Vomiting footballers & 30 years of the electronic sub board: The listeners' loves & hates

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0:32Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calsheet.com slash regulatory. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+.

1:06This episode is brought to you by State Farm. No two football players are exactly alike, and the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm gets to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like. Is Gascoigne going to have a crack? He is, you know. Oh, I say! Brilliant! The cheese! He's round the goalkeeper. He's done it! Absolutely incredible! He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip.

1:54Oh, I say! It's amazing! He does it time and time and time again. Crank up the music. Charge a glass. This nation is going to dance all night. Broadcasters' sensitivity over the lesser-discussed footballing bodily fluid. Fourth officials' core muscles and supermarket self-checkouts. The inside story of 30 years of electronic substitutes boards. The half-clap, half-skim hand gesture of post-miss ruefulness. the BBC player rater and other forlorn corners of the engagement farming internet, the unaddressed clumsiness of negatively themed league tables, and the backlash against cutback culture in the old corridors of uncertainty.

2:35Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés and your Meza Harland Dicks.

2:46Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry and this is the listeners' Meza Harland Dicks for August. Your latest football fascinations and irritations. The tiny things that float your boat or get your goat. Explored in the usual cliches depth. With me for this one, first of all, David Walker. How are things? Yeah, things are good. Alongside you is Nick Miller. How are you doing? I'm very well. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. A lovely little selection from the moderately twisted minds of our listeners this month. The first one. Let's dig into our fascinations then. First one comes from Nick Dunmore, a.k.a.

3:20Fisted Away on Twitter. Yeah Broadcasters always pan away from streakers, political protests and gruesome injuries But for years, they've denied us one electric piece of television Players being sick Beckham, twice against Ecuador 2006 but refused to be shown by the BBC Messi, apparently a serial puker, we've seen no evidence All I'm saying is, imagine how much harder Zidane's free kick in Euro 2004 would have gone If we'd seen him throw up beforehand Touch of the Stuart Lees about Nick Dunmore. Start off very Stuart Lee. Yeah, so this is an interesting thing. I mean, obviously, the classic case study for what broadcasters do and do not show in a game, Dave, would be sort of serious injuries.

4:06And there seems to be an increased sensitivity towards bad injuries not being shown again. And they'll go out of the way to tell us why they're not showing this again. But puking footballers feels like a greyer area. I mean, again, as Nick says, it doesn't feel like it's shown a lot. But what's the sensitivity here? It's a bodily function like most other things. But I guess you wouldn't show any of those either, would you? No, I think, I mean, I think it is, I think it just, you know, the bar for not showing things that would make people feel squeamish is relatively low. Unless it's a very clearly signposted, like, medical drama or something where you expect some blood and guts or some broken limbs or some surgery or whatever.

4:53I think people tuning in to watch football or whatever it might be and not expecting to see someone throwing up. But I agree with Nick in that I wouldn't have a problem with it being shown. I'm one of those people that if I see a bad injury that the cameras refuse to show, I am immediately on Twitter searching their name so I can see the leg dangling at the wrong angle. I want to see it. Nick, if you think of the triumvirate of PG-13 bodily emissions in a football context, we've had Jens Lehmann having a piss on the side of the pitch. Demarcus Beasley once famously did it at a World Cup. Gary Lineker shit himself on a pitch, although not visibly, at Italian 90.

5:36But when it comes to puking footballers, Zidane, obviously the most famous example, as Fisted Away said there, before his free kick against England at Euro 2004. unlike the other two situations which make the the person look more humiliated this one kind of burnishes the myth of the player like they overcame this and still did this it was lucky it's almost like he was ejecting the nerves from his body and then said right dusted himself off from being sick and then did that and it was a it was a real kind of like i don't know if a violent is quite the right word but it wasn't like you know sick and he's spitting bits out and it was just like like gush of water, straight back up, bang, goal.

6:15Because it will be watery, won't it? It's unlikely to be lumpy. Right. And if you projectile vomited on another player, would that be unsporting behaviour? Well, you should never do that to a fellow professional. I would rather have my legs broken than be puked on by a player. I think I actually would. Did they show Paula Radcliffe having a shit on the marathon? They did. They did. They certainly didn't pan away. Again, it was a Lineker situation. It wasn't, you know. But, yeah, they certainly didn't shy away. No, because Lineker actually, Lineker shat himself on the pitch in the midst of a stretch or whatever, whereas Radcliffe actually squatted down, didn't she?

