Football P - P The Weather: A Pseudo-Meteorological Study

Weather is a lot like football. It's a complex subject, often reduced to lazy clichés by those who don't understand it but really enjoy looking at it. Of course, we don't boo when it rains nor do we consider it a #nicetouch if the sun pops out at a convenient moment, but we do Instagram our snow and we'll always have a little gasp (yes, even you) when we hear thunder. Why are big, dark clouds always "ominous"? Erm, anyway...

Sun

The hope-filled opening day of the season apart, blazing sunshine does not constitute "perfect conditions" for any sane footballer. From bone-dry Sunday league pitches accommodating dehydrated huffers-and-puffers, right up to finely-tuned elite athletes being forced to drink lots take on fluids, British footballers are often seen to wilt in any significant heat.

World Cup USA '94 set a benchmark for thermoactivated football drama, with the red faces of dubious holders of Irish passports sharing centre-stage with a range of amusing baseball caps:

Pitchside thermometers suddenly pop up out of nowhere at these points, while the metric system goes out of the window - 100°F sounds much more dramatic than 37.8°C, after all.

Rain
Much more conducive to exciting football, rain is responsible for a suitably plentiful supply of football clichés. Light rain makes for a greasy pitch (or playing surface, as it should be known whenever under particular scrutiny), upon which the ball is able to zip around. Goalkeepers must be tested by shots that "pick up pace" as they skid across the turf, thereby defying basic physics. Players wearing the wrong boots (sorry, footwear), however, will only be allowed to slip over (sorry, lose their footing) once before the co-commentator fulfils his obligation of sternly policing such matters, often involving a semi-tirade on the "state of these modern boots these days". 

Fig 1.0 - the cold, wet Wednesday night in Stoke.

Heavier downpours edge proceedings closer to farce. Farcical conditions (much like an early red card) are a fatal threat to the game as a spectacle. If the heavens open sufficiently before kick-off, an anxious wait is required while the referee completes his emphatic routine of dropping the ball onto the sodden turf while a committee of sighing/chuckling* club officials (*delete according to fixture congestion) congregate in the centre-circle. While the finer details about the potential risks of sanctioning a game in such conditions are rarely explored - drowning, presumably, isn't one of them -  it is unanimously agreed that the safety of the players is paramount.

Snow
It all sounds so violent in the winter months. The Big Freeze™ annually plays havoc with the fixture list - and frequently decimates it - as matches fall victim to (or fall foul of) the cold snap taking hold up and down the country.

Fig 2.0 - the rarely-seen orange ball (beloved of Actua Soccer enthusiasts). 

Heartwarming moments remain, such as the sight of the orange ball (greeted with the same amount of delight as when a goalkeeper goes up for a corner) or the lauding of local volunteers and ground staff - again, the job of the patronising co-commentator - as they do everything to get this game on. Unfortunately, though, it's not the playing surface that's the problem - it's those damned, "treacherous" roads around the ground (or the approach roads, if it's modern, out-of-town Lego stadiums in question.)

Even if the game is allowed to go ahead, the problems aren't over. The low winter sun, the stealthiest and least-documented of modern football's dilemmas, makes life difficult for cap-averse goalkeepers and spoilt armchair fans alike.

Stay safe out there, you hardy souls.

How to Co-Commentate.

The French call them "consultants", in Italy they provide the commento tecnico, while in Scandinavia they're known as "expert commentators". Ostensibly, co-commentators are employed for their inside knowledge but, more often than not, they appear to be masters in the art of stating the bleeding obvious. 

There's not much chance of you becoming a co-commentator if you don't have a regional accent and haven't had a journeyman career in and around the top flight. However, if you do possess the relevant qualifications, you may be interested in a step-by-step guide to your new career. These instructions will prepare you for any scenario or eventuality that requires your verbal intervention. What to say, how to say it and what not to say - it's all here.

