the likes of Ronay bewitch us with those well-measured sentences that pointed towards the ineffability of the greatest moments of football. Somewhere along the way that hunger for pure feeling and the truth of the gut started to eclipse what happened on the pitch. Narratives had to be constructed and fulfilled. Reputations had to be decisively made and destroyed.

In such an intense, tumultuous and claustrophobic world cup perhaps it is understandable that journalists struggled to find time to contemplate the role of fortune in the events that unfolded. Seeing them frantically try to conjure a sense of self-satisfied awe as they struggled against their deadlines was genuinely moving, and one can only feel sympathy for the utter personal devastation each of them will feel once the fanfare dies down and they are left with the realisation that they have overstated the role of feeling and embarrassed themselves in front of millions.

But perhaps even in the centre of this vortex of ouroboric hubris, a kernel of truth remains. Writing shit about football awakens the depths of the soul, inviting both Bacchanalian and Apollonian lenses to better bring in to focus the forces on the pitch. Let these failings stand as a reminder to all that their steadfast responsibility is to reflect the swirling excitement of this glorious game, and to honour it with hyperbole.

https://d2v9y0dukr6mq2.cloudfront.net/video/thumbnail/azmSlLb/handsome-businessman-smiling-happy-make-thumbs-up-good-job-hand-gesture_ssvcxt-pe_thumbnail-full08.png

podcasts man podcasts

just been made aware of this

The cover to my debut novel: COME ON!!! 😎😎😎🚀🚀🚀🤗🤗🤗 pic.twitter.com/WFaQgaKlz0

— jamie jackson (@JamieJackson___) July 5, 2018

Oof

i have a long interview with richard williams in my anthology -- not conducted by me -- bcz, for all the flaws arrayed here, he was an important and very often a very good music writer and editor in the 70s, plus when he worked for island records he discovered and signed roxy music (tho jazz is his deep love). reviewing the two sides of engineer's electronic hum was the correct thing to do: it was a john & yoko record, and tbh they erred in not releasing two sides of engineer's electronic hum along with whatever they did release.

I daf about motors + f1 and find some of Williams' sports writing easily skip-able + maybe sometimes a bit in the style of a very effortlessly competent local rag correspondent, in the job 4 life days. But I like his music writing just fine, haven't read owt for a bit, but his blog is on hiatus atm.

Williams going on about how we should cut Micheal Owen some slack because of what a tough career he's had and how touching his self-interested and purely ego driven comments about his injury record were recently, is making me realise he is very very bad sometimes, and much worse than I thought.

just noticed Pete W's post upthread that calsl Glanville and McIlvanney over-rated, I'm 7 years too late for the FPing

Jamie Jackson's verdicts on who Man Utd should sell/keep incl. this

Fred Can the Brazilian boss a game like a Kevin De Bruyne? If not then he is a squad player at best. Verdict Maybe stay.

so any midfielder not as good as KdB should be sold?? Would leave Utd with no midfielders, or LFC for that matter.

Jonathon Wilson meanwhile

Two years ago the German photographer Christian Vieler brought out a book comprising studio shots of dogs as they tried to catch a chewy treat he tossed for them. Look at those pictures and look at Henderson under a high ball. The expression is the same. The same focus, the same desire, the same sheer wonderment to be alive in a universe in which such delights can drop from the sky.

I enjoyed this, while not wholeheartedly agreeing with all of it.

Ken Early: Football’s new age neutralises philosophies of the past

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/ken-early-football-s-new-age-neutralises-philosophies-of-the-past-1.3874358?mode=amp

good stuff. thx for that onimo.

Yeah that was good, thanks. Hearty lol at this:

Klopp, plainly, is no Mourinho. Last week he did a “Jürgen Klopp answers the web’s most-searched questions about him” video for Soccer AM. Asked “What is your favourite film?” his answer was immediate and decisive: “Forrest Gump! ” Somewhere out there, José felt his lip curl without knowing why.

look

if youse aren't on the second captains podcast by now its on youse

on it now deems

It is the best, humour and insight and great interviewing. I listen to them even when it's a sport I have zero interest in.

