Very interesting article on how to improve TV football coverage

[Maldini]

http://thissportinglife.net/2010/07/22/whats-wrong-with-soccer-broadcasting-soccer-vs-american-sports-part-4/

 

 

The job of sports broadcasters is to help viewers see the order and intention where the untrained eye sees only chaos. We expect broadcasters to be experts of the game. (By “broadcasters” I mean the entire team, from the people who plan and select the camera angles and design or use replay and “telestrator” technology, to the commentators of the live action and the analysts in the studio during intermissions or in special shows between matches.) The ability to “see” order and intention where the untrained eye sees only randomness is the mark of the expert. An expert in a sport is able to “see” tactics in the way a dermatologist can quickly distinguish dangerous from benign moles, or the detective can reconstruct a crime and a motive where others see only a crime scene marked off with yellow tape.

 

Broadcasters are also educators: their job is to help us see, or at least think we see, the way they can. Moreover, they are educators with huge budgets and all the illustrative technology you could ever want at their disposal. This is why it is so disheartening that the anonymous author or authors of the soccer blog Zonal Marking could shine so much more light on the World Cup matches than the big networks with hours of daily airtime and some of the greatest stars in living memory sitting around tables. Zonal Marking did it on a shoe-string budget with essentially PowerPoint technology — single-frame screen shots from a television, with colored dots and arrows, and a few brief sentences. (Check out any of their game analyses from their home page, but look in particular at the multi-part breakdown of the final, beginning here.) It’s so easy to see how this approach could be adapted and improved on television; and so frustrating that it rarely is.

 

It rarely is in soccer broadcasting, that is. American football broadcasters are the masters of this art, and as a result they have surely created, especially over the past couple of decades, the most well informed fans of any sport. This is all the more remarkable given that only a tiny minority of American football fans have ever actually played the sport in an organized league (with full padding and full contact).

 

I can’t claim to have a comprehensive familiarity with every show on every sports network in every soccer-loving country, and I guess I would still be surprised if there weren’t some useful shows here and there. But I have watched domestic leagues, World Cups, European Championships, and the Champions’ League, in several countries over three decades, and the dire state of coverage for the average viewer seems to be the norm.

 

Earlier in the spring I had a three-part rant against the mass-media analysis and broadcasting of hockey (beginning here) in North America, and virtually everything I said there applies equally to the broadcasting of soccer. This shouldn’t be entirely surprising, for two reasons. First, both hockey and soccer are at the most “flowing” end of the spectrum of sports, where set-plays are rarer and offensive and defensive tactics and play are intermingled at most times. This explains why it is much more difficult to “see” and to explain what is going on tactically in these two sports.

 

But a second feature they both share might account for generations of complacency in the culture of broadcasting. Hockey in Canada, and soccer in most of the countries where it is big, enjoyed decades of near-monopoly for the passions of mass team-sports fans. And in many of these countries (especially in Europe) games were shown on state-owed TV networks with no incentives to improve the already-popular broadcasts.

 

Innovation in the basic broadcasts of soccer games themselves is now difficult because the biggest and most important games and tournaments are international in scope and seem to use a standard feed that goes out to all of the national networks, one which will inevitably stick to the lowest-common-denominator formula. Namely, no matter how many cameras you have around and above the stadium, 98% of the live footage should come from the one camera mounted high up on one side of midfield, along with a few close-ups here and there of the player on the ball.

 

So what would an ideal live broadcast look like?

 

Let’s assume we’re broadcasting for fairly large, high-definition screens. Sure, these aren’t yet universal in the developed world, and far from it in the developing world. But let us consider what would be best, and then imagine that a somewhat different broadcast could be delivered to older screens.

