Since this is a quite concrete and also comprehensive attack on the media, which do not live up to their responsibility towards football and its dissemination, one naturally has to enquire quite thoroughly to what extent congruence can be achieved with other people’s views. In this respect, a number of discussions were held, especially since the problem was recognised quite early on. As a child, you might wonder why you can already guess the outcome of a game after just a few seconds of watching a sports summary. One wonders then whether the announcer actually sees, judges and evaluates the individual match situation, or whether he rather derives this understanding from knowing the final result? Why would it even occur to him to hint at the direction in which the game might go with a few pregnant with meaning words? To take the position of the knower in order to possibly reap a pat on the back more, instead of increasing the pure entertainment or suspense content?
In this respect, there was already a long, long time ago a consensus in the family circle that this kind of reporting was questionable, that one could at least seriously think about alternative forms. Later, people began to wonder why an entire team suddenly found itself in a collective deep sleep, just because – in itself an absolutely desirable situation, unless you are a supporter of the team conceding the goal – a goal was scored directly after the break? Who was in a deep sleep and how could you tell, apart from the fact that a goal had been scored?
Well, as soon as you are a little bit critical, a lot of things seem strange. So naturally, soon here or soon there, one begins to tell about the observations one has made, especially as they begin to pose a serious nuisance. Then one also waits very (self-)critically for the answer and reaction. The best one one can get, which just barely hints in the direction of “justification” of the media performance made, is: “Well, that’s what people want to hear.”
But after you have asked the 52nd acquaintance, and he too only gives that sobering explanation, but of course doesn’t see himself as belonging to that group, because he himself also doesn’t like it the way it is, you start to wonder which “people who want to hear it like that” you are actually talking about? Is there at least a representative somewhere who says: “No, you’re talking nonsense. I like it the way it is.”
Since this person is obviously not interested, one only has to utter a commentator’s name or one of his comments to directly find advocates by the pack – and this still in the course of a meanwhile quite long life in very different circles of acquaintances, for illustration only mentioned here, chess players as well as footballers among them — not only does one have considerable misgivings that anyone will like it, but the certainty emerges that it will meet with resistance everywhere and be accepted as an unpleasant, but just as a concomitant. It’s bad, but what are you going to do?
Well, the first step towards doing something was the idea of writing about it. Others followed, dealing more and more concretely with the poor content or the form of presentation, or consulting more and more new test persons, who were later interviewed almost by chance – the pub offers itself. The results were so overwhelming that the idea is now to be used here and now.
Incidentally, an “aha experience” of its own, which was almost decisive for the current implementation, came during the first viewing of a game with English commentary. It was immediately apparent that there really is another way. Unfortunately, almost no one in this country could be asked about this, but the very few who tried it out could also confirm the view: Good there, bad here.