Football speak

[nomorethaksintimes]

Surely, none of you are actually genuinely frustrated by these sayings? Do you sit there seething as they're said?

Football, like any area of life, has its own vernacular. That's how language works, we use devices to describe things so that other people can understand what we're getting at. They aren't meant to be taken literally, you're not supposed to take them at face value, we all understand what they mean. It's the same for every hobby/sport/subject that you take part in.

Some of them are curious sayings, but then since when did it actually rain cats and dogs?

I am actually frustrated by the extent of it in football - it inhibits genuine insight.

Oh that striker has been profligate today -----ahhhhH! Have you ever used that word in any other context!

He's got good feet for a big man/Sliderule pass arghhh!!

He's an honest player - If he's an average player just say he is and don't sugarcoat it in case you have to run into him a few weeks later!

Yaya Toure is a marauding midfielder ----argh! Get a bloody dictionary and think of a new way of saying it - you don't use that word for anything else you tool!

The problem with the likes of Shearer/Hansen etc is that they flit from cliche to cliche almost on autopilot as do commentators when they see something which was similar to a previous match so just reuse a stock phrase. I swear I've watched spells of football commentary where it's cliche to cliche for 5mins it might as well be an effin robot in the gantry.

I think it's partly due to TV's unwillingness to allow a healthy mix of solid pros with intelligent, articulate & knowledgeable journalists - e.g. Sid Lowe, Martin Samuel, James Richardson, David Conn who by nature of being quite clever actually can think for themselves and express their opinions outside of such confined linguistical parameters.

Think about the quality of cricket or golf commentary - even F1 compared to football. It's on another level and there isn't the same laziness. Golf commentators rarely dip into cliches and it makes it so much more rewarding as they are actually describing what they see off the top of their heads - not flicking through their cliche rollerdex but actually making up new sentences like a real human being!

People like Shearer really have no place on television - the man is incapable of sharing his (I'm sure vast) expertise and inside knowledge on football and has never come up with anything that I have ever said to myself 'Oh, I'd never thought of that' - surely if an ex-pro can't provide that unique insight into his sport then just get a witty/entertaining journalist on instead - and no I don't mean Colin Murray!

 

[Unknown_Genius]

Surely, none of you are actually genuinely frustrated by these sayings? Do you sit there seething as they're said?

Football, like any area of life, has its own vernacular. That's how language works, we use devices to describe things so that other people can understand what we're getting at. They aren't meant to be taken literally, you're not supposed to take them at face value, we all understand what they mean. It's the same for every hobby/sport/subject that you take part in.

Some of them are curious sayings, but then since when did it actually rain cats and dogs?

It annoys me, because they're just cliche'd, recycled rubbish, meaning that the pundit is either too lazy to give their own unique insight into what is going on, or they're too dim to do so, on a subject they are supposedly an "expert" in. Using these buzzwords and "football speak" doesn't show you're intelligent at all, quite the contrary. Its like listening to robots, even someone with very little understanding of football could give punditry if it was all about cliches and "football speak". Just tell them to insert x cliche here, when x happens, and you're sorted.

 

[mcnab-sees-red]

Surely, none of you are actually genuinely frustrated by these sayings? Do you sit there seething as they're said?

Whats got your goat? Has someone pissed on your parade?

 

[colourmeblue]

'opened his body up' is creeping in more and more

'gets it out from his feet' as well

 

[another generation]

A greasy pitch.

Er, have the groundsmen been smearing the pitch with lard? Is this what's happened to Norway's missing stock of dairy butter? The pitch is WET, either from the sprinklers or from the stuff that descends from the sky on many days of the year in the UK. The pitch could be described as being slippery, but it has not been coated in any form of fat or oil.