 

• Much more use should be made of other camera angles, and for extended periods (at least 30 seconds to a minute). And as much as possible, we should be liberated from that awful high mid-field side camera. Offensive and defensive tactics are all about space, zones of responsibility, and match-ups within and between these zones. But that standard camera serious distorts and compresses space; it gives the impression that the pitch is at least one-third narrower.
• There should be much greater use of cameras that are high and behind each goal. We should be able to watch how teams carry the ball out of their own end (or from goal kicks). We should be shown from time to time what this movement up field looks like from behind the attacking team as well as from the point of view of the defending team. This camera could allow us to see all 22 players (or 21 as it moves far enough away from the keeper out of play). It will compress the length of the pitch, but it will magically reveal the lateral spaces.
• There should be at least some extended live sequences using a camera directly above the center of the pitch, and capable of showing the entire pitch. Again, this would be a great way to see a goal kick and the ensuing midfield battles, not least because it would make it easier for the commentators to discuss and illustrate the two teams’ basic formations, shapes, and favored match-ups. This camera should also be used extensively for in-game replays and explanations of just about every goal or good scoring opportunity.
• A camera directly over the penalty area showing 21 players should be used for every replay of a corner kick, and even live during corner kicks some of the time. The current convention for the live shot of a corner kick reveals almost nothing to the untrained eye.
• Speaking of corner kicks and set plays in general: a little help with explaining away the apparent randomness and chaos would help. These make up the few moments when soccer stops, briefly, being a pure flow sport. Teams practice these set-pieces for hours every week. I presume they have a number of distinct ways to run each of these plays, with specific assignments for each player, and a rich vocabulary to distinguish the different plays and the assignments of each player. In three decades of watching soccer on TV, and I’ve never been given any indication that most of these set-pieces were any more tactically complicated than a coin flip.
• There seems to be in most soccer cultures a distinct aversion to “American-style” statistical analysis. And there are of course plenty of fairly unhelpful pieces of data — or at least data that do not in themselves tell much of the story. The percentage-of-possession stats seem especially unhelpful. Shots, shots-on-goal, and corner kicks are also less than reliable as a way of evaluating which team had the better of the play, but they are better than nothing. What would be more helpful would be some aggregate statistic not from the game per se, but from a large number of games involving the teams or players. What percentage of corner kicks and direct free kicks are successful at various levels (e.g. in World Cups, in the Premiership or Champions’ League), and which teams or players seem to have a significantly better chance of either scoring or not being scored on in these situations? Is anybody tracking data on errors by individual goalkeepers in general, or on corner kicks and free kicks in particular? If the viewer is supposed to get more excited when set-piece plays are about to happen, wouldn’t it be useful to tell the viewer what the rough odds are? In any case, soccer broadcasting doesn’t have to be flooded with useless data. It reveals less than it does in taking-turns sports (especially baseball). But objective information can further what should be the mission of a sports broadcast: to help us see order and intention in what looks like randomness.
• There’s no particular reason why the second person in the booth has to be a former player, let alone an inarticulate former striker (they seem to be over-represented, don’t they?). What we need is someone who is explaining to the viewer the sorts of things the manager will have been explaining to the players in preparing for the game. We want to know what should be going on in the heads of the players and the manager. So why not have more managers in the booth? And not just any managers, but the ones with a reputation for tactical acuity.

So much for how to improve live broadcasts. (Further suggestions in the comment section, below, are of course welcome.) In fairness, they can never be as enlightening as NFL or baseball broadcasts for the simple reason that there is not all of that dead space to fill in between plays. But most broadcasts of big soccer matches include pre-game, half-time, and post-game shows, often with an hour or more to kill. This is the most disheartening time of all for a soccer connoisseur. We see endless replays of goals, near-goals, and bad calls. There is a strong need to settle on a basic narrative (especially after the match) and this will almost always be couched in psychologistic (if not moralistic) language about how much effort or heart the key players put into it. If a key offensive play-maker has a bad game (which often means that he was strangely invisible) it is attributed to his failings, rather than to the way he was neutralized by the defensive tactics.

 

So what should post-game shows look like?

