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Nov 09
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Earlier this week my long-time collaborator Chris Nee announced he was closing twofootedtackle.com, the site he set up in 2008 and I’ve co-edited with him for coming on for a couple of years. Chris had been wanting to do something different for a while now and, given my lack of time, it felt like the right time to call it a day, although the podcast – which we both hugely enjoy – will continue.
All of which left me with some decisions to make. TFT has been where I’ve posted the majority of my somewhat infrequent football writing over the past couple of years, interspersed with guest posts elsewhere, and paid work. And since I started football blogging back in 2008 for Soccerlens, the industry and community has changed – both overtly and subtly.
There’s a few thoughts I’d like to consider around that, but my main thought is, with the football writing, it’s probably time to call it a day and largely leave it behind although, like Orson Welles in Transformers, I’m sure I’ll return will an occasional ill-judged foray in order to pay the bills. Or I have something equally ill-advised to say.
Back in 2008, football blogging was a very different community. There were a handful of well-known sites, with one eye on commerce, such as Soccerlens or Who Ate All The Pies, and some smaller or less well publicised blogs, often done by an individual out of love for the game.
The idea of a football blogging community was almost unheard of. Twitter existed but was still the preserve of early adopters. The idea that bloggers would contact each other, let alone converse with established football journalists seemed fanciful.
Fast forward to 2011 and around fifty football bloggers and writers gathered together to drink beer, eat pies, watch football and mingle or network with like-minded people at the Socrates football blogger meetup. Later this year the second NOPA awards for football bloggers will be held. It has attracted more entries and interest than the inaugural event. The football blogging sub culture is alive and in incredible rude health.
The makeup of these bloggers has changed. There are more football blogs than ever before, as younger writers who’ve grown up with the Internet take it further into the mainstream. Many of these aim for or are already writing for mainstream publications, either traditional publications like the Guardian and Mirror or newer entrants such as BT Life’s A Pitch. The lines are most definitely blurred.
Guest posts are common between bloggers, there are more niche focused football sites than anyone would have imagined possible, and the conversation across Twitter is constant. This is to say nothing on the thousands of football fans who don’t blog but do have football specific Twitter handles.
If you wanted to, you could spend all day consuming and talking about football. Some do. Like Sky Sports, football is never ending. There is always something to discuss, shout about or get outraged over. If you love football, it’s probably an ideal that sounds close to Utopia.
Which is why it probably sounds pretty odd that I’ve decided to, by and large, call it a day, right?
When I first pitched Soccerlens to see if they’d like me to write for them, I’d just moved to London from a journalism job into the world of PR. I wanted to keep my hand in at writing and, given I’d thought of setting up my own football blog, it seemed like a pretty good fit.
And it was, largely. From Soccerlens, led to other writing, some paid, some unpaid (I’m particularly proud of the work I wrote for Pitch Invasion), and then onto twofootedtackle.
But even in the early days, there was a certain weary cynicism of football blogging on my part, which takes a bit of explaining.
During my training as a journalist, one mantra was beaten into me: Tell your reader (or listener) something they don’t already know. And yes, blogging isn’t quite journalism (the lines are very blurred, but there are slim distinctions, I think), but that’s a maxim most writers would do well to consider.
The trouble is with sports journalism – and especially football journalism – is that much of it states the bleedin’ obvious. There is a large amount of dog-bites-man reports that ‘s practically dog-gets-taken-for-a-walk stories.
Of course no striker who has scored for the last five games isn’t going to target more goals, or a goalkeeper who has let in three goals will say, “Actually, I’d rather not keep a clean sheet next week.” In an entirely unscientific estimate, probably about half of sports news stories could write themselves, or be randomly generated, and stand a good chance of being roughly accurate.
And much as bloggers like to consider themselves independent, a large portion of what they write will be dictated by the news agenda; the same bland non-stories that tell us nothing new, although make for good headlines (and, ergo, good sales). Bloggers write because they want traffic, hits, think it’s important, or simply because they believe they should be writing about it
The are many exceptions to this, admittedly, and who head down a singular path. They are in the minority though (although I may be wrong here).
