Tonight, I watched the Liverpool – Chelsea Champions’ League match. My hope was for an early Liverpool goal to make a game of it, and they didn’t let me down. It was a terrific match with eight goals and more ups and downs than the Barclays share price.
Even without Gerrard, in the first half, Liverpool were all over Chelsea, who looked like a pub team. The second half started with Chelsea coming back – Guus Hiddink must have reminded them about their win bonuses at half time. And then Liverpool just started scoring again. Much talk of Istanbul and a great deal of singing from the away end. But in the end, Not-Fat Frank Lampard put Liverpool out of their misery and put Chelsea into the semi.
But this is the Steam Engine, not one of the thousand other blogs that will tell you how great the match was. Despite all the action, I was completely preoccupied during the action, because I noticed early on that the players’ names on the shirts were somehow different. After a few minutes, I figured it out – they are both using a different font for their European games.
In the Premier League, all teams have to employ the same mandated font to identify their players – it is preset by the league. In itself, this stultifyingly Orwellian rule is no surprise. I presume that Richard Scudamore has a shareholding in the company that provides these particular letters.
In European fixtures, however, the clubs appear free to use any font they like. In response to this freedom, they have reacted like the dazzled children in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and just gone crazy.
Liverpool are using a chunky, cartoony font which makes them look like the Why Don’t You XI, whereas Chelsea have gone for a cheery lower case job. I can’t begin to explain how much this sort of sloppy syntax annoys me, but what I can’t really figure out is why they are bothering.
The first reaction is that this has to be the most cynical marketing ploy of the season. But realistically, who would go out and buy a second shirt, identical in every way save for the font on the back? There might be the odd fan with more money than sense, but you have to give fans a little credit – there can’t be many of them who would fall for this. Certainly not enough to pay Didier Drogba’s wages for a week. Or even didier drogba’s.
The only other reason I can come up with is that they have a secretive sponsorship deal with the font itself. Perhaps the lower case franklin gothic font is secretly channelling funds into Chelsea in a bid to raise its profile and increase its use among Neighbourhood Watch newsletters in the ABC1 socio-economic groups. If anyone has any better ideas, let me know.
Incidentally, ITV’s commentary continues to infuriate and amuse me in equal measure. There were the usual crow-barred stats and strangled metaphors, and if I had a pound for every time the away-goals rule was explained, I would be able to fly to Rome for the final. But when Liverpool had a corner, late in the first half, Clive Tyldesley said of Petr Cech that, “there must be an alarm bell ringing, somewhere beneath that protective helmet.” I don’t care who you support, that is a beautiful image right there.
Showing posts with label ITV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ITV. Show all posts
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Introducing Tyson Fury
While Amir Khan was announcing himself to the world on Saturday night by beating up Marco Antonio Barrera, I was sitting sulkily at home refusing to pay £15 to fall asleep in front of Sky’s pay-per-view evening.
By way of consolation, ITV4 had an interesting evening of domestic boxing, the bill-topper of which was the British Middleweight Title. The highlight for me though, was this young heavyweight who is making waves and, I reckon, is going to be the next big star of British Boxing.
His name is Tyson Fury – and truly there was never a better name for a boxer. This is his real name, by the way – he comes from a from a family of Irish travellers with boxing in the blood. Grandfather “Gypsy John” Fury was a heavyweight contender in the eighties, and his uncle Hughie is his trainer. With that heritage, small wonder he was named after Mike Tyson – the self-styled “baddest man on the planet.”
Tyson is now four fights into his professional career and, having knocked over a couple of nobodies, this weekend, he took apart Lee Swaby. Swaby is by no means the greatest boxer in the world, but he’s a tough cookie who has been in with the best, stopped Enzo Maccarinelli, and fought for British Titles at Cruiserweight. Fury fought him to a standstill. At the end of the fourth, the fight was knocked out of Swaby, and he retired on his stool.
The striking thing about Fury is that, despite his fearsome stature – 6’8” in his socks – despite his terrific speed and heavy-handedness, despite the ominous career path he is already describing to the world, he comes across as just a lovely lad.
Despite his size, and the stubbly growth on his chin, he still looks like the dopey tall kid in class who didn’t know his own strength. He mouths off about David Price (recent Olympian, former amateur opponent and, like Fury, new to the professional ranks) having no chin, but he does it with such a boyish grin, that you just want to ruffle his hair (if you could reach it).
He is fighting again on the undercard of Carl Froch’s showdown with Jermain Taylor next month and, with ITV heavily trailing him as the next big star, I think you will be hearing more about him soon.
By way of consolation, ITV4 had an interesting evening of domestic boxing, the bill-topper of which was the British Middleweight Title. The highlight for me though, was this young heavyweight who is making waves and, I reckon, is going to be the next big star of British Boxing.
His name is Tyson Fury – and truly there was never a better name for a boxer. This is his real name, by the way – he comes from a from a family of Irish travellers with boxing in the blood. Grandfather “Gypsy John” Fury was a heavyweight contender in the eighties, and his uncle Hughie is his trainer. With that heritage, small wonder he was named after Mike Tyson – the self-styled “baddest man on the planet.”
Tyson is now four fights into his professional career and, having knocked over a couple of nobodies, this weekend, he took apart Lee Swaby. Swaby is by no means the greatest boxer in the world, but he’s a tough cookie who has been in with the best, stopped Enzo Maccarinelli, and fought for British Titles at Cruiserweight. Fury fought him to a standstill. At the end of the fourth, the fight was knocked out of Swaby, and he retired on his stool.
