Welcome to the Goal Rush
This week marked the debut of NBC’s latest attempt to whittle soccer down to the most painlessly consumable chunk of TV-entertainment possible. Goal Rush is what they named it, the tiredness of which pun may or may not ultimately reflect how little the network cares about this project.
The idea seems to be that Goal Rush will be to the Premier League what NFL RedZone is to the NFL, which is a way to make the sport seem more eventful than it actually is. The problem is that soccer, as we all know, is almost provocatively uneventful. And so by attempting to thicken the action, there is a possibility Goal Rush can only succeed in embarrassing itself.
As it actually turned out, Goal Rush was really just the NBC broadcast of Watford vs. Arsenal, except it cut away from that match every so often to show us the highlights of the other five games taking place at the same time. There was none of RedZone’s presentational panache, nowhere near as much happening on the screen, or as many people telling us how much fun we were having.
And it was a rush in neither sense of the word. The highlights were both very much not live and, more predictably, few and far between. So it felt more like the game I was trying to watch was simply being interrupted than that I was enjoying some new piece of cutting-edge TV-entertainment.
If you have watched none of Everton vs. Stoke, it turns out watching a contextless Ross Barkley drag various shots wide is a disorienting experience. There is almost no information there — about who is in control of the game, about how each team is playing and is trying to play, about what Everton did to get Ross Barkley in position to drag all those shots wide in the first place.
But then this isn’t really about information, is it? It is about, once more, making us believe more is happening than really is. It is about TV being a sub-optimal medium for this sport in the first place. The field is too big and there is too much going on at the same time for anyone to get a real handle on the game from their couch or their seat at the bar.
There is another, more ideological way of putting all that: in soccer, the not-scoring is the most interesting part. Goals change games, but they are in the end only the trimmings, the punctuation of soccer’s vast language. The problem, then, with an idea like Goal Rush is not that it’s incomplete, but that it’s completely empty.
However.
Goal Rush is also, if it can be properly executed, absolute genius, for the same reason RedZone is absolute genius. Because when it is executed properly, it is capable of making us forget the sport isn’t primarily a TV show, which is, presumably, exactly what NBC wants us to do.
And so at the same time as I completely hate the concept, I also absolutely love it. Because what kind of soccer fan wouldn’t want to see every goal in every game (sort of) live, (almost) as it happens? All that other stuff is all well and good, but as we know, or at least have been told many times by people who don’t understand statistics, the only number that counts is the one in the top left-hand corner of our screens.
Besides, even for the biggest tactics or analytics nerds, goals are in the end what it’s all about, the first premise from which the entire game follows, the sort of heart-in-mouth, ass-out-of-seat spectacle that makes it all worth it.
But if Goal Rush is going to capture this, it needs to be much more than it was this weekend. It needs a studio of pundits, one devoted to each game, to keep us up to date with what is actually happening, so we are not simply dropped in, as we were on Saturday, at King Power Stadium, where there seemed to be some sort weather-event taking place while Jamie Vardy punched his own weasely face in celebration of … something.
Goal Rush needs a real host, not poor old John Dykes, who clearly began the week as the designated announcer for Watford vs. Arsenal and was shortly thereafter handed the unenviable task of occasionally talking about whichever other game NBC’s producers threw on his monitor.
Goal Rush needs more things happening on screen, more pundits drawing circles around players so we know who is who and why they are no longer standing inside the circle that used to be drawn around them. We need a news ticker and a live table and more shouting and more jokes. We need Goal Rush to bask in the ridiculousness of its own central premise: that it is a live highlights show about a game in which live highlights simultaneously make no sense and are the only part of the game worth watching.
A title race emerges
Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United are (in that order) the top three teams in the Premier League, and that doesn’t look like changing any time soon (except for possibly next match week, when United and City play each other, but you get the point).
There were question marks about all three of these teams, and their managers, heading into the season. City seemed over-reliant on an aging spine (at the base of which was an always-injured Vincent Kompany), while Pep Guardiola was expected to struggle to implement his possession-based style in the uniquely anti-possession environment of the Premier League.
Chelsea’s squad was made up of 90 percent head cases whose new manager was exactly the sort of disciplinarian they had turned against the season before. Speaking of which, Jose Mourinho was coming off the worst season of his decade-plus managerial career, and his squad at Old Trafford had some gaping holes in midfield and defense.
Fast forward three weeks and all three teams have looked good-to-excellent. City’s best has been the best of all. Their first half performance against West Ham on Sunday was as good as anything this league has seen at least since City’s start to the 2013-14 campaign, and possibly since Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and Wayne Rooney were all playing for United.
That City played so well against a very good West Ham team made it even more impressive. When players as good as City’s move the ball as well and move off the ball as quickly as they did on Sunday, there is simply nothing the opposition can do, except hope they come up with some good blocks when it counts.
The second half, in which West Ham scored and briefly looked like they might equalize at 2-2, was a reminder that this team is still not perfect. The defense remains a question mark, and they are still lacking a truly world-class tempo-setter in midfield to help them maintain control when the going gets tough. (It is possible Ilkay Gundogan will be that man, but he is still recovering from an injury.)
Anyway, West Ham pushed a little higher, forced City into a few more mistakes and generally grew in confidence as they seemed to embrace the fact it really could not have gone any worse than that first half. They never really looked like winning, but the idea of them winning, which in the first half probably didn’t even occur to them, seemed at least plausible.
