Alex Hendley has had enough of incessant, wall-to-wall televised football.
He gives his opinion on watching the Premier League in lockdown
It was once my ambition to work in football media – I trained as a journalist, completed work placements at a handful of football clubs and broadcasters, and wrote or spoke about the sport in much of my spare time.
It comes as a surprise to my former self, therefore, that I am now sitting down to write an article about how much I despise watching football.
Why? Because I hate, with almost every fibre of my being, watching live football on television – the only way currently permitted to do so. The unholy trinity of Premier League broadcasters, Sky, BT and Amazon, each lay waste to a part of my soul via slightly different, but equally blood-boiling, means.
To summarise, Sky’s entire coverage drives me close to furious insanity, Amazon forces me to choose between following football and retaining my insufferable virtue, and due to not having a BT subscription a close friend of mine (definitely not me) is forced to finding dreadful, unreliable streams just to listen to Steve McManaman over-stress the name ‘Fletch’ for the 13th time and, as a result, punch a 13th hole in his living room wall.
However, a mere summary of my anger does not suffice.
For context, I am writing this the day after witnessing my team, Burnley, produce one of the worst displays of football in recent memory – the 0-0 draw with 10-man West Bromwich Albion could have driven even the perpetually ecstatic Micah Richards to early retirement from punditry, citing a lack of love for the game.
Luckily for Micah, he wasn’t burdened with discussing Burnley and the Baggies’ international war crimes. But then again, nobody was. The challenge to televise every single Premier League game has been met by a certain number of sacrifices – the Saturday 3pm match on Sky often comes presenter and studioless – and while this is understandable it is still a kick in the teeth for the type of club that tends to be lumped into this slot.
A fixture such as Arsenal v Manchester United gets, on average, three and a half months of build up from Sky Sports; I know there’s going to be a ‘Top Six’ clash further in advance than I do my own family members’ birthdays, yet Burnley v West Brom was only begrudgingly granted a meaningless 15-minute preamble.
At half-time, we were graced by a few words from the commentators as though we were watching Premier League TV – all that was missing was an advert for the league’s official sleeping pill partner. With the game done and dusted, we received a stately address from Graeme Souness for a suggestion of analysis before the Sky Squad moved on to discuss a game they actually cared about.
Now, I am not under any allusions here – the subsequent Merseyside derby was, of course, a fixture that meant much more to a much greater number of people, as well as neutrals. It was also always going to contain a superior level of talent and entertainment, but that doesn’t really dilute the insult dealt to two shite teams, every Saturday afternoon.
But Sky can’t do everything for everyone, right? I’m asking too much for them to treat Burnley the same way they treat Liverpool, it’s true. At least it’s balanced out by their comprehensive, dramatic and engaging coverage of the ‘big’ games though, surely?
Not a chance.
Sky’s coverage of the biggest fixtures is truly and purely insufferable. The wheeling out of Roy Keane because he occasionally abuses somebody and now has an Instagram account is boring and borderline backwards, while the off-topic musings of Martin Tyler, accentuated by his belief that screaming ‘AND IT’S LIVE’ into an empty stadium is completely normal, are enough to make me wish I was watching Clive Tyldesley’s conservatory videos on loop.
I could write an entire article on Tyler’s ability to completely ignore a promising attack, a superb piece of skill or a blinding save in favour of describing his journey up the M6, but I’d be wasting my time on a man who clearly hasn’t been interested in football for about nine years.
With Sky, you are either watching an accidental livestream that somebody in the control room forgot to turn off, or you’re muting the commentary on a ‘clash of the titans’ Super Sunday to try and convince yourself that you do actually still enjoy sport.
On the other side, Jake Humphrey’s turtleneck has given birth to his head just in time for his mouth to grill one of the BT Sport Dads about a contentious VAR decision. Owen Hargreaves is dialling in from his bathroom to be put in his place by Chris Sutton, who is sat approximately five miles away from Mark Pougatch in his Davros chair, resembling Warwick Davies presenting an episode of Tenable where none of the contestants have ever met each other and nobody knows the rules – just like an actual episode of Tenable.
I don’t know if that is what happens on BT Sport – I do not have a subscription – but it is the impression I have gained from the ‘Football on BT Sport’ Twitter page retweeting their own videos five times an hour.
To find a dodgy stream – rendering your ancient laptop useless for the next three days – just to listen to Peter Walton defend the indefensible is a little like cutting off your nose to spite your face, but you’re actually cutting off your entire face just to feel something on a Saturday lunchtime.
Amazon’s coverage, conversely, I have no qualms with. Clued up pundits, a solid presenting team and the best commentators in the business, Bezos’ boys are the pick of the bunch. Which is why it’s so god damn painful to watch.
Endlessly restarting free trials of Prime so I can enjoy the Champion-McCoist commentary double pivot without paying a penny to Jeff ‘Really Bad Bloke’ Bezos is tiresome and, deep down, I’m aware that even my presence as a viewer is likely lining Baldy’s pockets in one way or another anyway.
What hammers the nail into my hatred coffin is just how much football there is. Without wanting to echo the sentiments of Mitchell and Webb’s ‘Watch the Football!’ sketch too heavily, it simply never stops and I, a mere mortal, cannot keep up.
A key example: tuning into Everton’s long-awaited victory at Anfield on Saturday evening, I saw something – nay, someone – I had never seen before in my life. Ozan Kabak.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ I exclaim to a room of people uninterested in football, not listening to a word of my outrage. This man, with his full name across the back of his shirt, was playing for Liverpool in a Merseyside derby, and I had never seen, or heard of, him before in my life.
The incessant nature of lockdown football has meant I have had to pick and choose what information is retained, what is lost, and what is never picked up at all. There are entire 90-minute segments of football this season that I have watched but have no memory of. There are players I have no idea exist and controversies, arguments and dramas I have chosen to ignore out of fear I’ll forget something actually important to me, like my own name.
I cancelled my subscription to The Athletic because I wasn’t convinced that I knew who Ezri Konsa was, never mind why I’d be interested in him having the most consistent expected lobbed passes in his own third of any player who wears the number 4, and I don’t listen to the radio because, well, it’s all on television. In short, my knowledge of football since this time last year has plummeted.
All of this, everything I have just written, is of course only the case because of the coronavirus. It is not that I despise watching football, as such, it is more precisely the act of having to follow every inch of it from my sofa. I no longer receive the respite from Sky Sports that is going on the Turf, visiting a new ground as a neutral or even just having a Tuesday night where there aren’t any fixtures. It’s just the same teams, with the same commentators, from the same sofa, at the same time, every night.
And yet, I have no desire to stop. Tuning in to the day’s two or three games has sunk and set into lockdown’s concrete in the same way opening my work laptop at the same time, eating my dinner in the same seat and Zoom calling my family on the same day each week has.
I’d quite possibly feel lost and slightly empty without it, yet I do genuinely hate it. And on that note, I’m off to settle in for Arsenal v Manchester City – I’ve heard Tyler’s commentating.
Feature image: Twitter – @premierleague
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