Jump to content

June 12: Vancouver at Portland (R)


Recommended Posts

Guest Jeffery S.
quote:Originally posted by Allison A

There is a match report with 11 photos and 2 video clips here:

http://www.soccercityusa.com/timbers/van061204.htm

I know this is informative and all, but I don't consider this way of doing match reports, so popular in the A-League, at all edifying. I really hate this way of reporting in fact, I think it's childish. There is absolutely nothing about how the game was played, which is the important thing. A game has a story, flows, and changes character. Just listing attacking plays in respective boxes and the reasons for yellows is not enough.

The whole point about soccer is that its entertainment value does not lie solely in goals scored or attacks, which is why you can leave a hard fought midfield battle with a scoreless draw satisfied, because it is a form of entertainment not dependant on the simple fact of scoring or almost doing so.

Basically what I want to know is how the Caps broke the Timbers winning streak playing away, holding them scoreless. What did the Caps do right, and where did the Timbers fail. And who looked better, where on the field, and why.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why criticize fans who write game reports for free? I mean there are so few willing to do so, it's not as if they are professional and god knows it would be much more enjoyable to just go to the games and watch without bothering to write a match report.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To the person who didn't like the way I did my match report, I'll tell you exactly why I don't do match reports the way you preferred. If you try to talk too much about flow, character, and game stories, then you will be inserting opinion all over the report. And if you are trying to insert too much opinion into the report, then that will be shaped by the opinion of the writer, who in this case is a Timbers fan. Then what will you end up with? Well, in this case, it would have been my opinion that the Timbers gave this game away, with no help from the ref who blew several calls that would have benefitted the Timbers, including the goal where the ball appeared to have crossed the endline before Clarke crossed it. That's for message boards, not a match report.

So, the only way to try to make an objective report is to report the facts, try to shape it into a story the makes some sense and is a good read for the reader. Let them form their opinion about who controlled the flow of the match, and when the momentum changed. If they can't figure out who was controlling a certain part of the match or the character of the match from a description of what happened, then I can't do anything to help them.

These reports aren't easy to do, and I'm not a professional writer, I'm a Unix Administrator who happens to be a soccer fan, and I like to think I'm doing a service to the Timbers and to the A-League by providing my accounts of the games I see. I provide a description, pictures, and in most cases video clips. I can't hand-hold every soccer fan and describe to them when momentum changes and why one team lost and another team won.

And if you think it's childish, that's fine. Nobody is forcing you to read them and that's your opinion. But if you can't figure out how the flow of the game went, and why one team won and another team lost from the desciptions of the game, maybe that's your problem and not mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Jeffery S.

Boy I knew you were immature when you started whining about your stupid scarf being burnt by a few brainless fans in Montreal -Allison went East, learn of her dangerous forays into the Canadian unknown- but this reply confirms it. The whole point is that this silly report is nothing but objective, it is simply a list of "events" as you'd define them in basketball terms: three pointer, technical, fast break. Only soccer is not like that.

I think you if you honestly knew about what you were watching you'd have the capacity to make a global assessment, as any half decent soccer report will do, or any half decent poster on BigSoccer or here. And then you could divide the global assessment into a series of phases, as all games have phases: "For the final 20 minutes of regular time the Whitecaps dominated the midfield, forcing Portland to resort to the long ball to get to their strikers" would be a perfectly objective way of reporting events while at the same time actually informing readers what happened. If in your puritanically repressed mentality that is going way out on a limb and offering an opinion, well better that than wasting your time scribbling like a school child all game to publish what is more or less an amateur match tracker, only half a day after the game had ended.

But in any case though I did not direct the remarks initially to you personally, you had no reason to take it so personally. Oh, and if you don't want people like me who follow Whitecaps avidly from afar to read such reports and criticize them, don't publish them in a place they might get to me. Show them to your mom.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if you feel that way, you are hereby excused from being forced to read anything else I ever write. Or you can just get your detailed, objective match reports from the Whitecaps press releases.

If you really had wanted to offer advice on how to improve my reports, you wouldn't have started out with a rant of insults. So therefore your intent was just to criticize, not to improve. I can't think of anything more worthless and childish than that.

I liked the bit about "don't publish them in a place they might get to me". That said more about your true intent here than everything else you said put together. You aren't the first person to bitch about the way I write and you won't be the last. But you have alternatives to find out about the A-League and the Whitecaps. Use them and stay away from my site if you hate it that much. If you provide your IP address, I'll see if I can block it and save you the trouble of being inconvenienced.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Jeffery S.
quote:Originally posted by Allison A

If you really had wanted to offer advice on how to improve my reports, you wouldn't have started out with a rant of insults. So therefore your intent was just to criticize, not to improve. I can't think of anything more worthless and childish than that.

Perhaps you are right. But since I did not know who wrote it I just ranted. But one of the wonders of a forum is that you don't have to be objective and can just vent, wasn't you who said that was their purpose?

But if you are actually publishing, and representing the game officially in the place you are doing so, you should have the maturity and confidence to be able to go beyond these goal-keeper intervention and dirty play lists, which I insist are infantile. Why don't you try giving your opinion about phases of the game, you'd be surprised how many hundreds of official sites the world over are able to do so without offending anyone. As is all you are doing is hiding behind a false hedge of objectivity that is little more than an admission you don't understand the game very well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also like the match reports provided by volunteers, so plese keep them coming. They are usuallky filed promptly and give the essential facts, and thankfully don't provide an exhaustive narrative that Jeffery appears to want.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah.

Don't be afraid to put your mark on a report Allison. Timbers fan or no. Otherwise it comes off sterile, and good football is anything but sterile.

Live a little, woman. I think you'll find you can be a Timbers fan and still be objective enough to be credible.

Just a thought. Please don't yell at me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:Originally posted by Jeffrey S.

Boy I knew you were immature when you started whining about your stupid scarf being burnt by a few brainless fans in Montreal -Allison went East, learn of her dangerous forays into the Canadian unknown- but this reply confirms it.

If I recall correctly, Allison only came on this board to set the record straight as others were already talking about the actions of the Montreal fans. Thats hardly "coming here whining"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...