Manchester United, meanwhile, had a very Manchester United game. They looked fine, and just when fine started to look like it wouldn’t be enough, they found a way to a win. What was interesting was how old-United this felt, how naturally Mourinho, who was criticized before his arrival for failing to exemplify the United way (whatever that means), has slipped into the role as United manager.
With the rain falling thick and fast at KCOM Stadium, after 90 minutes of heroic Jake Livermore blocks and Curtis Davies headers, Marcus Rashford scored the winner in the 92nd minute. It was a win-while-your-playing-badly performance taken right out of the Fergie handbook, and it represents United’s trump card this season: Mourinho, who for all his disagreeableness, knows how to win in this league better than anyone currently managing in it, and especially better than his two closest managerial rivals.
(Side note: shout out here to Hull, who were superb. The owners, or whoever eventually buys the club, should appoint Mike Phelan as full-time manager immediately. He wants the job, and there is no else out there the club could reasonably expect to do any better than he has, under some truly trying circumstances, in his first couple of months.)
Finally, Chelsea. The Blues cruised to the easiest win of the weekend at home to Burnely. In fact, it was so easy we should be wary of praising Chelsea too much, lest we forget how completely awful the opposition were. Still, it was a nice confidence boost after two narrow wins.
Antonio Conte has introduced a really nice balance to this team. The N’Golo Kante – Nemanja Matic – Oscar central midfield triangle provides both an attacking threat and real defensive solidity, while Eden Hazard and Willian are the most lethal pair of wingers in the league. They don’t have the depth of attacking talent of City, or the Mourinho know-how and star power of United, but if Chelsea stay healthy and focused, they may have the strongest overall squad in the league. The defense is perhaps a John Terry injury away from a crisis, but it feels like we’ve saying that for the past decade, so maybe don’t hold your breath.
After last season, this title race feels alarmingly predictably. A three-horse title race between the two Manchester clubs and Chelsea isn’t exactly the stuff of fairytales, but it may be, in terms of the overall quality of the teams involved, the best title race in years.
Weekly Awards
The Kyrie Irving/Kevin Love Award for Terrible Pick and Roll Defense: Wayne Rooney
Late in Manchester United’s game against Hull, the Tigers made a rare foray forward. In the middle of this rare foray forward, United’s number 10, Wayne Rooney, found himself defending the second phase of a Hull corner. Shaun Maloney picked up the ball on the right side of the box and dribbled towards the end line, at which point Rooney, trying to follow him, was stopped in his tracks by a suspiciously innocent-looking Curtis Davies. Maloney then checked back again, at which point Rooney seemed to lose all sense of time and space (where he have bumped into contextless Ross Barkley) and, after finally recalibrating and figuring out where the ball was (long gone), turned to the linesman to try to blame it all on him. It was probably a foul by Davies, but then I think anything that can make the England captain look that confused should probably be encouraged.
The Mikael Forsell Award for Perseverance: Victor Moses
Chelsea bought Victor Moses from Wigan in 2012, when Roberto di Mateo was still fresh off a completely undeserved Champions League victory. Moses played 23 games that season and scored one goal. Since then, he has been loaned out to Liverpool, where he was a bit-part player in their title challenging season in 2013-14; Stoke, where he was a bit-part player in their not-title-challenging season in 2014-15; and West Ham, where he was a bit-part player in their impressive run to seventh place in 2015-16. Now, finally, he has returned to the place it all began, Chelsea, where he has so far been a bit-part player in their perfect start to the new season. On Saturday, his bit-part was a bit bigger than usual, as he scored one and played a key role in what should have been another in a 15 minute substitute appearance. So here’s to you, Moses. Keep on trucking.
The Jose Mourinho Award for Most Predictable 0-0 Draw: West Brom vs. Middlesbrough
West Brom scored less than a goal a game last season as they finished in a respectable 14th place. They also conceded only 48 goals, the seventh fewest in the league. On Sunday, they welcomed newly-promoted Middlesbrough to town, who themselves conceded mind-boggling 31 goals in 46 league games last season, the best defensive record in the English Football League. For some reason, the Premier League decided these two teams should play each other anyway, despite the fact this match had 0-0 written so completely all over it it was impossible to see whether a match was being played at all. The score? 0-0.
The Dr. Steve Peters Award for Sports Psychology: Eden Hazard
Eden Hazard deserves his own segment for another exceptional display. It seems safe to say the Belgian has returned from his season-long mental vacation and will resume being the world class player he obviously is. I don’t think we’ll ever really know what happened at Stamford Bridge last season, but there is no question Hazard’s “loss of form” had very little to do, as some speculated, with a lack of quality and everything to do with his own decision not to give a shit. Regardless, he’s back and he looks as focused as ever. There have been a few really great individual starts to the season, but Hazard may be the (very, very, very) early frontrunner for player of the year.
The Marouane Fellaini Award for Pointless Contributions to a Match: David Silva
Kevin de Bruyne’s dead ball delivery was exquisite on Sunday. He set up Fernandinho for City’s second goal with a swerving, dipping, in-swinging free-kick, he set up Nolito for a disallowed goal with another free-kick in the second half and he caused various levels of mayhem in the West Ham defense with several other deliveries as well. In the midst of all that exceptional technique, you may have missed David Silva, who accompanied de Bruyne to (maybe literally) every dead ball, and either stood next to his teammate and watched or ran over the ball before his teammate actually kicked it, accomplishing a grand total of absolutely nothing. Silva had an excellent game, per usual, but I’d really prefer it if he stopped doing that.