I have to admit to two frailties related to writing about soccer that likely separate me (and not in a good way) from those lucky enough to do this as their primary source of income. First, I can't stay away from the internet/instant messaging/SMS/etc. during matches - they don't even have to be terribly important ones. If I'd been trying, I couldn't have stayed away from Birmingham and Newcastle the other day just because I had two players on my fantasy team playing in the match. Second, once I know the outcome of the match, I generally can't bring myself to watch it on TiVo/DVR later on. This second part is particularly poor form as there is likely important insight I'm missing out on by not going back and seeing what is happening that doesn't show up in the statistics or the match report. What young and on-the-rise player or players are playing better than reported or conversely, which players of strong reputation are fading faster than we expected (I'm looking at you Gerrard and Lampard). I'm not proud of these things but in a life where I have a day job, a wife, and occasionally a social life I have to make some hard choices and not watching matches on DVR is one of them.
I relay those failings so I can tell this story. Yesterday afternoon, when Arsenal vs. Barca was on live, I had work commitments and couldn't watch live. I followed parts of it via Twitter updates when I could but I wasn't even able to follow via a "textcast" stream which would be my usual fallback. Since the game "sounded" amazing via Twitter I figured I'd better watch later on DVR just to see what everyone was so excited about and because, you know, ARSENAL CAME FROM BEHIND TO BEAT BARCA! Fortunately, despite the apparent self-awareness stated in the first paragraph, I tend to DVR big matches in hopes that this will be the time I keep myself from the results. Here's some thoughts from my view-after-the-fact:
