I spent twenty years watching coaches walk onto a pitch with a clipboard and a fancy tactical board, acting as if knowing the names of the roles was the same as understanding them. They’ll give you a lecture on “zonal marking” or “inverted wingers,” but they never bother explaining the actual physical and mental tax
I’ve spent thirty-five years standing on touchlines where the only “technology” we had was a whistle and a prayer that the wind wouldn’t blow the ball into the car park. So, when I sit in a pub and listen to pundits drone on about the “mathematical precision” of video officiating, I want to throw my
I remember standing on a waterlogged touchline in mid-November, watching a teenager nearly take his own head off because he didn’t understand why a whistle had blown. The pundits on the telly love to spend forty minutes dissecting VAR lines and technicalities, but they’ve clearly never had to explain to a sobbing twelve-year-old why a
I’ve spent thirty-five years standing on touchlines where the wind bites harder than the referee’s whistle, and if there is one thing that drives me mad, it’s the way people try to turn a simple concept into a PhD thesis. You’ll see pundits on the telly using high-speed cameras and complex geometric jargon to explain