 

In a sentence: they should look like a cross between the sort of thing we see at ZonalMarking.net and what we see on the ESPN show called NFL Matchup. This half-hour weekly show makes extensive use of the overhead footage the league provides to the teams after each game, as well as footage from above and behind either the offensive or defensive formations. They look for key plays (not always successful ones) to illustrate tactics and the responsibilities of players with or away from the ball to make the whole play work. They stop and start the slow motion replay. Illustrate on the screen, focus on where the players are looking and how this informs or deceives the players they are matched up with, and so on. They might take two minutes to explain a play that lasted for seven seconds, because that is how long it takes to let us know what the players and coaches are thinking about and trying to accomplish. In addition to using this kind of game film in soccer analysis (and we know the teams themselves use it), analysts could also introduce viewers to some of the computerized tracking and analysis tools the teams are using to better understand formations and players’ tendencies. These have been around since Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s pioneering work with Dynamo Kiev in the 1970s, but I don’t think I have even seen a demonstration of what it is that coaches can analyze in games with the help of computers and tracking technology. Why wouldn’t that make for enlightening TV?

 

Well, they could do all that. Or they could just continue to ignore most of the real core of the tactical encounter and fall back on the comfort of luck, of ethnic and national stereotypes, of pointing out who “wanted it” more, or who was lazy, or of how the referee handed the winners the match.

 

 

[Kahnee]

It's a very long article - does it mention shooting Andy Gray, Craig Burley and anyone who works for ITV?

[Gunga Din]

they should bring back Andy Townsends tactics truck. and then use it to run Andy Townsend over

 

 

[Maldini]

It's a very long article - does it mention shooting Andy Gray, Craig Burley and anyone who works for ITV?

 

Not by name, worth reading though, makes some excellent points.

[Stevie H]

yeah good piece that. for some reason there's a real look down the nose thing about the excellent zonalmarking website as there is about a lot of jonathan wilson's articles, and they're just top notch football analysis. actually i know exactly why it is, as do we all.

 

think the article could have mentioned how french, spanish and italian tv all manage to have intelligent, informed analysis and punditry within their football coverage. on here people talk about the MOTD2 show when strachan and houllier dissected a couple of performances in terms that most had never heard as some kind of holy grail of football coverage, but that's the way it should be all the time. and there's no reason why it shouldn't be, apart from pandering to the lowest common denominator muppets. i wonder if english football coverage could ever separate itself from the country's tabloid mentality? don't think it would ever get the viewing figures really, it would need a really brave cable channel to do it but they probably couldn't afford to buy the rights to show the highlights.

[Maldini]

I think it needs a brave producer with a bit of a budget in order for it to happen. You'd need a team of a few people doing the analysis on the fly during the game and preparing the clips. You'd also need a bigger team preparing statistics and analysis during the week. It wouldn't be that hard to do, but it would need a change of mindset. At the moment the attitude is that the audience is too stupid to understand the intricacies of the game. The author's point about US fans is very interesting though. American football fans really do know their s*** and the tactical side of their game is WAY more complicated than ours. The set-piece angle is interesting as well though, we never see ANY analysis of set-pieces apart from a token "he's lost his man there Richard" comment. Teams use the same set-piece tactics all the time, but we're never shown what they are or told how successful they are, or if their back post corners have a higher success ratio than their near post corners. There's clearly an audience for this sort of thing as we've seen with Jonathan Wilson and Zonalmarking.net, I hope their success is a sign of a move in the right direction.

[stressederic]

they should bring back Andy Townsends tactics truck. and then use it to run Andy Townsend over

 

Would we be able to watch it on instant replay from different angles?

[betterman]

I think it needs a brave producer with a bit of a budget in order for it to happen. You'd need a team of a few people doing the analysis on the fly during the game and preparing the clips. You'd also need a bigger team preparing statistics and analysis during the week. It wouldn't be that hard to do, but it would need a change of mindset. At the moment the attitude is that the audience is too stupid to understand the intricacies of the game. The author's point about US fans is very interesting though. American football fans really do know their s*** and the tactical side of their game is WAY more complicated than ours. The set-piece angle is interesting as well though, we never see ANY analysis of set-pieces apart from a token "he's lost his man there Richard" comment. Teams use the same set-piece tactics all the time, but we're never shown what they are or told how successful they are, or if their back post corners have a higher success ratio than their near post corners. There's clearly an audience for this sort of thing as we've seen with Jonathan Wilson and Zonalmarking.net, I hope their success is a sign of a move in the right direction.

