Hello,
One of the frequently unnoticed elements of the ‘football experience’ is the way in which it is an entirely ritualised experience; and, like most other ritualised experiences, many of its customs exist for no particularly good reason. Two of these customs that should have attention drawn to them are the tradition of the instant replay, and the tradition of pre-match and post-match reaction. I imagine that in its infancy the instant replay was a good idea, a means of briefly recapitulating something that might have been missed while one relieved themselves or picked up the phone. No more can this be said: the instant replay has long been a gratuitous time-filler, and such was evinced wonderfully succinctly today, when, in an attempt to fill a break in play – God forbid one should have a break from consuming relentless action during play – ITV decided to flash a goal-line-technology replay of Marcelo’s own goal (if anybody is using this blog as a means of learning the match’s narrative, Marcelo gave Croatia an early, surprising lead with an own goal before Neymar scored twice at the right end, before Oscar ended the game late on) up on our screens, just to assure us that the ball had crossed the line; to demonstrate the wonderful efficacy of goal-line technology. The superfluity of this was obvious to all who saw it, and, in any case, the basic mechanism of a goal-adjudication system could not escape even the most casual of armchair viewers. It was a slightly surreal moment; farcical in its superfluity. Yet football fills its breaks and lulls with these pointless intermissions, almost as though the viewer needs to be constantly reassured that something ‘actually did happen’. O’Brien, in the depths of the Ministry of Love, tells Winston that history exists only in people’s memories and records; the ritual of the gratuitous instant replay – with its novel update to include the gratuitous goal-confirmation ritual – is a strange real-life manifestation of the compulsive need to be perpetually reassured that if one forgets something, the wonders of video will ensure that they can trust in an outside source to do their remembering for them. Were it not so disconcerting that ITV, like most of our sports channels, feel mandated to ‘controversialise the certain’ by implying that there was a lack of surety about such an uncontroversial goal, it would have been (and was, briefly) incredibly amusing.
I now move onto the second part of this discussion of football’s odd rituals, which is punditry. I launch into diatribe against pundits so frequently I am sure that those who know me in person or who have followed this blog for its entire duration will be rather tired of me doing so – and yet I feel that, on a deeper level (deeper in the sense of going beyond talking about Michael Owen’s tediousness), such a thing needs to be done. For I will go so far as to say that the role of the pundit is utterly (this is, the reader will now be aware, the buzzword of this post) superfluous. It is unnecessary, and insult to the viewer’s intelligence and maturity. They are mind-numbing, cliche-spouting, occasionally foolish distractions who not only fail to fulfill a gap of necessity in the act of watching a game; they are actively pernicious to the experience. To illustrate further: before the game, Adrian Chiles and his Brotherhood of Banality went through the typical motions: talking about how excited the fans were (ironically, and with breathtaking myopia, seconds after a Brazilian fan had gone so far as to say that she would prefer her nation to fail so as not to distract from the wider socioeconomic issues surrounding the tournament), discussing whether Neymar could live up to his billing, discussing formations, and all of the other tripe. Among this tedium were insightful gems such as : ‘They’ll want to win’, ‘They want to scare the opposition’, and ‘Time will tell whether it’s right or wrong.’ These quotations do not gain greater perceptiveness or sagacity with context. They are time-fillers, redundant nonsense that do nothing to enhance the viewing experience. Had football reached a stage in its evolution at which it could become somewhat ironically self-aware in this respect (I concede that in others it has managed to do so), there would be something amusing, although equally pointless, about this charade. As it is, Chiles, Neville – to call him the best of the punditry group is rather like suggesting that ‘The Da Vinci Code’ is the best Dan Brown novel – repeat this week in, week out, without a hint of irony, without anybody bothering to suggest that they are utterly unnecessary.
This may thus far read like the diatribe of somebody who just wants to fill a blog post with words, or who just wishes that pundits were a little more ‘intellectual’ in their discussions. This is actually not the case. I feel that these points are worth making because they have a wider significance that affects, for numerous people worldwide, their daily lives. Cliches are one thing – a little irksome, perhaps, but one can always mute the screen for fifteen minutes or so – but the tendency of pundits to controversialise the uncontroversial rankles me far more. A wonderful example of this was provided by the Neymar penalty incident, in which the referee clearly made a dreadfully bad decision, showing a wonderfully charitable bent in pointing to the spot after Neymar swivelled and fell over. The commentator didn’t say, as any reasonably well-sighted and aware viewer at home might have done, that the referee was wrong, and that it just wasn’t a penalty. Rather, he felt the need to suggest that the penalty was ‘somewhat charitable’; that Brazil ‘might have been a bit lucky’; that there ‘wasn’t much contact’. At no point was the statement made that a wrong decision had been made.
