My ‘merican husband (otherwise known as my significant alien -SA) was getting a bit miffed during the England/USA match on Saturday. I’m not sure who the British commentator was but he was getting under his skin. So I had a listen, and he seemed to be making very normal commentator-y comments to me. He sounded comfortingly familiar, in fact.
But SA wasn’t having it. ‘There he just did it again – why did he have to say it was an unfortunate way for us to get a goal’. ‘Well wasn’t it?’ I thought.
And then he read the British press reports of the game and came back puzzled. ‘I just don’t get it’, he said. ‘Everyone’s blaming the goalie but nobody’s saying how well the American defence played’.
And it occured to me that when you get an unhappy result, you can blame the shortcomings of your team or you can praise the skills of your competitors. And I wonder if the latter might be more favoured here – positive politeness and all that.
But then I thought a bit more and reckoned SA just wanted his team to get more credit. Ha!
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Hi Vicki,
I watched the match via Sky in Spain and had to turn over in the end, not because of the poor performance (although that was a factor) but because of the commentary of the ITV team.
Phrases such as ‘we should breeze this’ and ‘we’re by far the better side’ struck me as horrendously arrogant, especially given the eventual result.
I made some sniffy comment about ‘this never happening on the BBC’ (the matches seem to be shared across the terrestrial channels – apologies to all true footie fans who probably have all the fixtures memorised – I’m just a tourist!).
Maybe most Brits are convinced that you are courting disater if you indulge in this kind of unseemly self-promotion!
Oh welcome Jennifer and nice to meet you. Thank you for these thoughts. I hope you’re right about the BBC, but I don’t feel too confident. Have other folks noticed any examples of arrogant British commentators?
It’s important to keep all this in perspective.
As Bill Shankley – legendary Liverpool manager – said “I get very upset when people say football is a matter of life and death. i can assure you it’s much more important than that.”
I think commentators are very, very biased, always, and they often say the most stupid of things.
there were a lot of stories circulating about comments that the English commentators made about the Japanese referee.
An event like The World Cup can generate a lot of latent racism as well.
Fortunately some people have fun too.
A lot of football comment derides defensive display because we overvalue the striker and think about the game as goals – see transfer fees for top striker versus top defender – and so many analysts describe a game in terms of the success or not of the goal scoring.
I met an Italian fan once who explained that the perfect result is 0-0 as then no one had made a mistake.
But you have to love the “theatre” and the recent story to top stories is that it’s all because some teams (including “arch enemies” Germany and the USA) have had more time to practice with the ball!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jun/15/world-cup-franz-beckenbauer-england
Ha ha ha. That is funny. This reminds me of the Olympics when the British commentators will go on and on about the brave Brit snatching 8th place in the 5000 meters with very little mention of the 3 Kenyans who have almost lapped the rest of the field.
Oh , and i meant to say, your man shouldn’t take the English arrogance personally, it is not directed at JUST the Americans.
remember that when the “scandal” broke around the English captain some months back, the biggest concern of all the commentators was – who was going to lift the cup over their head at the end of the final.
Oh good thought, Pumpkin Dan!
I now think that commentator might have been Martin Tyler and I gather there was some delight when he was signed up for the job because he’s well respected in the UK. But no delight from the ‘merican audience in our house, obviously. Think they might need to find ‘merican commentators for footie to take off here.
Chris, love that Bill Shankley quote!
I’m afraid I’m a poor person to discuss football with. The games themselves go over my head, but I do like the stories behind them and the reactions, so I very much appreciate the “theatre” bit.