Football's present-tense addiction & penalty shootout celebrations: The listeners' loves & hates

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The return of the football clichés quiz live. The fundamental football difference between causing chaos and wreaking havoc.

Very unexpected footballers' names in BBC news stories and Canadian elections. Why 2029 is going to be a huge year for David Siemens Face.

the art of skipping highlights to perfectly miss out the punditry, and the most mid-game possible celebration for scoring a penalty in a shootout. Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.

This is Football Clichés and your Mezza Haaland Dicks.

Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés and this month's listeners Mezza Haaland Dicks.

I'm Adam Hurry and alongside me to wade through your footballing fascinations and irritations, first of all, Charlie Eccleshare. How you doing? I'm good, yeah.

Fittingly, for a listener contribution episode, I was stopped by a few listeners yesterday

and one of them put in a request for a shout-out, which initially I sort of, you know, was thought, is that a bit like, can I have your shirt at the end of the game?

But this person in question, Jude, his name was, who asked the shout-out, I do want to give a shout-out to because he was really young.

He must have been, I don't know, like early secondary school age, maybe even primary school age, which I thought was amazing given. And he listens to the show in primary school.

Well, he was with his dad. And, well, maybe he just wanted a shout-out because he just wanted a shout-out.

But I just thought, I thought all our listeners were 25 to 45-year-old blokes with beard and or glasses. And so I was kind of like, wow, we've actually got the next generation coming through.

Keys and Grey devotees.

Yeah, exactly. What does he make of Keys and Grey Corner? Yeah, I didn't get into that.

No, fair enough. I mean, I thought the 20-somethings were young.
But yeah, good to see our demographic spreading even wider. Alongside you is David Walker.
How are you doing?

It's got to be the TikTok, right? Surely. Yeah.

That's it. You're rapidly paying off.

Rapid return on investment. It's like a Brunovich investing in the Chelsea Academy in 2010 or something.
That's it. They're coming through.

Well, speaking of demographics, anybody who's in Leeds right now, we've got big news for you. The Football Cliches Quiz Live is coming to you on Thursday, June the 12th at at the Brudenil Social Club.

What a venue that is, by the way, Dave. Yeah, it looks great.
And this is our second foray into live quizzing.

We had something of a pilot last summer, which no one's going to consider that part of the official. Yeah, that's all pre-canon, that one.

But this one, we're going to be back and we're going to

be the same barker. Yeah, exactly.
Very much so.

It's going to be great. We're going to have a really good quiz, some

characteristically fun rounds.

rounds and am i right in thinking we've got a trophy an actual trophy the football cliches quiz trophy it is quite something it's 40 centimeters tall i can tell you wow um i'm really excited to get people battling it out to be the first to win the presumably coveted football cliches quiz trophy um there's gonna be lots of exciting prizes to be won as well including merch all sorts of other stuff it's an interactive quiz as well so that cuts down on the admin dave that's good news isn't it yeah good news for me uh apologies once again to anyone i completely mugged off at that quiz last time.

It's a trial event. As they handed me their happy hunting grounds rounds.

Oh, God. No, no.
Right. No, this is a ticketed affair.
We will control the numbers. We'll know how many people will be there and plan accordingly.

If you want to come along and you're in Leeds in mid-June, come along to the Brudenel Social Club and get your ticket at tickets.football clichés.com. We are not fucking about with our URLs anymore.

Tickets.football clichés.com. And bring your friends and battle it out to be the first official Football Cliches Quiz live champions.

Will the winners get to keep the trophy or do they have to give it back at

the next quiz that we do after this? I thought about that, but Charlie, I think it's more elite-level behavior from us if we give a new trophy out each time. Probably.
Yeah, yeah.

Bit small time, otherwise. Yeah, it's going to look really good on people's mantelpieces if people still have them.

Right, we'll do a little adjudication panel before we get stuck into the main event today.

TNT Sports highlights of Arsenal 0 PSG 1 on Tuesday night, Charlie, were entitled, Denberlay Strike Sinks Arsenal. Vinegar Jones says, can a team be sunk in the first leg? How do you feel?

Sinking is definitive, though, isn't it?

You have to factor in there's going to be a second leg that it's a tie. You can't just sink a team in the first leg, unless, of course, you've done them 5-0 or something like that.

Yeah, where do you draw the line on kind of how definitive you can be? Because to some extent, you know, it is only half-time, as we're so often told.

And we don't, you know, it's not like we would do half-time headlines. Or Or some would, I guess, if you're doing a live blog or whatever.

You've got to factor in, Dave, that the proceedings aren't over.

