Football Coverage in the British Media

For most of my life up until around 2010 I would've said I was a sports fan, but I never truly fell in love with a sport until the World Cup in South Africa. Here was something almost completely new to me, not the childish kick-arounds that I had watched for years in the American suburbs but instead a fast-paced, dramatic and thrilling contest that was unique in how global its appeal was.

The following fall I began to consume every little bit I could about the sport and the leagues that went on during the rest of the year, eventually growing very attached to the English Premier League and more specifically a club in southwest London called Chelsea.

The Premier League is a unique beast in world football: it has the highest quality players culled from all over the globe and is one of the most hotly contested leagues anywhere in the world. Luckily all this competition ends up leading to a lot of drama on and off the pitch, and reading the British press and the tabloids can be both an entertaining ad sometimes even frustrating experience for football fans.

Firstly how they treat the transfer of players to different clubs is one of the most dramatic and exciting story lines the tabloids can get their hands on, so often times the less-respected papers will publish almost ludicrous rumors in order to spark either controversy or simply drive up sales/page views. Once you get used to not trusting all of the British publications you start forming a hierarchy of trustworthiness if you want to know if something's actually going to happen in the transfer market. There's probably no equivalent to something like this in the States, where pretty much any speculation is never too far-fetched and usually based in at least some truth. there are far fewer outlets to get your hardcore sports news in America, with ESPN being the bastion of trustworthiness in the sports media. There's really no such mogul in the UK, leaving reporting and speculation able to run wild. And while it sometimes can be frustrating to know what you're reading may not be true, it's still a wonderful form of entertainment to even speculate.

One thing that really struck me about reading press surrounding the England national team and their manager was and still is quite pessimistic and negative when they aren't in the World Cup. The tabloids skewer tactics by the manager, mock the inconsistency of their players and have a general pessimistic attitude about their prospects as a team.

The thing is, they're not wrong. England is probably one of the teams that underperforms the most when you look at the caliber of the players they have. Their manager does seem to be tactically inefficient and almost lost when England need a "plan B." But it's difficult for me to imagine this kind of negative mentality surrounding any national team in America. I'd say there was almost negative surrounding the US men's national team at this World Cup (although admittedly we had a fantastic run in the tournament) but I think it'd be completely out of place if American journalists constantly hounded our coach and players and made them look foolish all the time.

Now admittedly the English probably expect more out of their team since they did win a World Cup in 1966 and they are the inventors of the sport to begin with, but it's as if when they make the tiniest mistake the press throws them into the lions' den.

So basically the English tabloids treats sport like it treats many other things: with little regard for trustworthiness or information, but stacked high with entertainment value and also venom for the people they don't care for. Luis Suarez's (the infamous biter at the World Cup) agent even claimed the English press was a big reason Luis wanted to leave for Barcelona, even though that may not be entirely true. But the fact is that the sport of soccer is easily suited to the atmosphere of the English press. It's the world's most dramatic and games, goals, sending offs and even bitings can often spread around the world now that the Internet is able to spread them so quickly. Tabloids could have only dreamt about all the crazy things that would happen at this year's World Cup and it seems to me that the drama of the sport and the sensationalism of the newspapers are meant for each other.