6:57She squatted down and had a shit. Yeah, stopped the race to... Yeah. I don't remember them panning away. Maybe they didn't know. If they had, maybe the director would have made a different decision. We found ourselves in an unexpected you-are-the-ref situation there, Nick, about puking. Poor old Paul Trevelyan having to draw some vomit. But yeah, it's certainly the lesser scene of the three, I guess, Dave. But yeah, you hear about it a lot, but you don't see it. But I feel like it's going to become more of an issue with climate change and dehydration and that sort of stuff. So should we start to become more accepting of players puking on the pitch and just accept it as part of the game.

7:38In a way, I suppose it is interesting that you don't see it more because you do quite often hear athletes talk about it in training. They push themselves to that point where they throw up. But I guess that's the whole point. In training, they're going further than they would in a match to try and build up that stamina. But you don't see it that much. That's the thing. It is a rarity, which is more the more annoying that when it does happen, you don't see it. You do sometimes hear about players being sick before the game with nerves. Oh, yeah. So you just go to the, before a game, go and have a sort of tactical puke.

8:09As with anything, there's a Brian Clough story about this. He apparently, I think it was Gary Megson that he signed. Make sure you do the voice, if possible, please. I'm not doing the voice, no. Okay, okay. Gary Megson, he signed Gary Megson, and he was sick before a game, so Clough promptly sold him. So I can't find that. So I just got rid of him. I will not have vomiting players on my team. All right, there you go. Yep, thanks. It's as good as daishies. and that's what I was aiming for. Always good to go with a cluffy impression. That's what a football podcast is all about. Right, listeners footballing fascination for August number two.

8:44One of my footballing fascinations is the electronic substitute board. It just seems baffling to me that football spent billions making everything technologically complicated, but the sport has decided collectively that the perfect interface for a substitution is still just two brightly illuminated numbers. I think it's absolutely fantastic. We're actually coming up to the 30th anniversary of the first use of the electronic board. So I thought you guys might enjoy that. Nick, who fucking knew? 30 years of the LED substitution board. That's a long read waiting to happen, surely. Oh God, keep that quiet.

9:26That's got my name written all over it. Can't believe we missed the 25th anniversary, to be honest with you. This is a long-standing fascination of mine, I suppose, as well. It's obviously not so bad when it's just a single substitution or it's the added time at the end of a half. But when they have to do it twice, one of the most undignified sites in football is the fourth official trying to fiddle around doing the next set of numbers on the thing. There simply has to be a better way. I'm glad you posed that situation, Nick, because, Dave, I mean, Liam Harker has presented a valid point here.

10:05How has technology not moved on for this in the last sort of 20, 30 years? It is still just an LED board, and you do have to basically punch in the numbers on the device on the back, presumably. And also you have to factor in the fact that, of course, the fourth official has to twist their body, you know, around 180 degrees to make sure that everyone in the stadium can see the numbers being displayed. Where could technology go with this next? Do you think a curved board? It's a bit like a foldable phone. That's where the electronic boards are going to go next. It's that slightly unnecessary ergonomic development.

