Football journalism

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".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jun/23/wimbledon-2011-li-na-lisicki-sabine

not football but hayward...fucking unreadable. i actually can't read it.

The hyped political plot-line that cast Li Na's historic French Open win as the start of a sweep by the world's most populous nation was doused as Asia's first winner of a grand slam tennis event fell in the second round to Germany's Sabine Lisicki.

haha what.

'No results found for "the plotline was doused".'

like how could you write that sentence and submit it...do they even read their own stuff back after finishing it? and how do the subs leave it in, i've been subbing a bit in a freelance job lately and believe me i would go to town on that shit

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/thingummy99/Picture1-7.png

nice job, ronan

lol carles

The emergence of Chicharito on the global soccer stage doesn't just threaten the upcoming era of the American soccer zeitgeist (sponsored by Nike). His superior skills and warranted hype expose the faults with the American fan's relationship with our national team and the marketed motivations to anoint a "next great thing." Freddy Adu is still "the face" of failed American hopes that were overmarketed, and the loss to Mexico coupled with his "solid performance" has sent my fandom into a spiral of darkness. Sort of like a fun college relationship that was only possible because you were young and still living on your parent's dime, but now that you have grown up and acquired a grim office job, you realize that you were living in a distorted version of reality.

I'm still riding really high from Landon Donovan's last-minute game winner against Algeria

This phrase or a variation on it appears in roughly 70 percent of articles on US soccer, and translates as This was the last soccer match I watched, or at least caught the highlights.

Will the general public finally accept and praise Clint Dempsey as the player who we actually wanted Landon Donovan to be?

"I first learned who Clint Dempsey was last month, but I'd heard of Donovan *at least* as far back as 2009. Dempsey's a year younger. Yeah, I think I can get away with writing this like it means something."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/sep/13/sergio-aguero-manchester-city

The only time Agüero sets his ball aside comes when he reaches for his new Puma boots – which he will wear for the first time against Napoli. Draping them around his neck, and clutching them happily, Agüero says: "If I could score a goal with these boots against Napoli it would be a great debut for me and City in the Champions League. Of course, winning the game is much more important but a goal would be nice."

interesting seeing this sort of thing slowly creep into the broadsheets... first time ever in the guardian iirc?

although i suppose it's only wishful thinking that any major "regular" interview these days would be any less of a product of club/pr/sponsor collusion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/may/18/robin-van-persie-arsenal

Similar photo in this piece, though the analogous product placement is a little subtler: "Everybody knows everything about each other," he said, at the launch of the new adidas adiPower Predator boot.

Say anything less anodyne in an interview and your club will launch an investigation, it seems.

V hard to get access to any of these guys unless it's tied to some big brand. Is why the BBC are doubly screwed.

I like that Agüero plays with plain black boots, it brings a touch of olde worlde tradition back to the EPL and I'll cling to anything these days.

― Ismael Klata, Sunday, September 11, 2011 1:21 PM (3 days ago)

FFS the real world can't even go a week without crushing me

i think this thread has made me realise that i don't like reading about football.

a ringing endorsement of ILF, that

I learnt a long time ago that if in the photo a player/manager is wearing an obvious sporting brand (as opposed to just their kit or normal attire) then you should be fine reading the first half the interview and then remember to stop because everything after that is just shilling you shit you don't want.

xp nah, i love discussion of football maybe more than i ever have, tbh. It's just lengthy written articles that fail to catch my interest.

What footballers have to say couldn't interest me less. I think pete and ithappens said it upthread, but you can't expect a player to have anything meaningful to say while they're still marketable, and even afer that there's few enough of them that engage. G Neville's been good, though. Was trying to watch sky sports saturday the last day and by the time merse and phil thompson had said their piece on stoke i was done. Pure ignorance, pubtalk, nothing bluster

been noticing recently that wayne rooney, especially in post match interviews, is just the most terrifyingly perfect of all footballers at coming out with the exact scripted straight bat responses every time. such a model automaton is he that you almost start to suspect sort of diabolical intelligence in him, idk

he doesn't blink

no he's quite natural! - like you can see in other players eyes they're restraining themselves - but natural only in saying the most artificial things

He's not though

yeah he's not though

he's completely white iirc.

Rooney's eyes are really weird, idk if it's just the way everything is filmed on BBC nowadays (well, like Dragons Den or the Apprentice where everyone has vivid eyes) but on Saturday's MOTD he looked like had doll's eyes, with quite long eyelashes. When he lies down they close gradually.

he has really long eyelashes tho, with very childlike eyes imo. Completely white.

he's completely white iirc.

this was fucked up

probably talked about on another thread, but it bears repeating

Think the NultBot 3000 might be a faulty prototype of this kind of thing tbh: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/20-companies-using-computer-generated-stories-save-money-on-writers_b37987

xpost Anyone wearing plain black boots is doing so only because they don't have a kit sponsorship deal, so they'd rather black out all logos than let someone put a logo on their feet for which no money has changed hands.

warms the cockles of yer heart

It has been thus for many years ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2001/may/07/mondaymediasection.football

yeah the subliminal stuff (and editorialising) i take as given but was it really ever thus that journos were forced to crowbar references to branded goods into the copy? maybe my memory is failing me but every time i see this it always rings a loud alarm

granted some journos are subtler about it (or less strongarmed, who knows) than others; it's one thing to be like "cattermole, speaking at hi-tec's free tibet campaign launch," rather than "cattermole sips his lucozade powervom fortified by minerals and ponders the question, a smile playing on his lips"

lol

That Aguero one upthread was quite startling, I grant you. My guess would be there was only one print slot available, and that was the promise extracted for a piece all the papers would have wanted. Doubt Ryan Shawcross, say, would get that quote published.

friend pointed out something similar to me from the cricket world the other day -

Just flicking through an evening standard. Small piece on surrey's cb40 semi final on sunday, with a few quotes from hamilton-brown. At the end, apropos of nothing, it says hamilton-brown is represented by the wasserman media group. What's that all about? Do u reckon he wouldnt talk to them unless they put that at the end?

Only when football catches up with the media model of American sport, where journalists are granted formalised and regular access to players

how does this work btw? centralised organisation is one thing sure but as a space for free media too?

I'm always slightly taken aback when in the aftermath of an NFL/NBA game you see a player at his locker with about 15 mics/tape recorders in his face being asked questions. The idea of 20+ print, radio and tv journo's in the dressing rooms at Old Trafford post game asking whatever the hell they want doesn't seem feasible tbh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/oct/29/players-managers-bad-challenges

hayward can be bad but this isn't

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2054847/John-Terry-scandal-Des-Kelly-Football-tolerate-blind-spot-racism.html

surprisingly considered stuff from ver mail

anyone read an issue of the green soccer journal? it looks great. but i have no idea as to the quality of the writing.

i read this spanish mag called panenka, it's great. if you can read spanish.

I never read tabloid journalism or listen to radio phone-ins relating to English football, but I wondered if you had a media that is as suspicious of the internet as our mob up here. Whenever there is a groundswell of support for an idea (e.g. Fans Against Criminalisation, the idea that Rangers may generally be fucked), it is always dismissed as the work of tinfoil-hat-wearing wotsit-munching mentalists rather than of functioning intelligent human beings with a useful means of contact and research and an ready-made audience at their fingertips. I just wondered if this was particular to the dinosaur media up here? (Hats off to STV though, their twitter presence and engagement is excellent)

I got a subscription to When Saturday Comes for Christmas. First issue arrived in the week. I'd never read it before but it's so excellent - short articles thus far, and every one interesting.