What do we want?
More Goals, more Hoops or more Touchdowns?
Questions that burn in the memory of American Vs European sports.
I haven’t watched much American sports, but I’ve been a firm spectator for many many years. More embracing of the colourful jerseys and the ad hoc synergy of the commentators.
From afar it would appear that American sports have a far more reaching audience and a far more engaging sense of entertainment value.
The countless times I have observed Queens Park Rangers play out a null and void meatless zero zero draw. Yeah Yeah laugh now, it is a curse.
Zero Zero and Nil Nil are strong hold terminologies saved only for European sports. Where else does the “No Score Draw” exist.
The argument leads me onto a sour point that is overshadowing Europa sports currently in history, its name is VAR (Video Assistant Referee) for those who did not know. It is not that technology in sports is a bad thing, it’s the fact that in Europe where we watch countless football matches it is having a negative effect on spectatorship. We now have to endure muted celebrations, muted score lines and minute attention to detail in a sport that factored its spectatorship on the impulse, the surprise and the quite frankly genius moments. They’re currently lost in a myriad of players waiting on computerised decisions.
Just imagine “That Van Basten Goal” waiting on VAR for a non-existent handball in the build-up. Its desperate.
non so more than in the English Premiership Division.
If you know of a better way to castrate sporting enthusiasm, I would like to know.
Meanwhile in the U.S…..another Hoop, another Home Run, another Touchdown.
This all occurred whilst English Referees watch a television screen that has been installed pitch side for them to gaze as if strewn across a sofa watching from a dazed viewpoint having consumed a 4-pack of Fosters.
I jest, it is the only way to make sense of this situation.
Moving Forward, VAR can work, it does.
Look how it gives great addition to other sports such as Rugby and American Football.
It gives question to the rise of contention that lays strewn across European Sport, have we extinguished the flame that used to make our sports so watchable, so loved, so admired. The players, the tackles, the controversy, the drama, the delight, the bragging rights of so many many rivalries stretching over a continent.
I believe so.
Bring back the drama, the pub debate, the “getting away with it”, the controversy.
I for one miss it and at this time in history it looks like the American people are far more enjoying their sports than us.
Written by Alex Howard for @mondesportifsportblog
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