There is inherent marketing value in the name Manchester United. They are the most famous team in the most famous league in international soccer. So when a television company has the option of putting a United match or something else on TV, they opt for United. They have huge support and a lot of interested casual observers, so they'll pop a bigger rating than a game between Leicester City and Everton. It doesn't matter how good that match is.
Watching Manchester United feels like taking a sedative. They should be kicked off TV.
We need to talk about an international sporting tragedy: Manchester United getting TV time over teams that are good.
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But there's a problem: This edition of Manchester United is the worst team soccer fans have ever had shoved down their throats. Watching United has a way of making you feel like you've popped a sleeping pill and chased it with a swig of whiskey. Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick are essentially re-animated corpses. No one makes forward runs. And yet, United still gets the TV slots. We have to watch them or watch no English soccer at all.
Jose Mourinho's Chelsea teams from 10 years ago garnered similar complaints, but they weren't from the same universe. Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard scored a lot of goals. Michael Essien was a top-five player on earth. Claude Makelele was a master of a position he more or less invented. They weren't putting on scintillating spectacles, but at least they were great at soccer. United are just risk-averse.
This problem doesn’t present itself in other sports -- soccer is the only one where it’s possible to play great defense without doing anything fun. There is no anti-American football or anti-basketball. You have to play tough as nails and mess people up to play great defense in those sports. Scoreless baseball games are nail-biters, and regularly more entertaining than ones loaded with dingers. Boring, risk-averse hockey is possible, but is usually negated by the facts that a) hitting is legal and b) they’re playing on a damn sheet of ice. There is nothing else like a soccer team that has no plan or desire to score.
When you flip on a Lakers, Yankees or Cowboys game, there’s still a high probability that you’re going to see cool things. Old guys making great plays for the last time in their career! A comedy of errors! Entertaining opponents! But when you watch Manchester United, all you get is 11 guys standing around, scared of turning the ball over. Their opponents are afraid to attack them because the name on the front of their shirt still says “Manchester United,” while the names on the back say “Rooney” and “Mata,” but the time when these names meant something has long passed.
You will, perhaps, get a chance to laugh at United shooting themselves in the foot. Maybe you’ll groan/cheer at a defender bundling in a goal with his shoulder or thigh. But more likely than not, you’re going to watch two teams doing absolutely f-all for 90 minutes. You will feel like you’ve wasted your time.
"The recent defeats at Norwich and Stoke (and Bournemouth and Wolfsburg) at least carried some emotional value," wrote Jack Sargeant at The Busby Babe after an FA Cup match that featured zero open play shots on target. "Despair before amusement, hope for a result before a hope for van Gaal's swift sacking. But this contest offered nothing; as if staring into a footballing black hole with nothing to be seen nor felt but an interminable emptiness."
There’s an entire world outside of the room where you watch soccer, you might think. You don’t have to do this to yourself. You can go do something other than watching Manchester United on television. You’d be right! But if enough people think that, Sky and NBC have screwed up.
Because if the broadcasters are doing their jobs, you should never, ever think that you have something better to do than watch soccer on television. The Premier League is awesome. It has so many spectacular games, loveable players and brain-melting goals. It’s just that none of them ever come when Manchester United is on the pitch. They bring in ratings now, but as more and more people catch onto the fact that they’re irredeemably crap, that will change.
Please, throw this abysmal team into midday Saturday no-TV purgatory where they belong. Give us literally anyone other than these joy-sucking monsters.
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