10:34I guess you could have a big iPad, but it's obviously it's quite big. An actual LED board, what is it? It's probably like the size of a small TV, I guess, like a computer monitor or something. um so you could have one of those but then i guess their thinking is they don't want to add any unnecessary complications into the process you don't want it to be reliant on wi-fi or or anything that could that could because you know there's there's no time to fuck about with it so they just need the led is like low low enough tech that it's it's basically bulletproof as long as you know how to use it it's never going to let you down yeah and but you could obviously you have substitutions on the big screen you could take it away from the fourth official immediately but like it's a big part of their job it's like their responsibility it's like they have they have the substitutions have to go through them it shouldn't be part of the fourth official's kind of remit nick to do this admin i think so the solution i think might be viable should take inspiration from self-service checkouts every player their shirt should be loved like like a microchip or a barcode in it and it just gets scanned and then the numbers just come up on a board automatically so you don't have to type anything in they just all have their own identifiers and it comes up straight away and then the fourth official doesn't really have to do anything they probably pass through a little threshold and it scans them and up come the numbers like those amazon supermarket things yeah you you don't actually pay i like the kind of the ceremony of the fourth official doing the ball making some kind of signal to show that you know who's coming on and who's coming off it's specifically the the kind of fiddling around with the the things surely there should be they should it should have an app or something where he he puts it in and then the thing that the numbers automatically appear on the board and then the next set of numbers very quickly automatically appear on the board as well right i mean have you ever used a self-service checkout like how many how often does stuff go wrong you'd be sitting around waiting for the fourth official to come over two players the little red lights flashing please put the substitute in the bagging area he's in the bagging area he's in the technical area are you old enough to bring the substitute on these fourth officials to come over and give you permission type in the longest number in the world to activate it for some reason or sometimes just four zeros yeah it's at sainsbury's sometimes at sainsbury's as well the the people just have a little bit of paper they've just got a receipt yeah sure they should have a battered old piece of paper yeah why don't they have a pass surely they should have some kind of lanyard it's fraught with difficulty but you mentioned an app there nick there actually is um some sort of app based process that already goes on for substitutions because when you hear commentators say uh and we're told that dwight mcneil's going to be coming on to replace jack greelish or whoever before the board is held up the coaching staff have to tell the fourth official who they're going to bring on and at that point Like the Premier League match manager enters it into an app, which the broadcasters have access to, so they can get the information just that little bit ahead of time.

13:36So there is that sort of stuff already going on. That's really interesting. And I also very kind of naively thought that when the commentator said, we understand it's Player X coming off, I thought that this was just kind of boots on the ground journalism from the sideline reporting. Yeah, same. Overheard a conversation or something like that. I didn't know it was technology-based. This illusion shattered. On a plate. Yeah, it's annoying. So Jeff Shreve's not quite as intrepid as we always thought. I'm not saying it was around in his day. Maybe he did have to do some actual journalism. You know, mentioning technology as well, it strikes me as though this could be the sort of scenario where perhaps, like, the fourth official's union are blocking any attempts to modernise the process because it's their thing they get to do.

14:22It's like train drivers on the underground or whatever. Yeah, yeah. The dead man's handle. Don't take it away from us. No, no, no, it's crucial. Leading to the tantalising prospect of the fourth officials going on strike for a Premier League weekend. That sounds near parody, but I feel like it's just within reach if that's something that could happen. You know, you're Graham Scott leading the charge. I know he's retired now, so that doesn't count. Should we get Graham Scott for an MHD? I'm really warming to Graham Scott. So yeah, I want to know what he feels about the electronic board. I'll get in touch with him.

14:55What other podcasters would talk about LED substitution boards for approximately eight minutes? Nobody, nobody would. Thank you, Liam Hark. Now, I really like this. From Peter McLeod, this is your third fascination for my listeners this month. There's a certain kind of hand gesture that players do when they narrowly miss a chance, whereby they brush their palms together at a 45 degree angle. I'm doing it now, with only the slightest of contact. Sort of single clap, but without the percussive effect. and at an offset from the regular orientation for, e.g. applause. I associate this gesture with cultured, predominantly overseas, players who have just seen their shot brilliantly saved or coming back off the woodwork.

15:37Dave, this is one of the more niche bits of body language we've been confronted with on LMHD. I really like this one. It's definitely a thing. I know it most notably from the 1986 World Cup official film because Elk Kjar of Denmark does this in one of the kind of montages they show. And it is. Peter McLeod has described it quite well. It is a clap, but it's more of a skimming of the hand across the other one. And as he says, it's at an angle. And basically one hand just skims off the other. But what does it mean? It's definitely a thing. And the situation he describes is right. It's the scenario of just missing a goal.

16:11But what does the hand gesture denote? Why would someone do that? There's a bit of sort of just, you know, manifestation of your natural frustration coming out, isn't there? i think but do you think there's do you think there's uh any sort of literal element to it as well in the same way that you would describe like a whipped cross with a certain hand gesture are you doing yeah you're sort of mirroring the missed chance at all with the with the gesture here there has to be something in that nick it's it's that's that glancing blow of one hand on the other does give the implication of you know fine margins right yeah i mean in a more literal way would that kind of symbolise the ball kind of skipping off the post or something?

