If you go into a bookshop, and buy a classic novel, the chances are only three-quarters of the pages you pay your money for will be the book itself. The rest will be an explanation of the writing techniques, and attempts at analysis and finding a deeper meaning. You may resent paying the few extra pence for someone’s opinion that you may not care about, and you may even find that it detracts from the book’s style. But all said and done, it’s small change - the deeper reading is only there for you if you want it. Unfortunately, the same does not apply to Match Of The Day. Or, really, to any other highlight programme.
On Match Of The Day’s Untenable Middle Ground
Analysis on television may have reached a dismal nadir, leading to calls for more intelligent and insightful commentary. The solution? Stop the lectures altogether and show some football.
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A man called Roland Barthes famously said ‘the death of the author is the birth of the reader’ - a statement emphasising the subjective and personal reading the individual can have. Tragically, however, he was mown down by a laundry van before he could point out that this statement does not apply to the medium of television, with it’s all-or-nothing intake - we do not switch off the parts we don’t like, for fear of missing something good. If there is analysis, particularly in between games, it will have to be watched. We do not have the choice of joining or ignoring the discourse - it’s forced upon us.
This is a compromise. Analysis on television exists in the middle-ground between those who prefer depth and analysis, and those who prefer moving images of football being played. Since Jimmy Hill’s innocent idea of getting some suits together to fill up the breaks, we’ve been forced to endure ever-more painful and cliched analysis from unlikeable stuffed shirts, which has recently combined with the modern refusal to let their own personal view be just that - personal. Every form of communication and media is engaged with futile discussion, with interactivity heralded as the future as people create their own, more cultured analysis. So surely Match of the Day and its ilk must follow?
Wrong. There is a pressing need to alter the analysis on these programmes - by removing it altogether. Bloggers crave deeper analysis - for ‘deeper’, you can read longer, and for ‘longer’, you can read ‘less time to show actual football.’ The Football League Show, if we ignore some of the most inane emails you’ll ever hear, is a fine model to follow. It recognises the reason most people watch football - to watch, relive, or discover their team’s result and performance, and to see some good goals and people being kicked up in the air elsewhere in the country. In the interests of fairness, analysis for one means analysis for all - and there are more unwatchable 1-0 wins on a single Saturday than that sort of rigour can sustain.
Analysis, unlike commentary (and montages - more of those please, BBC) makes no addition to the atmosphere and enjoyability of the occasion. Snippets of Motson and his ilk will go down in history, from the all-time classics such as “They think it’s all over”, to ones that aren’t even very good or clever (“And Soslkjaer has won it”, “It’s up for grabs now.”) Even now, on pitches up and down the country, it is customary to emphasise any long-range effort with a war-cry of “Yebooaaahhhhh!” before slicing it into the corner flag. It all adds to the immediacy and urgency of the whole affair - the high-octane excitement. Analysis, from “And he’s done very well here”, to the rare insightful comments, simply don’t have the sense of occasion, and will be forgotten.
The former middle-ground between those desperate for details and those who’d rather focus on the men kicking the ball into the goal has shrunk to extinction. The former have become more pretentious, vociferous, and numerous, and move in their own circles for which entry can be obtained at as cheap a price as sharing the backslapping in-jokes about the poverty of the TV equivalent. As for the ones who’d rather concentrate on the football, well, they’re either neanderthals, or part of the increasing number of people bored of such pontificating. Football, so they say, used to be fun.
Callum Hamilton is co-editor of Surreal Football.
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