And here punditry is genuinely insidious, and I shall try to illustrate why in as succinct a form as possible. Within any plausible interpretation of the Laws of the Game, it was not a penalty kick. Therefore, the pundit wishing to show ingenuousness would say so. Yet this is inimical to the way in which punditry works. These small lexical insertions – ‘ might’, ‘a bit’, ‘somewhat’, ‘much’ – completely alter the semantic import of a sentence, and introduce the notion of possibility or dubiety where none exists in reality. They are therefore a means of trying to con the viewer or listener. To say unequivocally that the wrong is wrong is to bestow closure upon an incident; to fail to do so is to remove this closure, and to create an intellectual gap where none exists that allows for further discussion. And this, in turn, serves to validate the pundit’s job; to give him something to discuss when really there is nothing to discuss. It serves to justify Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer on Match of the Day; to justify instant replays ad infinitum; to suggest that the fan at home cannot make up their own mind without a pundit telling them what to think. And, in one respect, I do not want pundits to attempt to intellectualise football because football is not an intellectual game. It is a sport. It does not require a power-dynamic of the kind that is created by the pundit, where one ostensibly knowledgeable figure bestows wisdom upon the viewer. My other objection is that it allows the football-saturation to which any lover of the game is privy: the constant highlights programs, and, more than anything, the notion that it is not enough to simply switch on when the players enter the pitch, and switch off once the game has ended. It allows the game’s trivialities to take up far too much time, and prevents people from accepting that, in Aristotelian phrase, an ‘action has been completed’, and that closure can be achieved. Yet this is not an attempt to suggest that nobody should bother discussing football, and that people should just shut up and find something else to talk about. It is merely a suggestion that those truly interesting aspects of the game do not come from the topics for discussion that post-match-reaction typically supplies: matches are just generally not that controversial. Contrary to what this post (and numerous other whinging ones) suggest, I do actually like football. At its best – Aguero 2012, Beckham 2002, Barcelona 5 Madrid 0 – it provides superb narratives, wonderful twists of fate, burlesques of tragedy and comedy. But this enjoyment is not contingent on, or enhanced by, constant focus, on constant debate. There is merit in doing, as I did today, watching a game, appreciating the entertainment provided, and just moving on. In some cases there is, of course, room for debate. The ‘Laws’ of the Game imply room for interpretation, not an attempt to construct certitude. And in cases where there is room for debate – Nani’s red card against Real Madrid in the 2013/2014 CL quarter-final, for example – it is because the incident falls into an epistemological ‘gap’ in which no certitude can be reached. In such cases a pundit is no more qualified to enlighten the viewer than the over-beered shouter next to one in a pub is.
As such, I don’t feel the need to discuss much of what happened today, because there is little to say about this World Cup opener. It is of course true that Brazil will need to improve in order to beat better sides. It is perhaps worth noting that their attacking play lacked cohesion, but that Willian was not necessarily a better option than Hulk given the way in which Croatia might have been presaged to line up, given that he is a player that thrives on swathes of open space. Credit should be given to Croatia – and Modric and Rakitic – for some excellent attacking play: the crossing from both sides was of an unusually high-quality today. Brazil will no doubt suffer against some good sides for their full-backs, who are excellent going forward but often tentative or exhibit poor positional sense defensively, as was evinced by Alves being outjumped by Olic early on, and Marcelo’s poor body shape being partly culpable for Croatia’s opener. Neymar scored one good goal, and looked potent, as did Oscar. The penalty was not a penalty. Croatia had a goal unfairly disallowed for a negligible push on Julio Cesar at 2-1 which – as our dear pundits would be delighted to tell us – would have changed the game. (The notion that the viewer needs to be told that a goal would change a game, I believe, confirms the basic soundness of what is said above). The game was entertaining and a sight more watchable than the 2010 opener; I express my hope that the tournament sees the continuation of positive football from most sides. And that is, essentially, all of interest, I believe. Reacting to football is not an art: ‘I am no pundit, nor was meant to be’.
Regards,
Jack
jacknmoran 