And whilst a first leg can still be one drawn or lost,

I won't accept sinking. You know, there are many words that can be used, and sinking, I won't accept for a first leg 1-0 win.
Dembele Strike submerges Arsenal?

Yeah, no, obviously.

Just holding them down there. But Arsenal could fight the way out.
Don't like sinking. Don't like sinking.

It's a classic advantage, PSG, isn't it? Yes. That's where we are.
Absolutely right. Bit of a heart-sinking moment, I would suggest.
It was such an early goal in such a big game.

A real blow for the

extensive pre-match battle crying from Mikel Arteta, who urged Arsenal fans to bring their boots and really wanted to get the Emirates rocking.

And unfortunately, there was a moment silence for the Pope and an early goal. I mean,

could anything quell an atmosphere more than that?

The moment silence for the Pope was, I've never seen or heard a minute silence as badly respected as that.

It was kind of, it was borderline disrespectful, but I can understand it because it was really incongruous. And there weren't any, there wasn't any of that at Premier League games, was there?

No, this was a purely UEFA-driven thing. Yeah.
So I think everyone was a bit caught by surprise.

But I mean, it does go to show to some extent, Dave, to be semi-sincere about this, that, you know, these appeals for atmosphere pre-game, very much by British clubs you know British clubs feel the need to kind of artificially sort of get this going because they know that fans aren't just going to be singing you know regardless um it does render it all a bit artificial when if you have a bit of a silence for the pope and you score and you can see the goal early none of it none of it will work do you know what i mean and there's been there's been a bit of a bit of chat hasn't there about the arsenal atmosphere or lack thereof but which i find a bit I always find a really strange thing with regardless of whether it being Arsenal or just any discourse about atmospheres, it always basically seems to be it's the same wherever you are it's whatever level it's the same if the team does well and score the atmosphere will generally be pretty good if the if the team's not playing well yeah it's not going to be as good like yeah I don't know why that's such a mystery to people yeah especially as it wasn't even just like the they not only scored an early goal psg but they completely dominated possession they made it they were so in control and so dominant that's quite quite a hard thing with the best will in the world you know like moments get crowds going.

And so it's very rare, as Dave says, anywhere you're going to have crowds like really getting pumped up watching PSG's really good technical central midfielders passing it back and forth between one another.

Like that just is quite a hard thing to get excited about.

I thought it was a good game though, and listener Sam writes in, Dave, and says, Are there any slight differences between causing chaos and causing havoc?

Alan Shearer has told us that the PSG front three are causing both so far. I think as a defender, I'd rather be faced with havoc than chaos, but I couldn't say why.

I think wingers cause havoc. Wingers wreak havoc against fullbacks with their pace and their attacking ability.

Chaos, I think, is caused by a more muscular physical presence, like cause, like causing drogba-style chaos in the middle, like defenders all over the place not sure what to do.

They're being out-muscled. I think havoc and chaos are different.

Yeah, I think they are, but I think I'd prefer to face chaos rather than havoc because I think havoc feels more like devastating and harder to come back from. Whereas chaos,

there suggests an element that it could still fall your way. Yeah, it's a little bit of

a...

It's less sustainable. It's kind of like, but you're right.
Like chaos, you know, you hear about like agents of chaos and there are some, I mean, like someone like Filaney was a bit like that.

You'd sort of chuck him on and just... hope for some madness to ensue.
Havoc, I think, is a bit more thought out. Havoc is two wingers who are super dangerous.

Maybe they're switching flanks like they, you know, like. Yeah, Havoc is premeditated, right? Yeah, exactly.
It's a bit more sophisticated. Great answer.
Brilliant answers from the pair of you. Right.

Specky Matt gets in touch next. He links me to a BBC article about the power outages across Spain and Portugal.

Now, as always with the BBC, there's a piece speaking to an affected Briton, either an expat or a tourist, because that's the only way a British audience can possibly get their heads around international news.

So here it is. A British expat has described the confusing, thrilling, and bizarre experience experience of living through a major power blackout in Spain.

Experts have been trying to determine what caused the sweeping outage on Monday afternoon, which saw people stuck on trains and traffic lights failing.

Rudy Voller, who moved to Madrid from Essex in 2020, said the city centre was swarmed by the sound of police sirens and helicopters. What?

Can't I just throw that in? I can't.

Rudy Voller from Essex. Spell exactly the same as Rudy Voller.
The greatest

joke that they've had, that this person's had, do we think?

There's a quote from him saying, not knowing whether it would be hours or days was a strange sinking feeling, the 28-year-old told the BBC, Mr. Voller from Wickford.
No!

