Football journalism

I still don't know what the real meaning of 'begs the question' is supposed to be.

Embarrassing old Roy talks all sorts of rubbish here. Unspectacular piece, but well done - the right questions, lets Hodgson do the talking, avoids the difficult stuff mostly but what're you gonna do? The problem is it should be a much longer feature I feel, Roy going in-depth on a number of those topics could be really interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/apr/15/paul-scholes-manchester-united-manchester-city

not going to complain too much about yet another "rare" interview with paul scholes, but this piece is full of annoying shit. eg who needs to hear YET AGAIN that paul scholes doesn't like haircuts or flash cars?

Or Barcelona maybe, the side he loves to watch and that, in many ways, symbolise his own brand of pass-them-to-death football – quick, elusive and, when everything clicks, bloody brilliant.

Is this really the best he can do with words? Ah fuck it "bloody brilliant" will do.

He is talking in a quiet side room at Manchester United's training ground. Scholes, as usual, has been one of the first to arrive for work, his hair still damp from his morning shower. Training top, jeans, the same haircut he has had since he was playing for Boundary Park Juniors almost 25 years ago. Scholes has never been one for designer labels or flashy cars, and it is almost a surprise to find out he has accepted the offer of a benefit match. Already, you can imagine the adulation from the stands and the polite, unassuming little wave from a man not really comfortable with all the flashing bulbs.

Surely I'm not the only one who would actually like to know something interesting about Scholes if there is anything, or like hear him talk about his game and how he plays or who he idolised etc etc.

daniel taylor is a shit writer and a noted sycophant

Roy Hodgson is a bullshitter of the highest order. Says a lot without saying anything at all. Jeez, and the way he's portrayed as this old sage, football guru and life coach just because he's read a few books. "You can get undone very quickly in this league, and what we've got to look at in the future is the mental strength of the team so they don't get carried along by opinions about them." Mental strength a thing of the future? WTF?

yeah i think at least it can now be said hodgson isn't effective at the top level.

1807: How on earth? Arsenal's title challenge was off-bang on-and the off again all in the space of four injury-time minutes the likes of which you'll rarely see again.

off-bang on-and the off

sam lyon is the worst

the likes of which you'll rarely see again

wondering if that's some phrase that's been handed down through his family through the years, and he's oblivious to its lack of wider meaning

"how was the liveblogging today son"
"oh you know, it was a bit off-bang on-and the off"
"that's absolutely top, son"

bang and off son

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyZspqjtG2k#t=0m57s

argh, supposed to start 57 secs in.

BBC underlines importance of full stops:

Wilshere proves that more than most, having signed for Arsenal at just nine years old, making an impression among the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie and Andrey Arshavin can not have been easy, but Wilshere has begun to look more and more like one of manager Arsene Wenger's first names on the team sheet.

There were some interesting comments about player access on twitter last night from Michael Owen and Stan Collymore. Worth reading.

This basically sums it up from Owen.
@OllieHoltMirror it's the sensationalising of headlines that annoys most players. It makes us look like clowns when most lads are normal.
Twitter for iPad • 20/04/2011 00:51
 in reply to… 

He and Collymore both say there is a generation of players growing up who have no relationship at all with the press, and that means journalists are more likely then ever to portray footballers as one-dimensional sub-human retards (my words, not their's). They both demonstrate a desire to do something about this if they could trust the press to write about football and not sensationalise trivialities.

That's what we all want I suppose. The basic problem is that football isn't important or complicated enough for the amount that gets written about it*, so the vast majority of stuff has to be rubbish. On the other hand, I doubt very much that ye olden days ('England wins world cup - see page 72') were a golden era of great writing either, they'd just be more polite.

* I enjoyed this Run Of Play piece on The Velvet Underground and Raul, and indeed I write that sort of thing myself occasionally, but tbh the Nico stuff is just filler - has to be, because otherwise the article says everything it can in about four or five sentences. Throwaway but it's novel, entertaining and makes me smile, in a way that transfer rumours and faux-outrage no longer do (if they ever did).

If you haven't seen all 5 seasons of The Wire and you don't want any spoilers, then don't read. If you have, enjoy.

http://gregtheoharis.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/myths-and-legends/

Great article! Although Prop Joe was always my favourite.

