Shut up and show the football

When I was a kid there weren't that many pundits. There was the avuncular Saint and the impish Greavsie, the sainted Sir Jim, the other Jimmy, (the one with the chin) and a few others I can't really remember. For sure, the newspapers would have columns written by stars of yesteryear and the Beeb would wheel out Geoff Hurst every now and again to chat to Bob Wilson during the World Cup but the role of the pundit seemed a fairly low key one, mostly giving a balanced view, perhaps comparing a situation to one they faced as a player or a manager and maybe explaining a tactical switch or speculating about the likelihood of substitute. 

Not prone to pointless wind ups and pseudo controversy

Fast forward to today and it seems that they're everywhere. Radio 5 and Talksport, Sky, BT, podcasts and more offering opinions, opinions, opinions. You can't scroll down twitter without a quote or a selectively edited piece of expertise from someone who played a few seasons for Charlton being debated as if it's ancient Chinese wisdom. 

I remember when 606 started, hosted by Danny Baker. It was a funny and lively show in which Baker prompted discussion of football as a whole, including the rituals and experiences of the most important people in the game, the ones who allow it to be a professional sport - the supporters. I still play a game I heard on Baker's 606 nearly 30 years ago - me and my lad pass a pound coin back and forth every time the ball goes for a throw in. Whoever is holding the quid at the end is the winner of the coin. It adds a certain tension to a drab game, it can be played with any number of players and to be honest, is sometimes more exciting than the football. 3-0 down at home to Gillingham? Chuck an extra quid to the pot and game on! 

606 today is asinine rubbish that has never brought me anything remotely approaching useful knowledge. It's, like much of the football media, in thrall to the idea that the game is 'really important' and that black and white opinions should be argued to the death with no space for self deprecation or reflection on the bigger picture. Football is essentially meaningless chaos, a ball bouncing about within a few hundred square yards according to a few rules and frankly attempting to debate things like 'was his shoulder over the line?' as if it 'really matters' only serves to make it seem even more meaningless. Bring back descriptions of games on aircraft carriers, homemade kits and fellas with wooden bow ties.

Punditry has become essentially large scale trolling. 'Experts' using the airwaves to chuck out 'opinion' like 'It was/wasn't offside' 'Villa will go down/get into Europe' 'Liverpool are over/underrated' 'Ole is the right man/wrong man' etc. The more provocative the better. Nothing will get a fan base raging more than some sort of provocative statement and an angry fan base means angry phone calls and plenty of retweets with people quoting the clip with phrases like 'muppet' and 'look at this bell end' and thus exposure for the broadcaster. 

The odd thing is, at the top level, it feels as if the real battle is for 'respect' by the media. As if somehow 'credit' matters. As if column inches and radio or TV coverage is akin to points in the league. I've seen and heard Chelsea fans furiously condemning criticism of boring Frank calling it 'disrespect', Liverpool fans literally hours after winning their first title in thirty years turning their ire on 'the Utd bias' in the media, United fans slating BT sport for not demanding Ole's head on a plate as if they themselves are the United board. 606 is essentially just angry blokes ringing up to say 'Robbie, I liked you as a player mate, but you are bang out of order...' and proceeding to rant for a minute or two about the square root of fuck all in response to some stupid statement that Savage or Sutton or whoever has made despite the fact you can hear in their voice that it's this week's contrived opinion dreamt up 10 minutes before they went on air. 

What I don't get, is why it matters. No one likes us, we don't care and all of that. No set of pundits ever so much as awarded a free kick, let alone decided where three points went on a Saturday. Possibly it's being a fan of a team who don't get this kind of coverage or maybe my most impressionable football years being the 1980s, a time before the saturation coverage of the game and before social media. A time when, to be considered a controversial figure you had to have a bit of chutzpah and an impishness about you. I'm too young to remember Clough's 'win the league but win it better...' mischief but watching it back reveals a twinkly eyed devilment that only Jose comes close to possessing in the uber serious and terminally boring world of football. In other words, in a world where everyone is a wind up merchant and everyone is willing to be wound up, the artform is devalued significantly.

Everyone seems to be looking for 'controversy,' and a lot of the time it feels as if we're not watching or listening to a discussion but an attempt to trigger a response or a reaction. It's like experiencing a half baked misunderstood version of what what 'fan culture' is, as if all football fans do is go around trying to goad each other all the time. I mean, we do sometimes, but that's our business and it doesn't need mediating by people on telly. The satisfaction of a last minute winner against your rivals or watching their star player get sent off, miss an open goal or whatever is entirely between the two sets of supporters. 

I've never been entirely sure what the pundits are for beyond offering the odd word of insight here and there like 'well, he'll be disappointed to beaten at his near post' or 'they'll be hoping for a win today Alan' and the new breed of superstar ex pros baffle me even more. I frankly couldn't give a shit about how upset Patrick Evra or Roy Keane are about United being in the Europa League or whatever the controversy of the day is. Clough had it right when he picked a fight with the telly about showing more football and doing less talking. God knows what he'd make of the situation today where podcasts full of journalists spend as much time dissecting what was said in the Sky studio as they do the game itself. The podcasters then in turn get dissected on twitter for what they said in the podcast about what the people in the studio said and it goes on and on and on. It's like those shows that come on after shite TV shows that then talk about the shite show and make me want to kill everyone on earth and give the planet to the apes cos instead of flying to Mars, we're watching Big Brothers Little Brother. 

Football is full of people trying to insert themselves into the narrative. Trying desperately to be important by any means possible and I don't understand why we care so much about them. 

Don't get me started on fucking bloggers. The boring, wordy, self regarding cunts. 

When will this game finally eat itself? 

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