Sky Sports cannot pretend mismatches like Manchester United v Liverpool are unmissable
Trust Sky Sports to oversell a game and pretend it will be 90 minutes of action. Manchester United v Liverpool was a masterclass in selling sh*t as sugar.
âWhen Manchester United play Liverpool, everyone has to watchâ, so spoke Sky. But surely that was a long time ago, when both were good. Now, not so much.
But thatâs Sky: over-selling a totally unequal contest, pretending something is what it isnât â in this case Manchester United being any good.
âThe first goal in this game is not necessarily a defining one,â urged the annoyingly breathlessly exaggerating Peter Drury after Liverpool scored, except of course it is and any understanding or appreciation of the teams would have told you so. But no, keep pumping it up, donât admit the truth, even though we can all see it. Dishonesty is the name of the game.
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It got the big build-up treatment, seemingly oblivious that theyâve done this hundreds of times before and have publicly soiled themselves while showing football which doesnât match their hyperbole. But no, this time it really is different.
Oh, waitâŠno itâs not.
The problem here is the modern mediaâs habit of pretending football is thrilling. Especially in the Premier League, which proffers lies and pretends theyâre truths all the time.
Football is not entertainment like a gig or the theatre. Part of its attraction is just being present on the terraces or in front of the TV. Grounds arenât full of people eager to see astonishingly brilliant football. They wouldnât mind, of course, but they are there because they are there. Present. âWeâre here because weâre here,â as the old chant goes.
Football doesnât attract millions all over the country because people expect to see exciting football. They go to be present and to do everything else they do on match days. Thatâs why 30,000-40,000 left Old Trafford before the end; they have been present, done their duty, seen them be rubbish and now thereâs something better to do.
Before football became a tool for media organisations to manipulate, we didnât expect it to be thrilling much of the time, even though it often was. I remember all the fanfare that came with Skyâs takeover. It really was âa whole new worldâ, one where lying about the game is shameless. Remember, they had pre-game cheerleaders initially. Thatâs how wrong they got it. They continue to pretend itâs something it isnât, then have to shame-facedly return from the break to accept â or more likely excuse â the tedium or dress up a few minor incidents as if theyâre exciting representations of the whole or make out the one entertaining game is proof of all games being wonderful. The fact that live games lose 50% of their audience once the game ends should tell them something.
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This isnât to complain about boring football. Almost all football Iâve ever seen has been largely boring for most of the 90 minutes. Itâs the birthright of a Middlesbrough fan. I especially love terrible, incompetent football and object to anyone who wants to pretend itâs brilliant. Try selling that. âTonight we have a game that is likely to be awful.â It would never happen. But it should.
And thatâs the problem. Itâs got to the point that a game rides in with Hollywood graphics and slow-motion action sequences with CGI graphics and soundtrack (or in the case of the Old Firm game on Sunday, a pretentious Gothic video in a graveyard â twice in an hour!), only to spend 90 minutes in the company of 22 blokes who may be better than almost anyone you know at playing football, but they spend a lot of time running forward 10 yards, turning and passing it back, then sideways, trying to play old-fashioned, outdated, possession football and itâs so boring. Letâs not pretend otherwise.
If I had one wish for the game, it would be for it to be presented to us in a way that is commensurate with our experience of it. Stop trying to turn sh*t into sugar. The producers think that unless they pretend that this upcoming Bournemouth game will be orgasmic, theyâll lose viewers, not thinking that those precious viewers have seen football before and know itâll likely be 75 minutes of pratting around and 15 of action. Itâs OK. Weâll be back again next week. Just stop lying to us.
If you want proof of the resilience of football fansâ desire to just be present, look how many thousands turn up to see relegation candidates play. Go to your local amateur side and youâll find 1,000 hardy souls enduring another skill-less game of hoofball.
What this âgreat entertainmentâ approach fails to grasp is how omniscient football is in our lives. Itâs not an entertainment event. Itâs not going to the theatre for a night out. That the match is just one part of a huge routine which nourishes and feeds our lives often doesnât seem appreciated. We donât or didnât expect Manchester United v Liverpool to be great. We know that one side is far better than the other, even if Sky doesnât. We just wanted to be present, for the occasion, to see what happens.
Not swallowing every piece of marketing is important for seeing things as they really are. Yet no, here comes the next load of unwarranted hype. Stop it. We donât need everything sugar-coated all the time. It just makes TV especially look ridiculous to have all this bated breath bullsh*t pre-game, only to show 85 minutes of boring nothingness and five of action. In fairness, there are exceptions, Mark Chapman is one who will certainly call a spade a f*cking sh*t shovel. Too many wonât.
Thatâs why Iâm cynical about the âbest league in the worldâ hype, like itâs a competition, or some sort of virility contest, not least because football almost anywhere else almost always seems more fun. Best League In The World? The only league Iâve heard of, more like, from the pundits who think Holstein Kiel is a lager.
We are well served by the amount of games on TV, but usually poorly served in almost every other way. Theyâve got football all wrong and take the wrong approach, only to be exposed as frauds when the football starts, time and again. Remember that time, many moons ago, when the BBC invited Danny Baker onto a broadcast? The fear was in everyoneâs eyes as they were terrified some truths might be told. He refused to take any of it seriously, and that revealed how invested they are in selling sh*t as sugar (especially on Sky and TNT). âItâs just football, you can say anything,â Danny proclaimed. Never a truer word was said, and to those who somehow think these ex-professionals have got greater insight into an essentially simple game, just listen to them next time thereâs a boring game, talking self-evident banalities.
It is especially ironic that so much of this hyperventilation is at a time when you could be forgiven for thinking the authorities have done all they can to make football less interesting, by letting VAR into the game, along with tinkering with some rules each season, and allowing massive financial disparities which are making the league uncompetitive, as West Ham fans saw this weekend in a game which if you didnât find boring, you were a City fan.
When you see games from the â90s, theyâre often wild affairs, especially big games. Thereâs nothing polite about them. We have seen a neutering of that since. Now is incomparable to that wild and untamed time and the wild untamed football.
The worst advert for football now is to show games from 30 years ago. Raw emotion has been replaced by self-conscious reflection and an obsession with documenting everything on a phone, even at peopleâs admitted own expense of happiness or joy.
Itâs a long time ago now, yet Sky tries to pretend itâs as entertaining as it once was. Itâs not. Thatâs not nostalgic or romantic; if you donât believe me, look at the crowds at a Premier League game in 1995 and compare their reactions to today. Itâs changed. And crowds are, if anything, even bigger. Yet at Old Trafford on Sunday, at times it was almost embarrassingly silent. Itâs not what it was and itâs not worth as much to pay to see, even though it costs more. The endless propaganda and marketing might have fooled some, but wiser heads know better. Theyâre living off an echo of what was and the proof is evident every week.
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