Football journalism

lol this whole issue can be summed up as WHY HARRY REDKNAPP HAS A NEWS STORY ON BBC SPORT EVERY SINGLE DAY

Yeah people bitch about Wenger getting love from journos but it is only because he has a press conference every friday and will at least allow any question to be asked (whether he answers it is a different matter).

It also makes me hate that clubs are cracking down on twitter. There was a small, miniscule really, period of time when the public could see a footballer's genuine opinion on matters instead of the dull press officer nicey nicey approach (i'm looking at you darren bent etc.)

Lack of an angle unless it's one the journalist is working to death is also a problem. There was a good interview with Kalou in the Graun on Saturday though.

Actually the reaction to that Kalou interview sums it up really, he gave a thoughtful and emotional interview about the political situation in the Ivory Coast and then talked a bit about being frustrated with lack of starts. Obviously the subsequent stories are all 'SALOMON KALOU CONSIDERING CHELSEA EXIT'

chicken egg in vicious circle SHOCKAH

but i mean cmon, the press in england are, taken as a whole, probably best left the fuck alone from the pov of yr average english footballer.

“Stan Kroenke can take Arsenal forward by working with Arsene Wenger to quicken the pursuit of trophies.” – Henry Winter

http://twitter.com/#!/henrywinter

Winter's current Twitter liveblog of Pool-City is a bit of a grab bag of familiar bollocks

henrywinter Henry Winter
What. A. Goal. Andy Carroll off the mark in style for #lfc - left-foot 25-yarder that flew past Hart. Majestic strike.

What. A. Tweet.

henrywinter Henry Winter
Tevez just limped off. Huge blow for #mcfc. Must be a major doubt for FA Cup semi on Saturday. Looks disconsolate as heads down tunnel

An injury to Man City's best player: disappointing to Man City; also the player

henrywinter Henry Winter
Kuyt makes it 2-0, low drive after a series of chances for #lfc. Terrible half for #mcfc. Sky saying Tevez has a hamstring

Player has hamstring

There were 18 characters to spare in that one

lol

Manchester City fans still exercising their vocal chords though

FUCK YOU NULT ARRRGHHH

I bet that rat cunt thinks "begs the question" means "raises the question" and all

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.