The Premier League is back!
The season of the TV deal is upon us
The Premier League is back. This is what NBC kept telling me, anyway, as I watched the Premier League on NBC. I guess I’ll take their word for it.
This is, after all, the season of the TV rights deal, when even the worst team in the top flight is expected to earn around $130 million thanks to the league’s new $6.5 billion contract with Sky and BT. NBC’s six-year, $1 billion deal, signed at the end of the 2014-15 season, looks like a steal by comparison.
And yet it is one of the strange by-products of the Premier League’s TV-moneyed reality that it is now easier to watch the league in the U.S. than it is in the U.K. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing for the future of soccer in this country remains to be seen.
But for now, after a summer when many of us American Premier League fans got to see our favorite teams up close and personal, as they competed in the laughably-titled, wannabe-competitive International Champions Cup, we have been forced back to the bars and living rooms and laptops at and on which we will enjoy the new season of our favorite TV show.
This is the third year the Premier League has been broadcast on NBC. That this is where you go to watch the #mostexcitingleagueintheworld no longer feels like a novelty. Which is strangely exhilarating, as far as sitting on the couch goes.
The coverage itself, however, felt a little anticlimactic as the network continues to direct the majority of its resources to the Olympics in Rio. Rebecca Lowe and Arlo White are both in Brazil, so Steve Bower took on the venerable task of reigning in the two Robbies (Mustoe and Earle), who were as to-the-point as always.
They have a very strange way of shoehorning huge chunks of analysis into a 90 second segment, as if everything they say is part of a single compound adjective. The really amazing thing is that you often feel like you have learned some new information, and yet it passes so quickly it is just as often impossible to tell exactly what that information is.
Perhaps we need a way to measure this. Word Efficiency Rating, or WER, if you will. The two Robbies are probably off the charts. God only knows how much one, super Robbie could say in the 90 seconds he is allotted between Chevy commercials. The mind truly boggles.
In commentary, we got the second string, too. White was out, so Peter Drury stepped in for Leicester’s opener alongside Jim Beglin, the original former-professional-full-back-turned-announcer. Drury did his usual Drury thing, all grand metaphors and freeform adverbs (upliftingly, anyone?), while Beglin kept our feet on the ground.
“It’s not sentiment,” he said at one point, “it’s business.” That was in reference to the growing tension between Hull’s fans and owners. But it could just as well have been a reference to the league as an increasingly ridiculous whole. It is just business. And business is booming. The Premier League is back, everyone. If NBC hasn’t told you already, this is the part where you get excited.
Hull not as bad as we thought, Manchester United as good as we feared
There were some games, too, which we shouldn’t forget. Perhaps the most interesting, for a number of reasons, was the one between Hull and Leicester.
The abiding lesson from Leicester’s title win last season was, I thought, that you do not make it to the highest levels of the game without being a very, very, very good player. Success depends on a lot of factors, but a lack of talent is very rarely one of them.
The Foxes relished teaching us that lesson last season, but against Hull on Saturday they seemed to forget it rather quickly. The Tigers, having just finished the most laughably demoralizing preseason possibly ever, were happy to remind them. Hull, led by caretaker manager Mike Phelan, had only 13 fit senior players, made zero substitutes and won, comfortably.
They also played a starting XI that had several hundred Premier League appearances between them. So, then, there’s hope for us all. To be clear, Hull are still a mess. But this served as a timely reminder that they do not lack quality. They might lack literally everything else that traditionally ensures quality shows through on the pitch, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?
Leicester, meanwhile, did not show any of the energy and intensity that won them the title. They ceded the possession battle, as is their wont, but did not counterattack with the desperation that brought them so much success last season. The good news: new signing Ahmed Musa was not only their best player, but looked like a very good player. The bad news: Riyad Mahrez looked disinterested and Jamie Vardy couldn’t finish. My guess: Leicester will look at their best against the league’s elite teams, against whom they are able to maintain the old underdog spirit, but will struggle against the league’s worst, who force them, like Hull did, to play a game to which they are not suited.
Jose Mourinho got off to a much better start as Manchester United manager. This was not the most exciting game, which is worth point out only because there is an idea going around that excitement was the measuring stick against which Louis van Gaal was judged. Except it wasn’t, really, because in two seasons he finished fourth and fifth. For a club that can afford to pay over $100 million for a player it used to own, that is simply not good enough. No, van Gaal was judged on results, just as Mourinho will be.
Having said that, while United were not exactly free-flowing against Bournemouth, there were reasons to be optimistic about a positive change in style. One of those was the possession stats. Under van Gaal, United typically averaged over 60 percent (they averaged a shade over 57 in the corresponding fixture against Bournemouth last season). The reason they were so often described as boring is that they spent so much time doing nothing with the ball.
On Sunday, Mourinho’s United averaged 52.6 percent possession. They were for large parts of the game guilty of doing very little with the ball, but because their approach was never really predicated on controlling the ball, it felt like less of a problem. Plus there were the three goals they scored. And the fact Paul Pogba will be a big upgrade on Marouane Fellaini when he (presumably, hopefully and mercifully) replaces him in the starting XI on Friday. And once Henrikh Mkhytarian is up to speed, he should be an improvement as well, though it is unclear where he will play. (He should probably play behind Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but may have to settle for a spot on the right if Mourinho keeps faith with a not-great-but-also-not-nearly-as-terrible-as-some-people-seem-to-think Wayne Rooney [shout out to the two Robbies]).