Firstly, you're allowed to rely on clichés. You're not the experienced, slick media professional who's sat alongside you in the gantry. You can refer to an untidy challenge as "six and two threes" (if you're feeling adventurous) or suggest a player has "if anything, hit that too well" as the ball rockets over the bar. 

All slow-motion replays are your territory. It's your job to confirm if the shot got a nick on its way through or if the goalkeeper did, in fact, get fingertips to it. Committing to a call before you see the replay is done at your own risk; if the replay proves you wrong, you'll need to awkwardly dig your heels in and refuse to concede defeat. The most dignified way of doing this is to admit some slight wrongdoing, but not enough to warrant a penalty/free-kick. Minimal contact? A coming-together? Nothing in it. After a while, you'll be oblivious to just how annoying this is for your viewers.

Offside decisions? If it's close, but you can actually tell whether it's offside or not, just say it's "borderline" or "touch and go". Don't use the visual tools at your disposal to decide one way or the other - that's not what the viewers want at all. What about that tackle, then? Clumsy more than anything. Don't forget the "more than anything" suffix here - no-one will prompt you to expand on what that "anything" actually is, lest you slander the player by mentioning exactly what it was that his tackle wasn't. While the game flows, it is the co-commentator's responsibility to keep an eye on any injured players and provide updates on their freedom of movement, on a vague scale ranging from "gingerly" to "much better now".  

"...for me." Keep that ready for really desperate moments where you've been made to look stupid, but want to at least spare your fellow commentator from ridicule. I mean, it's a game of opinions, right? Don't worry too much about research, though. Sky Sports regular Alan Smith, for example, relies on a watertight formula of size + nationality to demonstrate his knowledge of the top players, be they big Belgians or little Spaniards.


Keep it light-hearted when appropriate. Make jokes about your own playing career, your lax attitude to training, or the commentator's playing ability. Or his age -go on, joke about how he'll be able to remember that far back when he mentions something that happened a long time ago! But avoid the temptation of Lawrensonesque over-quipping - this isn't Come Dine With Me.

Right, ten minutes in - which team has made the brighter start? It's the question on everybody's lips. If you can't work it out, just say they're "cancelling each other out" so far. Or the markedly creepier-sounding "feeling each other out". Have the bookies' favourites "got going yet"? "Not getting going" is easy to spot - they need to have failed to open the scoring. 20 minutes is the magic benchmark - if the underdog hasn't conceded in this all-important window, everything is going to be fine. Except you've shifted the goalposts for them - now they need to get to half-time. Speaking of which, you must become an amateur psychologist just before the break and judge which manager will be the happier of the two.

Sometimes, the most important statistic isn't in the top left-hand corner of our screens. When you're really struggling for an angle, up will pop the possession stats for the preceding 5-10 minutes. "Look at that!" you can exclaim, as we all do just that. Tell us whether that's what we could have expected or not. Later on, we'll see the epic two-part drama of the shots/shots on target statistics. The sheer tension as we wait to see how many of those 12 shots actually troubled the goalkeeper. A player shoots over the bar - he was leaning back. They always are.

Around five times a game, you'll be called upon to offer us The Bigger Picture as the commentator nips away to the loo. Halfway through the first half, on the stroke of half-time, the start of the second period, on the hour mark, and in the dying moments - you'll need to sum up what you've seen so far. Has it been a classic? Has one manager asked his team for "more of the same" in this second 45? As the time ticks on, will the other manager be thinking of a change? You can slide your way in to your observation, as the play enters a lull, with a wistful sigh that informs the viewer that you're about to offer your lengthy views on the action so far. 

Do not describe players as short or slow - that's rude. They're "not the tallest" or "not the quickest". Why on earth co-commentators feel the need to shield the (obviously otherwise unsuspecting) public from the physical deficiencies of footballers is beyond comprehension. Is it some sort of PFA membership-inspired solidarity? Is it in fact a well-disguised challenge to Usain Bolt or the world's tallest man, Turkish part-time farmer Sultan Kösen, to take up football? Does Kösen have a good touch for a big man? 