 

We need a producer with moral courage

[Maldini]

We need a producer with moral courage

 

...who takes each game on it's merits

[Swipe]

Sky Sports have has some horrible ads this summer.

 

I'd like to shoot Jamie Redknapp.

[Superjay]

Sky Sports have has some horrible ads this summer.

 

I'd like to shoot Jamie Redknapp.

 

Really? I quite liked the new one for the football with the kids.

 

How they didn't realise it was a bad idea while filming is beyond me. They are talking the p155 out of themselves by analyzing a game on children...... only thing is the analysis and coverage is exactly like that.

[Flight]

Brilliant article in the OP. Love to see the suggested kind of coverage of our games.

[John Nada]

It's true that the Americans have it down stone cold when it comes to sports broadcast. When over in the states watching American Football I was blown away by how in depth the coverage is, and how tactically knowledgeable the people who have been watching for years were.

 

My lady is American, and knew nothing about football/soccer. She started watching just to share an interest with me. Now, I can't wait to roll out the "Americans are thick, follow a proper sport" banter. However, I was soon embarrassed when after briefly getting her up to date with the rules of the game she was explaining tactics to me and making calls she was seeing that most a*****s, including myself in most cases, would never have picked up on.

 

Bottom line is, I want Andy Gray dead. Now. Right now. In fact that f***** ruins playing xbox FIFA as well, with amazing insights such as "if you don't hit the target you're never going to score". REEEEEAAAAAALLLLLY? "What did you think of that shot Andy?" "Well he kept it down, but he didn't get it on target". REAAAAAAALLLLLY?

 

He needs to die, and those just like him.

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

UK coverage is only interested in sensationalism, they'd rather a bad call from a ref that they can micro-analyze for hours & predict the effect on the clubs than a screaming goal

[The Hitman]

This may not be particularly relevant,but Mark Kermode made a very good point with regard to Inception the other day,basically saying that he hopes it's successful at the box office because that would prove to Hollywood execs and the rest,that the audience they're dealing with is capable of watching an intelligent and thought-provoking film (and not just any old garbage).

 

I think the same goes for footie coverage and punditry. I don't believe that the average joe on the street is so stupid that any form of rational and insightful analysis would be beyond them,like somebody else said,it'll just take a brave producer to do so.

[CarraLegend]

Speaking of Sky.

 

Keys is being dumbed down now apparently. Ben Shepherd will be splitting a lot of premier league and CL games with him. They say Keys is still important etc but hopefully this is the beginning of the end.

 

Dunno what Shepherd will be like but he cant be any worse so its all good. Hopefully the only time we see Keys on sky next year is when he has a heart attack on air and dies.

[Maldini]

I've seen Ben Shepherd talk about football before and he's surprisingly knowledgable, this might not be a bad thing. Whether he'll be allowed speak sense on Sky is another thing. Less Keys cannot be bad though.

[Hassony]

Ben Shepherd is a decent footballer too

[budgie]

I think it needs a brave producer with a bit of a budget in order for it to happen. You'd need a team of a few people doing the analysis on the fly during the game and preparing the clips. You'd also need a bigger team preparing statistics and analysis during the week. It wouldn't be that hard to do, but it would need a change of mindset. At the moment the attitude is that the audience is too stupid to understand the intricacies of the game. The author's point about US fans is very interesting though. American football fans really do know their s*** and the tactical side of their game is WAY more complicated than ours. The set-piece angle is interesting as well though, we never see ANY analysis of set-pieces apart from a token "he's lost his man there Richard" comment. Teams use the same set-piece tactics all the time, but we're never shown what they are or told how successful they are, or if their back post corners have a higher success ratio than their near post corners. There's clearly an audience for this sort of thing as we've seen with Jonathan Wilson and Zonalmarking.net, I hope their success is a sign of a move in the right direction.