This was, all in all, a very Mourinho start, and probably the most complete performance of any team this weekend. Not world changing. Not wildly exciting. But the result was never really in doubt after Simon Francis played Juan Mata through on goal at the end of the first half. The early signs are promising.
Bournemouth have bigger questions to answer. As with last season, there was a lot to like. They passed with the same calm assurance as always. They have a lot of dangerous individual players. Jordon Ibe didn’t have a great debut, but he showed enough to suggest he will be a good signing, and Callum Wilson and Josh King have the makings of an excellent front two (injuries permitting).
Wilson, in particular, will be interesting to watch this season. He had scored five goals in the first month of 2015-16, before suffering from a cruciate ligament injury that sidelined him until April. He struggled to get into the game against United, but so did all of his teammates. If he stays fit, he could score 12-15 goals this campaign, and maybe even work his way into the conversation for an England call up.
There was, however, a noticeable lack of threat through the middle. The Cherries consistently sought out space on the wings (whether by accident or design) and Wilson and King never really looked like getting on the end of their teammates’ crosses. Bournemouth’s biggest weakness last season was the defense. And the three goals they conceded did not suggest any immediate improvement in that department. Mata’s goal was the result of a freak individual error from Francis, but Rooney’s was probably more disturbing from an overall team perspective. This was never going to be an easy start for Eddie Howe’s team, and I still expect them to steer clear of relegation, but if they want to make the jump into the upper-mid-table, the defense needs to improve.
Weekly Awards
The Jesus Navas Award for Terrible Crossing: Bournemouth
The Cherries attempted 17 crosses against Manchester United on Sunday. Only three of them found their mark. On top of that, after attempting to stretch the play all match to almost no effect, one of Bournemouth’s few moves down the middle resulted in their only goal. Go figure. Jesus Navas, meanwhile, forced an own goal off Sunderland’s Paddy McNair with what may literally have been the best cross he has ever played. If he keeps this up, we’re going to have to rename the award.
The Dennis Bergkamp Award for Technical Invention: Adama Diomande and Abel Hernandez
The bicycle kick has long been one of the most universally popular pieces of acrobatics in soccer, but until Saturday morning the tandem bicycle kick was but a shadow of a flicker of a dream. Or something. Anyway, I have watched Hull’s first goal against Leicester approximately 8,000 times and I still can’t decide who scored. The powers that be ultimately awarded it to Diomande, which does nothing to explain why Diomande didn’t react (literally at all) when Hernandez immediately started celebrating as if he had gotten the decisive touch. This is set to go down as one of the game’s great mysteries, along with Ronaldo’s will-he-won’t-he ahead of the World Cup final in 1998 and the number of elbows possessed by Marouane Fellaini.
The Manchester United Award for Worst Shirt Sponsor: Hull
I have nothing against Sportspesa (Africa’s No. 1 sports betting site, apparently), but there are only so many things a club can do when their primary shirt colors are black and orange. Putting a chrome-blue circle right in the middle of the home shirt is not one of them. As if things in Hull weren’t bad enough.
The Sergio Aguero Award for Best Premier League Debut: Idrissa Gueye
Everton tired in the second half against Tottenham, but they were dominant in the first, and Gueye was arguably their best player. He showed exactly the sort of bite in the tackle the Toffees missed last season and looked intelligent and occasionally dangerous in possession. He also cost only $9.5 million, which got more puzzling by the minute on Saturday.
The Alberto Moreno Award for Terrible Decision Making: Alberto Moreno
This should come as a surprise to exactly no one. And yet. AND YET. The Liverpool left back not only decided to two foot Theo Walcott in his own box on Sunday, he also, having been bailed out by Simon Mignolet’s penalty save, decided a mere 60 seconds later to leave Theo Walcott completely unmarked in exactly the same spot he had lately two footed Theo Walcott in his own box. Then Theo Walcott scored. Adam Lallana, who lost the ball cheaply in midfield in the buildup to the goal, was also at fault, but there was something so remarkably Alberto Moreno about the whole debacle that I am willing to overlook Lallana’s contribution entirely.
Friday soccer asks tough questions
The first Friday game of the new Premier League season kicks off this, ahem, Friday, when Manchester United take on Southampton at Old Trafford in what will hopefully be Paul Pogba’s first game for the club.
In England, the introduction of Friday night soccer has raised yet another question about whether the Premier League really values the match-going fan. The 500 mile roundtrip Saints supporters will have to make (on a workday, no less) to watch their team play is probably the best answer to that question, but the shortest answer to that question is also true: no.
Of course, all of this raises an even weirder question for fans in the U.S., which is this: if Friday night soccer is a symbol of the corporate greed taking over the beautiful game, but it takes place while I, the overseas fan (the other symbol of the corporate greed taking over the beautiful game), am at work, then what do the rules of authentic fandom dictate I do? I could turn off my NBC live stream and do my job, thereby showing my solidarity with the plight of the working fan. Or I could, you know, not. The Premier League is back, and it has tricked us already.