Congratulations, you're now a fully-trained peer of the Andy Townsends, Jim Beglins, Gerry Armstrongs, Davie Provans and Alan Smiths of this world. You're a combination of amateur comedian, psychoanalyst, anatomist and ex-footballer. 

Perhaps it's not the easiest job in the world after all.

Where Are the New Clichés?

Like goalkeepers, we don't seem to be producing clichés in the same numbers any more. Or are we?

What is a football cliché? It can be a single word (derisory, for example), a phrase ("if anything, he's hit that too well..."), any vague concept of widely-received wisdom ("They're guilty of trying to walk the ball in like Arsenal!"), something visual (that grimace on a striker's face after he's shot wildly over the bar with a teammate in a better position) or simply behavioural (fans applauding instinctively when a defender completes a basic header back to his goalkeeper, under no pressure.)

New candidates for cliché have to endure a certain period of overuse before they can qualify as such, as well as being overwhelmingly true, or widely believed to be so. In the past, this process could have taken years or decades. The now-antiquated concept of a second period of 45 minutes being starkly contrasted with the first has gone through the entire lifespan of a football cliché, and is now the black dwarf in the many galaxies of received wisdom. 

As the discussion of football proliferates, compared to the 20th century at least, this process is perhaps accelerated. It is only recently that Stoke usurped Rochdale as the unpleasantly inclement midweek venue, zonal marking has been taking a bashing for as long as someone noticed it, players over six feet tall have always had their deftness of touch questioned but never have they managed to confound these doubters as they do now. Corridors of uncertainty arrived on loan from the cricket world with a view to a permanent transfer, sometime in the 1990s, while taking on fluids became the new drinking in c.1994, as pitch-level temperatures soared at the World Cup in the USA.

The 140-character limit of Twitter accommodates new phrases, in much the same way as the space-starved Ceefax and Teletext once did.  Examples such as "nice touch" or "classy", snappy ways of expressing your approval for a moment of footballing decency (however sickly sweet), are on the rise. The cringeworthy latter quality is now conspicuous by its absence, with high-horse-riding guardians urging miscreants to "stay classy" whenever a ill-judged press release threatens to unmask a club as morally bankrupt. 

Footballers are trendsetters, and the moment they hashtag something, it's gift-wrapped for their following millions. Ashley Cole's glorious #BUNCHOFTWATS entered the football lexicon, mainly for purposes of lampoonery, as football fans now seek to inject humour (to varying degrees of success) into a notoriously straight-faced national sport. Twitter jokes/gifs/photoshops are now the language of the modern fan, with every possible celebratory scenario that John Terry could gatecrash now crudely mocked up for "the lolz". Retweets can help propagate a new cliché, in the same way that bloke in the pub repeating something about Teddy Sheringham's relative lack of pace that he'd garnered from Football Focus the week before managed to osmose into anyone within earshot in 1993.

"Worldy" - a term originating in the playing community, meaning "world beater" - has caught on, often abbreviated further to simply "world" whenever a goal or save should warrant such incredulous praise. "Big" Ron Atkinson attempted to introduce his own set of catchphrases in the mid-90s, some of which managed to prevail, while "tekkers" looks set to withstand the backlash and dig its heels in.

No terrace wit may be delivered to a tune other than that of the Beach Boys' dreary "Sloop John B", thanks to Liverpool's fifth European triumph and Phil Brown's Hull avoiding the drop. The minute's applause was born out of sheer mistrust towards a small minority of idiots to immaculately observe a minute's silence and has become commonplace. Dr Richard Steadman earned a reputation as the most clichéd medical professional the game has ever seen, but has had a quiet last couple of years, possibly since the Serbian horse placenta woman arrived on the scene.