Yet, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, The Good Blogger Manual and received wisdom says you should post content on a regular, even daily basis, and keep writing to bring the punters back. Which inevitably means regular regurgitation of the main Premier League headlines of the day and a discussion or post that, in truth, has probably been written twenty times elsewhere already, with at least two of them being better than the one you’re writing.
This is fine for some. It will bring in readers, and possibly advertisers and money. Or if you’re shrill and pushy enough, and a good self-publicist, then you’ll also pull in the readers. If that’s your desire, then fine. It’s not for me to say how to run a website.
But if writing something for the sake of it – and writing something already written at that – means that’s the task in hand, then I’d rather close down my laptop and do something more worthwhile with my life. There seems little point for me in writing just to either look like I have an opinion or tempt in extra readers who, in all honesty, probably already know about this and don’t need opinions from an oik like me.
In truth, the most read posts we’ve seen on twofootedtackle have been one-offs that happen to have been well-written and very occasionally happen to coincide with a genuine talking point. These readers rarely returned on a regular basis. It was the content rather than the site that enticed them in, not a steady slew of pieces on Carlos Tevez.
I’m also not getting any younger. There was a period where becoming a sports journalist looked like a distinct possibility. At the very least, I could have freelanced and made enough to get by on. But that lifestyle has never appealed and the days where I had the time and commitment to attempt re-entering journalism in a different discipline are long departed.
I have plenty of non-footballing interests. I have a busy, challenging non-football job that I genuinely enjoy, and I get to write as part of this. There’s no burning desire to leave my position or spend significant amounts of time moonlighting as a football writer on the side.
I have infinite respect for those who do stay up all hours honing their posts, but that life is also not for me anymore. And most importantly, I don’t want my football blogging to feel like work. A hobby should be fun. It shouldn’t be something I’d rather procrastinate over by putting in extra hours for work rather than churn out another post. And work is what it feels like at the moment.
Equally, I don’t feel the need to say yes to every offer that comes my way, be it from PR or from more respected publications offering the opportunity to write on their site. For free. Again, for some it’s a necessary evil to take on unpaid blogging to pick up better paid gigs (or should be, if they’re serious about making money). I don’t want to build my profile, and while I’m always flattered, I dislike the implication that I should be grateful that I’ve been considered and offered this opportunity.
This isn’t to suggest that my work is perfect – anyone reading this can tell I could benefit from an editor, for a start. But I’d rather do what feels right for me than jump because a well-known brand is offering me an unpaid platform for my ill-conceived ramblings.
All this is a rather long way of saying that what feels right for me right now is to step back from football blogging. There is no strong need or compulsion to produce regular football content, and much of what I’d want to write about will have been written better by somebody before I get round to placing finger on keyboard.
More than this, though, I want to remind myself why I fell in love with football in the first place. Some reading this will have also read a rant on why I’m falling out of love with modern football. Cathartic as writing that piece was, football and me are not done, my enthusiasm for the ridiculous basics of the game are undiminished. It’s just my passion isn’t currently served by spending time considering new angles on whatever game I’m watching or reading about. As I said at the start, Orson Welles and Transformers.
This isn’t storming away from football blogging, vowing never to as much make reference to Luton Town’s Johnstone’s Paint Trophy victory in any blog post. I know I’ll still be roused to opine and write on occasions, and there are most likely outlets to publish this. I just don’t envisage this more than a handful of times a year at the moment.
The podcast will remain. That’s one fortnightly hobby I genuinely look forward to. Unobjectively, I think it’s sounding better than ever (down, in no small part, to our guests).
But blogging has changed. And so have I. If I’m going write on a subject I’m passionate about, then I don’t want to chase page views or court the approval of the professionals (although I’d certainly welcome forensic feedback pointing out potential improvements).I just want to write something that tells the reader something they don’t already know.
If that takes two months to research and put together or two minutes to put down loose thoughts, then so be it. And at the moment, there’s nothing I can say that you don’t already know.
Apart from my experimental recipes. But then you didn’t come here for a lesson in cooking.
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