 

 

I'm really not sure about the budget piece. I definitely agree it needs a brave producer. What you need are pundits that actually understand the game and can articulate their understanding. BBC & ITV (etc) have gone with "big names". The coverage on RTE is great from my perspective. They do try to go a little deeper on tactics and have a lot of entertainment factor in there as well. It's a balance because getting into very detailed tactics would be boring to a lot of people.

[drdooom]

Canal+ has post game shows like the one described there, and good pundits to go with it. Very enjoyable, I'll miss it this season.

[Maldini]

I'm really not sure about the budget piece. I definitely agree it needs a brave producer. What you need are pundits that actually understand the game and can articulate their understanding. BBC & ITV (etc) have gone with "big names". The coverage on RTE is great from my perspective. They do try to go a little deeper on tactics and have a lot of entertainment factor in there as well. It's a balance because getting into very detailed tactics would be boring to a lot of people.

 

In terms of the budget I mean to pay the wages of the extra staff. It'd cost a few hundred grand a year to have a team dedicated to tactical analysis. I think RTE are hit and miss, they can be a bit curmudgeonly and at times they seem like a Statler & Waldorf tribute act. The Ronaldo stuff the year before last was ridiculous. I also think O'Herlihy is superb at what he does and brings out the best in the pundits by asking the big questions and steering away from the narrative driven s*** that infests all English coverage. They also have the advantage of time, their World cup shows ran for 30 minutes more than BBC and ITV so they can go into much more detail. I don't think going into detail on tactics would bore people at all, the American experience has proven that, it's just harder work for the channels. It boils down to laziness.

[floyd]

Memo to Sky - Shoot Keys, Gray and Redknapp with one bullet each right up the ar5e, and broadcast their slow agonising death over six hours, in HD obviously, live. Sack Ian Darke off from footy. Hire Barry Davies

Get rid or restyle Sunday Supplement, back to the Hold the Back Pages style discussion, stop sticking to the same fvckin journos. Maybe add a Graham Taylor or David Pleat type character, bit like Jimmy Hill, but one who knows footy, and can show these journos up for being the conceted pr1cks they are most of the time. Also, maybe add a "colourful" controversial character in their also - memo not fvckin like Claridge (who also needs to die)

Then promote Mark Bolton off Revista De La Liga.

Edited July 30, 2010 by floyd

[jimmylibel]

In terms of the budget I mean to pay the wages of the extra staff. It'd cost a few hundred grand a year to have a team dedicated to tactical analysis. I think RTE are hit and miss, they can be a bit curmudgeonly and at times they seem like a Statler & Waldorf tribute act. The Ronaldo stuff the year before last was ridiculous. I also think O'Herlihy is superb at what he does and brings out the best in the pundits by asking the big questions and steering away from the narrative driven s*** that infests all English coverage. They also have the advantage of time, their World cup shows ran for 30 minutes more than BBC and ITV so they can go into much more detail. I don't think going into detail on tactics would bore people at all, the American experience has proven that, it's just harder work for the channels. It boils down to laziness.

 

RTÉ, as entertaining as their coverage is, offers very little in tactical analysis. They tend to focus on big players being a) brilliant or b) crap and managers either being positive or negative. That's about it as far as tactical analysis goes.

 

However they do rants like no ones business.

[Maldini]

Then promote Mark Bolton off Revista De La Liga.

 

Yes!

 

RTÉ, as entertaining as their coverage is, offers very little in tactical analysis. They tend to focus on big players being a) brilliant or b) crap and managers either being positive or negative. That's about it as far as tactical analysis goes.

 

However they do rants like no ones business.

 

Yeah, Giles gets into it a bit, more than Sky or BBC but they don't really get into the reasons why one team won and another lost

Edited July 30, 2010 by Maldini

[jimmylibel]

Yeah, Giles gets into it a bit, more than Sky or BBC but they don't really get into the reasons why one team won and another lost

 

True, but then Dunphy will get realise he's not getting enough attention and try to bring it down to a particular player or manager being a charlatan. And Giles will get distracted from his point and that'll be that.

Edited July 30, 2010 by jimmylibel