On the pitch, waving the imaginary card is still the latest established hand-signal you'll see. Giant circular hand movements to indicate that a tackle won the ball are a product of the TV-aware era of players, as is the outwardly-rotating double claw to signify an opponent has dived. A forefinger from each hand cycled with the other has denoted the need for a substitution for decades now, while referees imploring players to turn straight round at half-time of extra time predates the Macarena by many years. Pointing to the sky after a goal is a recent melodramatic development, as footballer's tragic personal lives become our business whether any of us wish it to be. Disappearing from view is the shirt-name point, usually with both thumbs while turned away from the crowd, possibly to avoid being instructed to "stay classy". There is no indication as to what the next hand-signal will be, but if goal-line technology is introduced, a TV-screen gesture (similar to cricket/rugby officials) may become quickly popular with players with an easily-triggered sense of injustice.

The more tactically-aware football supporter now knows what a false nine is. Everyone now plays 4-3-3 (or a corruption of it, all turning into a 4-5-1 without the ball) up and down the country, much like the mid-90s saw an obsession with 3-5-2, or the 2000s and the seemingly neverending search for Claude Makélélé clones in defensive midfield berths. Diminutive Spaniards ferreting behind a lone striker are now the flavour of this decade. Perhaps full-backs will soon become more tactically significant than ever before, which may spell bad news for the more agricultural Andy Wilkinsons of this world, but Southampton's Luke Shaw may find himself hot property.

The Anatomy of a Footballer

Professional footballers are apparently not built like you and I. From head to toe, their bodies are subject to an entirely different terminology to the Average Joe. 

Used figuratively as often as it is literally, the concept of the head in football is conveniently vague. Composed young footballers are said to have an old head on young shoulders, at least until they lose their head, at which point they need an arm around their shoulder. Players who lack genuine pace are able to call upon the yard in their head (pace is quantified simply in yards, on a narrow scale from 0.5-1). 

A predatory striker is said to have an eye for goal, which occasionally involves giving the goalkeeper the eyes (having seen the whites of them), despite often having one eye (or half an eye) on an upcoming fixture. Meanwhile, today's mutant referees are required to have eyes in the back of their head. 

Calling upon the other senses, players can sniff out a chance if their team smells blood (unless they're not given a sniff) but only after the two teams have finished feeling each other out. Hearing is less frequently referenced, but the universal gesture for a footballer not hearing something (a referee's whistle, or a goalkeeper's shout) is unmistakable:

A goalkeeper faces the frequent prospect of a shot arriving straight down his throat, which in reality is much less threatening than it sounds. One can only assume that big-money signings wear their price tags around their necks, while players still subject to a hands-off warning have their price tag slapped upon their person.

A particularly goal-shy centre-forward must bear the burden of both a monkey and the crowd on his back. The well-established (if rather dubious) remedy for his goal drought, however, is for one to go in off his backside.

In the game of football, the hands and arms are a consistently controversial region of the body. Penalty areas are frequent witnesses to a suspicion of a hand while everyone knows that as soon as you raise your hands, you're asking for trouble. Goalkeepers must possess a strong hand while making sure errant crosses are plucked out of the air using their grateful hands. Palms, meanwhile, exist only to be "stung" - the act of palming away has slowly been superseded by the more menacing-sounding clawing away.

No sports scientist has yet been able to determine the whereabouts of a player's engine, but it is likely to be found in a lung-bursting location near the centre of the body. There's no real room for innuendo in football commentary, but a great deal of mirth is reserved for when a player is struck in the unmentionables by a shot or a boot. 

And so the business end of the footballer's anatomy. The legs seem the most obvious place to find the ever-elusive malicious bone, but loyal managers have rendered the search fruitless. The most notable part of the lower-body skeleton is surely the dreaded metatarsal, which homo sapiens only developed in the early 2000s if the succession of major tournament-disrupting breaks to the feet of your Beckhams, your Rooneys, your Nevilles and your Owens are anything to go by. 