16:50Or maybe like it's a greasy surface and the ball has kind of skipped off the surface from across quicker than you expect. So therefore you skew your shot wide or something like that. It's sort of bemoaning of an angle. So it's that representation of fine margins, Dave, but also frustration with yourself in the same way that Vardy used to punch himself in the head when he missed a chance. Very much the less subtle version of this phenomenon. but yeah it's definitely an embodiment of something but there's no way whoever did this first sort of meant it to embody anything it's just maybe it just comes naturally but it's a very footballing thing i wouldn't do this in the rest of my life if i missed a bus i would say that ah with my hand well no i i think i i can sort of feel like i've done it in certain right scenarios where like you know you're walking down the street and you've remembered something that you've forgotten to do, oh, fuck, ah, fuck, I was supposed to do that, message that person, pay that thing, whatever.

17:47Yeah, maybe. Do you reckon your best man did that when he realised he'd locked himself in his house? More than that, I would say. Yeah, I'd like to think that the paid expression was a bit more, yeah, hitting himself in the head, maybe, would have been more appropriate at that juncture. Yeah, yeah, well, Nick, that sound is basically very analogous to the hand gesture. It's, gah! and it's that glance of the hand with a kind of a wistfulness to it as well a hint of ruin it's ruin and there's there's also like you i don't think you a player would do that if they'd missed a proper sitter as well there is a it's a kind of i great striker you know should have done better there you mere mortals may not have may not be kind of annoyed may not have been annoyed that you missed that chance but i am better so i expect more of myself interesting because i can picture like a center half coming up from a corner missing a not necessarily like an obviously like three header six yards out but missing missing a header that maybe he should have done better with and there's that sort of feeling of like ah oh that was actually closer than than i realized oh god i could i think i can actually see a center half more likely to perform that action actually yeah it's almost like this was my chance.

19:00Not only have I missed a chance by a small margin, but this was the one opportunity I had and what a pivotal moment it could have been. So there's lots of factors in here. But yeah, I certainly wouldn't say sort of a two-yard sitter, but a presentable chance certainly, but that's been missed, not necessarily by their own haplessness, but what they perceive to be misfortune, fine margins, football conspiring against them. But yeah, it's kind of that kind of dag nabbit essentially kind of gesture. yeah it's a really subtle and superbly identified by peter there this episode of football cliches is brought to you in association with incogni if you've ever googled yourself admit it listener don't be shy and found your home address and phone number staring back at you you'll understand what a difference data removal can make scammers criminals and companies with something to gain they can all use exposed data profiles to work against your interests but if they can't find you They can't harm you.

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20:50Kalshi app and use code CUP26 to get$10 when you trade 10. K-A-L-S-H-I, Kalshi. Trade the beautiful game. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see Kalshi.com slash regulatory. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

21:25Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

21:37This episode is brought to you by State Farm. No two football players are exactly alike, and the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm gets to know you so they can help personalized coverage for your life and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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22:05Welcome back to Football Clichés. This is the listeners' mezzat, harland, dicks for August. We've heard your fascinations. Time for your irritations in a moment. Dreamland episode 30 is out now. The big 3-0. Thank you for all your excellent slash mad questions for the first Dreamland Q &A. What a bar you have set for any future ones, just personal enough. But I think, yeah, we might well do this again, given the quality of the correspondence we had for that. If you want to sign up for Dreamland for just£5.99 a month, you'll get ad-free listening of all of our episodes, two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive show, access to premium section of the Happy Hunting Grounds quiz, and lots of other things as well.

22:43Just go to dreamland.footballcliches.com. Meanwhile, we're all set, I confidently say, five days before anyone actually hears these words broadcast for our Clichés live show at the South Bank Centre on Saturday afternoon. You've still got time to get involved. Just send something in for the show. You can email me at footballcliches at gmail.com or you could DM me anything you spotted and we'll happily place it on a very big screen for 400 people. So look forward to that. Right, time for the listeners' irritations for August. We kick things off with George Twigg. Gentlemen, I've had enough. The BBC Player Rater app is the pits and the general public is to blame.

