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The most perplexing aspect of Joe Hart’s recent switch from Manchester City to Torino was seeing one of Italy’s most famous clubs labelled ‘minnows’ by an English newspaper.
Never mind that seven-time Serie A champions Torino are veritable heavyweights of the Italian game, the Daily Mirror saw fit to criticise Hart’s loan move to the Stadio Olimpico on the basis that it’s apparently a step down.
This is despite the fact Torino recently provided the Italian national team with its latest coach, in Giampiero Ventura. But then, what would Italy know about success in the international arena?
The perpetual dumbing down of football discourse is hardly confined to topics involving the English game, although it’s probably worth noting the ubiquitous online presence of Premier League fans.
Last week I read an unremarkable piece from Sid Lowe on The Guardian website, in which he made the reasonable point that English clubs are in the midst of signing second-tier talent from La Liga.
It was an article I would never have given a second thought to, had I not scrolled down and perused the comments.
Almost immediately, a selection of commenters accused Lowe of bias, named several prominent players who hadn’t left Spain, suggested the article was criticising Arsenal – oddly enough – and lamented La Liga’s supposed lack of competitiveness.
Yet it wasn’t even the fact that some of the comments were so wildly off tangent that had me bemused. After all, several other commenters more or less agreed with Lowe.
What surprised me was just how many commenters were willing to ignore Lowe’s use of evidence in order to validate their own point of view.
It got me wondering, in a Carrie Bradshaw kind of way: have we reached a point where the average football fan effectively knows nothing about the game?(Click to Tweet)
It’s not like Lowe’s article is even an ideal case study. The Guardian‘s football pages attract a relatively literate audience from all corners of the globe, with commenters generally making some astute points.
And with any online article, the common refrain is to ‘avoid the comments’ – although to do so on The Roar would be to turn our backs on the kind of Socratic dialogue I’d prefer to encourage.
But in a realm where Torino are minnows, and Madrid-based journalists are anti-Arsenal, and a 63-time Socceroo like Brett Holman is a terrible A-League signing according to some on Twitter, are we now living in a post-factual football world?
Perhaps I’m simply jaded by the fact that despite the internet providing us with an infinite amount of information, so few online users seem willing to utilise it.
Last week a video from the World Challenge Cup youth tournament did the rounds in which Barcelona’s young players were seen to console their beaten Japanese opponents.
Almost every single comment about it revolved around how much ‘respect’ Barcelona showed to their opponents, but sadly that respect didn’t include actually naming the opposition correctly.
So when Barcelona tweeted that they had beaten ‘Omya’ – they had, in fact, defeated Omiya Ardija – their mistake was shared millions of times around the world, including by countless media outlets.
Yet the only thing I’ll accomplish by highlighting how disrespectful it was for Barcelona to get their opponent’s name wrong, is attract criticism for focusing on a misnomer.
I learnt long ago that one of the most effective ways to annoy people is simply to ask questions.
Does any of this really matter? Probably not.
In the grand scheme of things, there are more important things to worry about than what people say about football.
But with so many of these people eager to promote their point of view – often in spite of the prevailing evidence – perhaps it’s worth asking a much broader question.
Why do so many football fans honestly appear to know so little about the game?