Flat-footed defenders are exposed by fleet-footed wingers, and given a torrid time by jet-heeled ones, resulting (in extreme cases) in twisted blood. Appropriately, some footballers' feet are now beyond cliché - the good feet for a big man are now rarely referenced unknowingly. A distinct bias towards the exotic, sinistral footballer has always been in evidence - left feet are educated and cultured, while any old neanderthal can swing his right boot.

When a footballer finally loses that half a yard, it is said that his legs have gone. Luckily, fresh legs are always on hand (so to speak) to replace them.

He Knows Where the Goal Is: Mapping the Modern Football Pitch

The modern footballer must know his place. If the forensic analysis of Zonal Marking is to be believed, most of them are mindless chess pieces moved around at will by their gesticulating manager. But, while the positions they are allocated have well-established names, the areas of the pitch they occupy are still subject to the eccentricity of the football cliché.

All credit to @jon_foley for putting the image together

The Engine Room

Smack-bang in the middle of the park is the British Crown dependency of the midfield engine room, the domain of the Lampards, the Gerrards and the Parkers of this world. As the name suggests, everyone within the engine room must possess an engine, or at least be full of running.

Going Nowhere

You know the drill - a bumbling winger, in a desperate attempt to track back, fouls an opponent as they loiter (facing the wrong way) in this specific, innocuous part of the pitch. Located near half-way and close to the touchline, the vast majority of free-kicks conceded here will be classified as silly.

The Hole

The hole is fast becoming a quaint anachronism in the era of false nines who flit between the lines. A stealthy place to inhabit, the hole confounds opposing defenders who struggle to pick up the deep-lying forward.

The Channels

The thinking man's wings, the channels represent the dire straits between penalty area and touchline where full-backs can be given a torrid time - either by fleet-footed (or jet-heeled) wingers or by their swashbuckling opposite numbers.

The endangered species of the old fashioned winger (centre-forwards and cup-ties can also be old-fashioned) has been forced inside to survive, leaving its former home of the wing (or the "flank") derelict and languishing under the vague term "wide areas". 

In a figurative sense, one of the worst places a footballer can find himself is on the periphery, from where it is very difficult to get into the game.

David Beckham Territory

A hotly disputed area, but various attempts to annex it permanently over the last decade have proved fruitless, many coming to a ignominious end up in Row Z.

It is the most popular strategic base to launch attacks on the tiny enclave in the top corner of the goal - known as the postage stamp - located just next to the angle of post and bar.

 

The Mixer

There's a distinct whiff of Big Ron about this (Ronglish was an unsanctioned splinter lexicon which is thankfully fading from view), but the mixer remains a great leveller. From Sunday League to the top flight, last throws of the dice find their way into this perilous badland. The mixer must be accessed with a hopeful long ball - no team has ever attempted to walk the ball into the mixer.

To further emphasise the stresses of the mixer, it often gives proverbial nosebleeds to no-nonsense defenders who venture upfield, often with the kitchen sink tucked under their arms.

many thanks to @Steve_Sub for the image

No Man's Land

A horrid void in which hapless goalkeepers are said to have "gone walkabout". Littered with suicidal backpasses, this is where the custodian feels most alone. But it's not the only danger that 'keepers face...

The Corridor of Uncertainty

One of the most poetic of all the football cliches. Originally a cricket phrase, as many seem keen to point out, but now undeniably adopted by football. The narrow corridor of uncertainty straddles the six-yard line, and is permeated regularly by crosses fizzed in from the channels.

Whether you're marauding, swashbuckling, rampaging, venturing, flooding, backpedalling, gliding, ghosting, wandering, drifting, racing, slaloming, jinking or simply ambling, 

always know where you are.

"Where's the Talking?!" - Part II

Last January, Football Clichés detailed ten of the most mindless Sunday league phrases heard week-in-week-out in public parks up and down the country. Attempting to cash in on Inspired by today's prolifically trending #sundayleagueshouts, here's ten more Sunday league trademarks for the 2012/13 season...

1) "Who's got tape?"