Yeah that's otm. There's also a kind of ennui about players before they arrive now, through much the same process. I only really get a frisson now when players have somehow managed to compile a reputation out-of-sight, either in a disastrous team (Torres), in a disastrous league (Arshavin, Suarez), or by being a prodigy (Rooney or Theo). Otherwise meh*. It definitely wasn't like that when, say, Bergkamp arrived.

* there's I guess another deeper layer of pleasure at the surprise you get when Luiz, van der Vaart or Silva turns out to actually be amazing after all. Hernandez would tick every box going here, but Mexico's forever off the radar.

I was on holiday in US when Bergkamp signed for Arsenal. I remember reading the papers at the airport and not quite believing he was gonna want to play in England and being really excited at the prospect of seeing him. That kind of feeling has somewhat disappeared for me although Suarez has thrilled me tbf.

That article is well intentioned but Rooney won't become a myth because he's a ugly dick no-one cares about and not because of the cameras. They haven't done any harm to the likes of Cassano, Balotelli or even say Ashley Cole, Zidane or Sol. Those players have stories you can enjoy telling, even if you don't like the content or the character. What story is there with Rooney after his first goal? Looking a bit shit in an England team that didn't qualify in '08 and got beat down in '10? Being in an underachieving Utd team until he rode on Ronaldo's coattails? Fucking grannies or cheating on his wife? At least you can laugh your tits off at Ashley Cole doing it properly and SHOOTING someone. Balotelli tried to break into a womans prison. Cassano decided to he was going to single handedly repopulate Italy. This is the stuff of legend, not just doing something that makes Mickey Owens frown from the other side of the room.

Fun as those stories might be, other than Zidane they're not really about the football.

Since when has myth building been about football? There is what, Thomas v. Liverpool, Ronaldo 98 final and... Romario's 1000 goals in my lifetime? I guess you could add Lineker pooing himself.

I don't generally want metajournalism but this eulogy to When Saturday Comes is a vey nice piece of contextualisation. D'you know, I can't recall ever reading WSC.

I've got a subscription to WSC which I can't bring myself to cancel even tho I don't really enjoy reading it as much as I did. The writing is patchy and it does get too 'jumpers for goalposts' at times (knowingly but still annoyingly). The straight reporting is much better than the reminiscences and attempts at humour and there are always a few things worth reading. Now competing with the Blizzard and some high-profile blogs I spose, not sure how it's coping.

Hmm, I always thought 'eulogy' was about the dead - man does my english suck.

Yeah I've never read it either, although I saw that Wenger cover the other day, lol'd and thought i might pick it up in the future.

I think 'eulogy' is for the dead though, I just liked it and couldn't be bothered checking

elegy/eulogy/eugene levy

commonly for the dead or otherwise departed, but not always

'It is shameful that the Spanish league have the most unfair revenue sharing in Europe,' says Sevilla president Jose Maria del Nido. Yes, but as King Tee said, the payback's a mutha.

http://i.imgur.com/hUNhD.png

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-1380844/Martin-Samuel-Spain-pain-Real-Madrid-Barcelona-turning-Scotland-.html)

eugh samuel needs culling

Ugh, what a dreadful piece of writing. There are plenty of reasons why Scottish football has gone to shit, and the one he's laying it all at is possibly the least important of all.

This is the beginning of La Liga's reinvention as New Caledonia

there already is a new caledonia u troughfed fuck

christian karembeu is of new caledonian extraction iirc

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Creek_South_New_Caledonia.JPG/300px-Creek_South_New_Caledonia.JPG

If Samuel's saying that this picture of New Caledonia looks a bit like some places in Spain, he may have the beginnings of a point.

i was just boggling at him mentioning king tee

bloody ponces

idk his cultural co-ordinates, roughly brummie truck driver +/- former select reader, seem quite like former microblogging fave 'thebig_sam'

Run Of Play: Your Stupid Rage is really great

I haven't read that, but Samuel is great. The only columnist I have any time for.

I was going to post that Run Of Play piece on here - it's very good. Not massive fan of his style, but agree with everything he says.