23:22I'm looking at the ratings from Forest Leeds at the weekend, an even game won by an inspired late goal, where I don't think either team could have complained about a draw. The lowest rating for a Leeds player is Sean Longstaff at 7.51 out of 10, whereas the highest Forest player is Igor Jesus at 4.63. This happens, I would say, in over 75 % of matches. The people handing out ratings will just issue blanket high scores to the team that won and low scores to the team that lost, regardless of how close the game actually is. You cannot tell me Forest Star player on the night was a whole 2.88 of 10 worse than Leeds' best, infuriating.

23:52The sheer tempo of that, Nick, really does betray the fury of George Twig. Very points of view tempo. Yes, yeah, it was. More bombardment for the beleaguered BBC, Dave. If they haven't got enough fires to put out at the moment on their sporting side, someone's laying into the player rater. and rightly so to be honest it is a waste of time and space yeah why does it exist why do any of these things exist you see them in all sorts of apps it's not just the bbc thing you see them in live score apps even you know just oh it's just another way of getting a bit of interaction and engagement or whatever but who's doing this yeah who's using this but like you can sort of see the logic for it for big games but they do it for every game because the technology means that it's really easy to deploy so you've got a completely non-event of a game where the other team might be complete no marks or it might even be a pre-season friendly you have the ability to rate everybody out of 10 so the results are completely nonsensical so for most of george twig's kind of missive here dave my response is basically don't pay any attention to it is a waste of time that like no real thought has gone into the player ratings here but but i but i do want to indulge it to a certain extent because the bbc player rater underneath their match reports or under their live blogs it's one of those kind of futile almost liminal spaces of the football content universe now.

25:07There is so much shit out there that a lot of these things just go under the radar. I'm talking about, say, the comments section under an express online article. Like, why are you going there to just say anything to anybody? Or when ITV Football's Twitter account sort of tweets out a question and you think, well, why ask anybody? Because the answers aren't going to go anywhere. You're just a Twitter account. You haven't really got a website for it to go on. There's not going to be a TV programme where you're going to talk about the answers. Why would you reply to that? And this is similar to it.

25:34It's like, what is the point in engaging with this? I know. You're right to call them sort of liminal spaces. You're right. It's like, I suppose in a way, there is an element of sort of old school, pre-modern internet charm about it in that it's just these absolutely tiny, tiny crevices of the internet. They're inhabited by certain people who want to, who decide to comment on an Express article or, you know, and it's like breadcrumbs could be found there for some sort of potential investigation. Yeah, maybe. It's not worth it. Don't incriminate yourself. But I suppose the one thing that probably keeps this going, Nick, is that player ratings are such a venerable kind of footballing device.

26:15Newspaces have been doing them for decades. They are quite a simple concept and they can reflect some certain heroism on behalf of a certain player, but the results are going to be so polarised. You're not going to get nuance in the BBC player rater. As George Swig has already said, there's 2.88 difference between two very, very similar performances. But also the kind of fundamental point is that the examples that he's used there Forest against Leeds on Saturday. It's a three o 'clock game on Saturday. Probably most of the people who have rated the players haven't watched the game. So it renders it even more.

26:48Maybe you get a lot of traffic from Ireland or whatever, and they're watching it legitimately on that. But unless someone's watching it on a ropey stream, then these people just haven't watched the game. So it renders it even more pointless. It's like voting in a Twitter poll that you're not involved in. It's like voting in one of Martin Lewis's Twitter polls, just for the hell of it. What annoys me even more, Dave, is that I reckon people are just rating random players. They're not even bothering to do all 22, because I've never heard of him, I don't know who he looks like. I don't know whether he played well or not.

27:19I'm just picking on my favourite player and giving him an eight. Really annoying. It is pointless. It's a massive abuse. Open to the most boring abuse of all time. It annoys me a little bit more that the BBC indulge this stuff. I sort of don't mind if it's LiveScore or FopMob or whatever it might be. yeah you know get your engagement any way you can lads fine but it's like the bbc they've really started leaning into like daily quizzes recently which are fine i i play them sometimes and and i quite enjoy them but there's a part of me that just goes no leave this to sparkle or someone else yeah it doesn't yeah it feels beneath you yeah i know what you mean but are they doing this for like tennis and snooker do you have to rate you have to rate like either player on the side of for two-player games.