The gold-dust of amateur football, despite being available in any hardware shop. As the sole provider of tape, once you declare and dispense it, you will never see it again.

2) Injury Prevention

The warm-up routine of the typical Sunday league team is a complex one, drawing on the game's modern obsession with sports science:

- Jog from one touchline to the other
- Run back again - knees up at the front
- And again - heels up at the back
- And again, "picking it up a little bit"
- Sprint to the line, having left around 70% of the team by the wayside

The substitutes, should your team be fortunate enough to have any, are spared this tedium. They have the important task of firing the ball at the goalkeeper from the six-yard line as part of his carefully-tailored warm-up programme.

3) "Ref! Ref!! How long?"

Usually asked by an overexcited player from the leading team, with surprising desperation. Whatever the answer, the player will always add about 10% on before relaying the revised figure to his teammates. 

4) "Watch the short!"

It is considered a cardinal sin to let an opposing Sunday league team pass a goal-kick out to a full-back. Precisely what sort of devastating attack an average Sunday league team are expected to be capable of, deep in their own half, with the ball at the feet of statistically the least capable player in their ranks, is anyone's guess.

Traditional goal-kicks, thumped aimlessly as far down the pitch as possible, aren't often the task of the goalkeeper. As the designated goal-kick taker for my side, I can confirm that fetching the ball in preparation for this moment is one of the more soul-destroying aspects of life at around 11am on every Sunday between September and May.

5) "They're fighting amongst themselves!"
An extension of "All day! All day!" from Part One, this is the ultimate psychological blow you can land on the opponents, so gleefully is it delivered. 

6) "One of you!"
When a Sunday league midfield is so often instructed to "get a [insert team's shirt colour] head on this", you often witness an unsightly clash of [insert team's shirt colour]-clad bodies as they attempt to perform their primary duty. It is left to a team-mate to helpfully point out that only one of them was required on the scene.

7) How to Insult a Sunday League Opponent - a 3-Step Guide

The Respect campaign is yet to trickle down the grassroots, it seems. Sunday league pitches can be horrible places, as devoid of joy as they are of any real wit. With that in mind, it seems pertinent to document the standard procedure for unpleasantries. When angry adversaries clash, the following hierarchy of verbals should ensue:

1. Appearance - Latch on to anything you legally can. Having ginger hair or (in my case) no hair puts one at a significant disadvantage here. Should you be on the receiving end of this, though, my advice is to act genuinely horrified and heartbroken - no-one's prepared for that.
2. Presumed intelligence - neither big, nor clever, but this is barrel-scraping territory.
3. Footballing ability - Surprisingly, the last bastion of offence in any on-pitch exchange. A simple "you're shit" often seems to suffice.

8) How to Befriend a Sunday League Opponent - a 2-Step Guide

Amid the snarling testosterone-toting, the hand of friendship can still be extended. Exchanging cheerful words with your opposite number can seem a little odd, and the moment is fleeting, usually because of the sheer banality:

Ask them "how they're doing in the league" - an answer he is unlikely to be able to accurately provide, which is fortunate since you don't actually care.

Ask them if that's their regular goalkeeper - Often squarely to blame for all eleven goals that have sailed past him, the goalkeeper is a worthy spectacle to discuss with his striker. Sharing in his resigned despair at a floundering teammate is a tenuous kinship, which borders on patronising.

9) "Don't let it bounce!"

A rare example of a phenomenon that afflicts a Premier League side just as much as it does your Sunday league rabble. Letting the ball bounce, especially there, is (like raising your hands to an opponent) traditionally asking for trouble.

10) "See it out!" vs "Leave it!"
The former is perfectly acceptable, the latter an absurd taboo. Physical and verbal abuse is dished out in spades but no-one's ever conceded a free-kick for shouting "L**ve it!" after the age of about thirteen. 

Thanks to Twitter for providing the occasional few #sundayleagueshouts that weren't about being "pissed from the night before" and which helped compile this.

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