Thanks for that Ismael. V good article. Tho still think his Football Manager(the game)pieces are his best writing.

lol had to wonder when i got a column for a second there

I like the idea of manager sour grapes as an extension of the feeling of white hot "this isn't happening" rage/confusion you feel at the sound of distant away fans going apeshit for their farcical late winner

I didn't wholly agree with that Run of Play article.

I think to some extent anger and negativity are part of football, just as they are part of life. There are a lot of feelings vented when you watch sport, sometimes joy, sometimes anger, sometimes a combination of the two. Years and years of watching the same sports team builds a mental relationship which is quite unique. I cried when Liverpool won the CL in 2005 (yes had had a few drinks) because of years and years of having to admit that they were crap or not quite good enough, and finally they had some major trophy glory, in such a stupendous fashion.

It wasn't about "having fun", I don't enjoy watching Liverpool or Ireland in the same way I enjoy watching two teams I don't support at all, sure it's exciting sometimes but a lot of it is gut clenching and fear etc.

I don't think it's as simple as just deciding to control your emotions.

I agree that "hyperpartisan" fans are annoying but you know, people are jerks, not revelatory stuff. Some people should be jerks less. Definitely.

All that said it is fun to say things about football you know are completely untrue or ott just out of sheer partisan feelings, once you don't actually believe them.

And it can be fun to shout at the telly too...though sometimes after a few drinks this can get a bit grim.

xpost to way up ...

I used to work in football journalism - left 10 years ago. Even then, access was a massive problem. The only way to get to UK players for more than a couple of minutes after training was through kit sponsors. Back then, at least you didn't have to discuss the boots when you went that route, but the pics were always horrible. Club press officers in the UK were less than no help: the Leicester man once refused a ticket for Leicester-Spurs to a woman writer of ours who was doing a piece about one of the Leicester players: he said he reckoned she only wanted a ticket because she fancied Ginola.
But access wasn't the biggest problem, really: it was that most of them have nothing to say, not because they are stupid, but because they have a pathological fear of offending their contemporaries. Sol Campbell refused to even discuss players he admired in football because of the implication that there might be players he didn't admire. The best interviews were always with players who'd been good, but were now on the way down – I really enjoyed doing John Sheridan at Oldham and Peter Beardsley at Hartlepool – because they no longer had to worry about what people thought of what they had to say. That doesn't mean they ran their mouths off, but they answered honestly, rather than in platitudes. Same with Rocastle and Thomas, who I spoke to for a Whatever Happened To? piece, and who were fabulous. Also, it helps when the players love football, which isn't always the case.
Not sure older players would be such good interviewees now - the ones I was talking to were the last pre-big money generation. Their wealth might have changed it all.

Interview nightmares: talking to Sol Campbell sitting on the floor of the changing room at Spurs Lodge, with a naked John Scales standing right next to me, listening, his penis three inches from my face.
Going to Sunderland to interview Kevin Phillips after training. Him assuming that - after having come up from London at 6 in the morning - I just needed two minutes in the car park. I negotiated him up to a whole 15 mins in the boot room.
Anything connected with Harry Kewell.

there was almost a lawsuit at one prem club when a (mystery) player deliberately kicked a football full force at a cameraman we'd hired, while he was filming, massive camera black eye and had to be checked for concussion. that club was v keen to help us with anything we wanted after that.

I am interviewing two footballers in the next few days, one very famous and retired, the other very famous and still playing. For the reasons stated above, I am looking forward to one a hell of a lot more than the other.

Regarding kit sponsorship, I remember being at one paper and it being pointed out that a certain (still) very prominent young writer on another paper who was getting a lot of unprecedented access with big players always seemed to slip the word NIKE into his opening paragraph.

I thought I asked this earlier but it obv didn't come up for some reason - who do you write for Pete? Written anything worth braggin' about and sharing?

As for actual writers, McCarra was actually fantastic when he did Scottish football for the Times. And I do like Martin Samuel for having something to say, even though it's often bollocks.

Agree on both. McCarra was brilliant, and a lovely chap.

Sam, have answered on the other thread.

Guardian's Football League Blog has been a really good thing: often interesting stuff, and less frequently told stories. And the below-the-line stuff is miles better than on the Premier pieces, because it doesn't degenerate into "You hate Man U and you're shit".