“Go on.”
The weird positivity of English television
When it comes to the big European games, English television often assumes that all its viewers are pulling in the same direction. They’re really, really not.
David Ramos
The first time it happened, it wasn’t quite clear exactly what it was. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t forceful. It wasn’t delivered into the microphone like most modern commentary, with an insistence that teeters on the edge of hectoring. If it was anything, it was an accident; words falling from a careless mouth, barely audible, perhaps imagined.
“Go on.”
Then it happened again, and there was no mistaking it. It was the first half in Munich. Arsenal were labouring and, though they hadn't yet conceded, they hadn't looked much like they were capable of scoring the goals they needed. Being charitable, they were at least keeping Bayern Munich contained; being harsh, the German side were playing in second gear. The one exception for the Londoners was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, whose direct running was not only unsettling the home defence, but also, apparently, exciting ITV's co-commentator Andy Townsend to the point of unthinking ejaculation. In the old-fashioned sense, you understand. There's no suggestion that he was that excited.
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Being a commentator, or being a commentator’s wingperson, is in many ways a thankless business. Accurately describing what is happening in front of you is difficult enough; doing so in a way that is interesting, disinterested, enthusiastic, entertaining, informed, informative, and even-handed is, well, possibly impossible, which is why everybody spends so much time shouting at their television.
Even-handedness is paramount. Bias, or even the suggestion of bias, is the one thing that no commentator can be seen to be indulging. There’d be letters. There’d be tweets. There’d be even more letters and tweets than there are now. But there are two exceptions. The first is international football, which sort of makes sense. The second — in the heads of those in televisionland, at any rate — is when an English team ventures into Europe. Then an ancient and peculiar supposition comes into force: the idea that the country is, at least to some extent, lining up to support their representatives.
Perhaps there once was a golden time of total, mutual national support. When cheery Spurs fans waved Arsenal supporters off to the continent, then gathered around the wireless to cheer every goal their closest compatriots managed to get past the continentals. Perhaps this attitude still exists to a certain extent, particularly when some club from outside the traditional cartel at the top find themselves, by accident or design, playing European football. Even Leeds briefly approached something resembling likeability, back in the days of that giddy charge to the semi-finals. At least by their own standards.
But it's far from the default. Apart from anything else, the Champions League clubs are not easy for a neutral to warm to. Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea: these are not likeable institutions. Even Arsenal, with their pretty football and their pious glow, get on their fair share of wicks for reasons both reasonable and un-. Fans of the other "big" clubs want to see their rivals humiliated, their morale smashed and their momentum stalled, since any edge is a vital one in the race for fourth. Increasing numbers of people will have acquired a Spanish club, a German club, a Greek club, or whatever, and will prioritise their ends over those of some other side that just happen to play in the same league.
Perhaps there are wider reasons as well. The expansion of the Champions League may have played a role: as domestic rivalries were extended onto the European stage, so the stage itself because slightly diminished. It makes sense to set aside traditional rivalries for something genuinely special, but for Liverpool vs. Chelsea, Mourinho vs. Benitez, Chapter 37? Not so much. And as the bigger clubs jockey for position in the larger global scheme of things, their eyes scanning distant horizons for dollars and yen, there is a natural sense of dislocation. The sense that domestic football isn't necessarily their priority.
This doesn’t mean that everybody sitting down to watch Arsenal playing Bayern Munich the other night were doing so in the hope that Arsenal were going to get torn to pieces. (Apart from anything else, Bayern are vastly irritating as well.) Most will have been hoping for a good game of some kind, and everybody will have their own definition of “good game”. But very few will have been doing so in the active hope that Arsenal will get through. For most neutrals, the result is less important than the spectacle. And a good spectacle for the neutral doesn’t necessarily mean a good result for Arsenal.
That perhaps is the key. Arsenal, United, City, Chelsea: all are playing in the Champions League because they were, last season, better at football than everybody else in England. There is only one thing in the universe funnier than somebody falling on their face, and that’s somebody who is better than you and knows it falling on their face. Recall John Terry slipping to his knees as Arsenal skelped Andre-Villas Boas’s Chelsea a few seasons back. Now extrapolate that out to a team performance and you’ve got Olympiakos 2-0 Manchester United. United fans aside, no result this season has done more to unite the disparate strands of England’s football support in joy.
Hubris-fuelled collapse and emergent physical comedy
Back to televisionland then. Football coverage has never really got to grips with this kind of thing; the serious coverage veers between the shouty and the chatty, while the comedy stuff tends to overlook the actual behaviour patterns of human beings in favour of ultra-ritualised and vaguely terrifying banter. But football does many things well, and one of its finest expressions is an intoxicating blend of hubris-fuelled collapse and emergent physical comedy. The presumption that much television makes — of either benign neutrality or active boosterism on the part of the viewer — sits poorly with the reality of following football, which is that a lot of time is spent laughing at something, be that thing a player, a club, or just the innate comic timing of the universe. Sometimes in a cruel way; sometimes just because it’s funny. The world is a silly place, and our hobby is a silly thing. Once, just once, it would be a pleasure to hear a television presenter turn to his guests, smile, then turn to the camera and say “With apologies to any Arsenal fans watching ... that was hilarious.”
Not going to happen, of course. There’d be letters. There’d be tweets.
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