The striking thing about Fury is that, despite his fearsome stature – 6’8” in his socks – despite his terrific speed and heavy-handedness, despite the ominous career path he is already describing to the world, he comes across as just a lovely lad.
Despite his size, and the stubbly growth on his chin, he still looks like the dopey tall kid in class who didn’t know his own strength. He mouths off about David Price (recent Olympian, former amateur opponent and, like Fury, new to the professional ranks) having no chin, but he does it with such a boyish grin, that you just want to ruffle his hair (if you could reach it).
He is fighting again on the undercard of Carl Froch’s showdown with Jermain Taylor next month and, with ITV heavily trailing him as the next big star, I think you will be hearing more about him soon.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
ITV’s Woeful Presentation of Sport (Again)
Got up this morning, as I do every Sunday morning, planning to watch Match of The Day. I tend to record it on the Saturday night and watch that version rather than the Sunday am version that the BBC broadcast. This enables me to watch it a time convenient to me, and also saves me the bother of fast-forwarding through the nonsense “community feature” that they insist on dropping in. I am not paying my licence fee to watch Mikkel Arteta struggling to read kids stories to scouse schoolchildren.
This was of course, all for nothing, because it is FA Cup weekend. This means that Gary and the Alans get a week off and we all decamp to ITV to watch how football would be covered if the production rights were given to a bunch of young offenders doing community service because they had been deemed to retarded for conventional custody.
That dreadful title sequence rolls, which attempts to compare the history of the FA Cup with the glorious proletarian thread of industry which makes Britain great. It actually ends up making the trophy resemble some piece of horrendous “public art,” like the monstrous white horse they are going to put up on the South Downs.
In the studio, we have the omnipresent Jim Rosenthal – surely it’s just a matter of time before he gets a crack at the Countdown job – and Robbie Earle, looking beautiful in a powder blue cardigan. Standards have been allowed to slip everywhere, but surely this is a dress-down too far – my wife has a cardigan identical to this. Earle used to play for Wimbledon, for Christ’s sake. You wouldn’t see Vinny Jones in a pink shirt or Lawrie Sanchez wearing a pair of Italian loafers.
On to the action and they managed to mount their cameras in the right place this time, unlike a previous round where footage from Fratton Park (a Premiership ground, mind you), appeared to have been shot from the lower tier of the West Stand.
First, to Craven Cottage, and an altercation between Clint Dempsey and Wayne Rooney was greeted with a chuckling political metaphor from Clive Tyldesley. “So much for the special relationship,” he drawled. “It nearly broke down there, despite the best efforts of Brown and Obama…”
At best that is a vapid and patronising reference to the fact that we have one of those American chappies over here playing football. Even Jim Beglin kept a tactful silence.
But when it comes to lazy pre-scripted commentary, Tyldesley has nothing on Peter Drury. Commentating from The Ricoh Arena, he deliciously told us that, “they have had 40,000 fans in here to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and today there are 31,500 to see Coventry take on Chelsea.” This meaningless stat was dropped in like a depth charge among the action and neither justified nor qualified. I was left shouting, “SO WHAT?” at the screen.
Sir Alex Ferguson won’t speak to the BBC due to some perceived slight they perpetrated on his son years ago. If I were him, I would boycott ITV simply because they are incompetent.
This was of course, all for nothing, because it is FA Cup weekend. This means that Gary and the Alans get a week off and we all decamp to ITV to watch how football would be covered if the production rights were given to a bunch of young offenders doing community service because they had been deemed to retarded for conventional custody.
That dreadful title sequence rolls, which attempts to compare the history of the FA Cup with the glorious proletarian thread of industry which makes Britain great. It actually ends up making the trophy resemble some piece of horrendous “public art,” like the monstrous white horse they are going to put up on the South Downs.
In the studio, we have the omnipresent Jim Rosenthal – surely it’s just a matter of time before he gets a crack at the Countdown job – and Robbie Earle, looking beautiful in a powder blue cardigan. Standards have been allowed to slip everywhere, but surely this is a dress-down too far – my wife has a cardigan identical to this. Earle used to play for Wimbledon, for Christ’s sake. You wouldn’t see Vinny Jones in a pink shirt or Lawrie Sanchez wearing a pair of Italian loafers.
On to the action and they managed to mount their cameras in the right place this time, unlike a previous round where footage from Fratton Park (a Premiership ground, mind you), appeared to have been shot from the lower tier of the West Stand.
First, to Craven Cottage, and an altercation between Clint Dempsey and Wayne Rooney was greeted with a chuckling political metaphor from Clive Tyldesley. “So much for the special relationship,” he drawled. “It nearly broke down there, despite the best efforts of Brown and Obama…”
At best that is a vapid and patronising reference to the fact that we have one of those American chappies over here playing football. Even Jim Beglin kept a tactful silence.
But when it comes to lazy pre-scripted commentary, Tyldesley has nothing on Peter Drury. Commentating from The Ricoh Arena, he deliciously told us that, “they have had 40,000 fans in here to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and today there are 31,500 to see Coventry take on Chelsea.” This meaningless stat was dropped in like a depth charge among the action and neither justified nor qualified. I was left shouting, “SO WHAT?” at the screen.
Sir Alex Ferguson won’t speak to the BBC due to some perceived slight they perpetrated on his son years ago. If I were him, I would boycott ITV simply because they are incompetent.
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