It’s half an hour after attempting to watch 18 football matches at the same time on the final match day of the Champions League group stage, so it’s still a little early to tell whether I think it was a brilliant night of football or not.
The information overload from a TV, laptop and phone means I may need a couple of weeks to really process it – by which time of course this will all be forgotten and we’ll be wondering whether one point from three Premier League games is enough for Thomas Frank to keep his job.
It is fair to say that the jeopardy does go right to the end with this format. And the obvious truth is that if you put enough football matches on at the same time, odds are something interesting will happen. Thirty-six teams in an eight-game league means the as-it-stands table will change a lot. Make it 128 teams playing four games, and see how the permutations algorithm deals with that.
Is it a surprise that Chelsea were up to eighth and down to 12th and back up to sixth as goals went in in Naples and elsewhere? Of course the rights holders have an obligation to tell you this is exciting – and to a certain degree it is.
Perhaps it’s all worth it for Anatoliy Trubin – not a man I’ve spent a lot of time considering until today. It’s at least an eight out of 10 on the Jimmy Glass scale. The Uefa script writer would have happily accepted José Mourinho’s goalkeeper scoring a flying header in the eighth minute of five minutes of added time to beat nine-man Real Madrid and squeeze into the playoffs.
In the list of best things that can happen in football, a goalkeeper lolloping into the opposition penalty area and scoring is right up there alongside fan in the crowd heading the ball back into play and an outfield player going in goal. There is something about the way a keeper moves before the free-kick: big long limbs, remarkably unmarkable because keepers don’t even really know where they’re meant to run.
There’s been no team meeting to decide who picks them up. And it feels (and here’s some recency bias talking) as if the ball has some kind of magnetic attraction to the person in a different colour kit doing their own thing.
It’s a moment to make you even feel joy for Mourinho. Hugging a ballboy like peak Everton Duncan Ferguson. “We knew that he could it … We know that the big guy is capable of this, it’s an amazing goal for the guy,” beamed José.
If you really want to feel it, find the Ukrainian commentary. “TRUBIIIIIIIIIIIN. AN-A-TOLIY-TRU *voice cracks* BIN …” And great casting from TNT to have Ally McCoist sitting on a little bar stool to bring the moment to life – although, I’d watch him watching anything; Gogglebox have missed a trick not getting him on an eight-year amortised contract.
The evening had started terribly, Paris Saint-Germain winning a penalty after THEIR OWN PLAYER (Bradley Barcola) HANDBALLED IT ON TO the outstretched fingertips of Lewis Miley. On the list of organisations beginning with I that need abolishing, it is clearly a long way below ICE, and it’s hard to get too passionate about football while the world burns, but Ifab’s determination to single-handedly destroy the game through its interpretation of the handball law is almost reason enough to take to the streets.
Between that and Trubin’s wonder moment, lots of exciting things. Viktor Gyökeres scored a nice one, someone absolutely belts one in for Pafos, Brugge have scored twice, Manchester City and Liverpool see off any jeopardy. Copenhagen lead in Barcelona! Sporting turn it around early, Napoli take the lead. Benfica lead Real. Newcastle equalise! Half-time. Stare at a league table that is just too big for a legacy football fan’s eyes. Breathe, maybe lie down.
Spurs score a goal. João Pedro, what a hit. Ah Jamal Musiala is fit again, oh Simon Mignolet is still playing, I hope Harry Kane finishes that imperiously at the World Cup. Bodø/Glimt! Probably the good news story of the group. We all know they’re good on 4G in -4C but winning at the Wanda, sensational. No time to think about it, Spurs score again. Marcus Rashford scores a free kick – he’s smiling; did the internet give him permission to do that? Harvey McBarnes skews it wide. Alisson Santos for Sporting – and finally Trubin with the cake, the icing and the cherry.
There was that time during Covid when Premier League games were staggered and you could watch every minute. And you suddenly realised that sometimes the “product” really benefited from a lot of games getting only the seven-minute Match of the Day edit.
This is the opposite. Football as a content machine. Never-ending things happening, swooshing from match to match. The game wasn’t invented to be consumed like this. The joy of football is the big moments are rare, they have meaning. You watch one game, very occasionally two in an afternoon, and then move on to Traitors (I’m voting for yourself, Linda).
There’s no chance to consider the games on anything but a superficial level. You are watching everything and nothing. That doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining – it is. And perhaps one night like this a season is OK, not getting bogged down in three at the back, high-intensity duels and forward progressions.
As I said, still processing. To misquote Gennaro Gattuso, it was sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe not that good. As Jonathan Wilson pointed out this week, it is a lot of football to get down to this one evening: players being flogged into the ground. Teams and fans celebrating because they don’t have to play more football matches feels counterintuitive.
On Thursday’s Guardian Football Weekly Nicky Bandini made two really important points. First that from a Premier League lens, there is less jeopardy than if you are a Sporting or Benfica or Bodø fan, and second that perhaps this night will become an event in the football calendar, not one we need every week but a one-off bun-fight free-for-all where we just lean into the sheer amount of it.
But it is the football we have, and you have a choice whether you consume it and how you do. The previous night I watched Cambridge United 1-0 Shrewsbury (Ben Knight 90+1 daft handball penalty). It felt like a different game, a different world. A more attritional, more boring, and far less eventful world – but one which was much easier to follow.