Ken is just great fun to listen to, yes even his baffling mancrush on David Luiz

especially his irrational enthusiasms or dislikes, his scathing takes on silva are great

i love ken early

Am I missing something or did the podcast stop six months ago? Last one on Spotify was 15th September.

Never mind found the website. I forgot people had websites for stuff.

keep forgetting that richie, who is brilliant while never in any way appearing ill at ease with his ladness or striving for a pose (contrast with ken who is the very model of a fella looking for the mot juste and the big statement) has his MA in pyschotherapy since he retired

such high quality regulars, such a great blend and so at ease inter alia

i sometimes think about whether it would be plausible that there could ever be scottish football/sports journalism that could even touch second captains and there's just no fucking way

but i mean why not!

Scoop: “It has set off a bomb. Fuck it’s tremendous” – The Athletic guts the football teams from the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Times.

We can reveal latest to exit are BBC’s David Ornstein and Guardian’s chief football writer Daniel Taylor.https://t.co/pcuTr9uN9H

— Mark Di Stefano 🤙🏻 (@MarkDiStef) July 17, 2019

One person briefed on the Athletic's plans told BuzzFeed News the US site is hoping to get 100,000 paid subscribers to fund its ambitious expansion into English football coverage.

Two sources said one subscription price point put forward would see subscribers pay “about £4 a month … or some sort of package where a reader pays £50 a year”. One source described it as “Netflix-like” pricing.

“They’re banking on a passionate football supporter willing to fork out £4 a month for some scoops about their team, and quality feature and match day writing,” the source said.

they haven't tapped up nult 🤔

Harsh on the Nult. xp

I don't think I've ever read an article on the Athletic.

well, it is subscription only

Ah yes, I see. Wondering how many people will want to subscribe to read "soccer" articles tbf

I think you mean "how many people will have want to have been going to have read BBC an Nult"

"BBC man" fuck this fucking phone

the liverpudlian scribe will have watched with some consternation as his peers in the british football press were poached by the upstart american outfit. he will have felt that his career will have been going to the proverbial dogs

Yeah that's how you will have wanted to do it

he will have wondered to himself the significance if any of wait where is everyone

jonathon wilson comparing pep to darth vader via some torturous analogy today.https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2019/oct/07/pep-guardiola-manchester-city-darth-vader-death-star-dark-side

it's like there's no point beating Man City because somehow it's all down to them and fuck all to do with your own performance

love wilson obviously but that is a fucking torturous analogy

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/jul/11/why-tottenham-are-stagnating-under-jose-mourinho-who-has-yet-to-evolve?CMP

Jonathan Wilson really on peak metaphorical form this morning:

Back then, Mourinho’s outrages were mitigated by his charm. But now it is as though Richard III had suffered no Bosworth. This is him after almost two decades on the throne, worn down by tax planning, worrying about alum prices, dealing with uppity nobles, the French and Lancastrian pretenders and suffering the growing realisation that some of his past excesses – drowning his brother in a vat of malmsey, murdering his nephews in the Tower, ending Anders Frisk’s career – probably shouldn’t have been excused on the basis of a knowing glance and a quip that made a good headline.

God love 'im

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/aug/02/frank-lampard-resolve-chelsea-defensive-issues-arsenal-fa-cup-final

jonathon wilson raises the bar on himself

In July 1971, Apollo 15 approached the moon. After the lunar module detached bearing the mission’s other two astronauts, Al Worden was left alone in the command module. When he went behind the moon, breaking transmission with Houston, he entertained himself by playing the Beatles, Elton John and John Denver and the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Orbiting 2,235 miles from his companions on the moon’s surface and quarter of a million miles from Earth, Worden was for three days the most isolated human to have existed since Adam. Or at least he was until the 67th minute of the FA Cup final on Saturday.