So wait, so when was, so this guy would have been born in what, 97, something like that? Yep. So Rudy Voller, you know, was weather stat,

his career must have been pretty much done by that point. I mean, it's a great name.
Like, you know,

it is a brilliant name, but why is he called Rudy Voller? Is it a pseudonym? I wonder if it's a pseudonym, and they've almost done it as a joke.

I just, the person who's written the article may be not aware of the original Rudy Voller, Dave, and you can explain

he might, you know, maybe the article hasn't gone into enough depth. Maybe, maybe his parents are German and they moved to Essex.

Maybe, but maybe, maybe it's one of these things we had the other week. Maybe parents are just really big fans of Rudy Voller, just thought, I'm going to give my son the name of this German forward.

That's who I want him to be. Bullied at school by Frank Reichard.

But they are the Voller family from Essex. He's not been called Rudy Voller.
Joe.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I just imagine, Dave, I don't know, ringing up, booking a restaurant saying, what's the name? Oh, Rudy Voller.
Actually, the what? No.

Jürgen Klinsman. Carl Heinz Riminiger.
It's not going to work. You just get a real range of responses because a lot of people it would mean nothing to, and for some, you're getting quite a lot.

It's an objectively great name in isolation. You know, it's just a really nice name.
So fair play to him. Do you think it might break even the sternest immigration official at a German airport?

Oh yeah. Oh that would be oh I'm so jealous.
I'm jealous of Rudy Voller. That's why he's gone traveling.
That's why he's done it. Anyway let's move on.

This came from James Hotchkiss who was watching Animal Park on BBC One on Tuesday daytime and this guy he just loves lions. He loves them.

Being in charge of their welfare is a responsibility he doesn't take lightly.

I love them to pieces. Every day I think about lions, I dream about lions, I read books about lions.

So yeah, I have spent every hour trying to think about, you know, making lions' lives better. So that's that's literally my life.
If anyone who knows me, I cut me in half and you'll find a lion.

That is right up there with, you know, I'll eat all my hands and arms off. Cut me open and you'll find a lion.
A lion. Yeah, that's fine.

I'll bleed lion or bleed yellow and black or something. I mean, yeah, it it doesn't work, Charlie.

I mean, I mean, obviously it doesn't work, but what it should be is that lions pervade his entire being, his entire existence. Not just one lion sitting inside him.

You know, you'd cut the lion open as well. What's inside that?

The Russian lion.

Cut me open and you'll find one rogue lion. Oh, God.
Oh, mate.

Listen, I'm glad you exist and you're looking after the lions. Right.
Next up, some big David Seaman news for you.

Dave, it dawned on me on Tuesday that David Seaman has been moustacheless now for quite a long time. Did it just suddenly dawn on you? It did.
It did dawn on me, I swear to God.

And I realised he'd been moustacheless now for 17 and a half years. That's the best estimate I could find by going back through Getty Images to the last photo of him where he did have a moustache.

So what's that? September 2007?

Yeah, about that. That was the first time he was pictured by Getty Images without a moustache, you know, on a media appearance somewhere, on a red carpet somewhere, I believe.

July 2007, he had a moustache. So sometime in that summer, he said, that's it, I'm done.
I don't want it anymore. I don't want to be identified as a mustachioed guy anymore.

But Charlie, just to give you some context here, by the end of 2029, if he carries on being a moustacheless man, he'll have matched his entire career in football having a moustache.

He's already been moustacheless longer than the time between his England debut in 1988 and his retirement from football in 2004. Do you now think of him as a moustacheless man?

No, I think I'll always think of him as a mustachioed man, especially as he was one of like the first moustachioed men I was ever really introduced to, I think.

So, yeah, he'll always be synonymous with that. I mean, there's extra context here, Dave.
He basically tried to phase his moustache out.

You'll remember in the sort of World Cup 2002, he had a proper moustache, right? Yeah. For the next five years.
Well, did he have a little goatee with it at that point as well?

He had the ponytail by then, didn't he? Yeah, but don't think he had he's a goatee no i don't think he ever had one

uh or maybe in euro 96 it was like shorter hair and proper thick moustache no 2002 to be fair it is also a proper moustache yeah yeah for each

bush he basically phased it out over the next five years where to the point in july 2007 it was basically just a stubble moustache and clean shaven around it you have to really zoom in to double check it's there so he basically tried to make us all forget that it happened he's basically mandela affected him his own moustache.

It's part of the reason, isn't it, as well, why people like him, and you see pictures of him and Ian Rush, especially someone like Ian Rush, and you just think, like, how are they the age they were at?

at that point. Like, it's genuinely kind of incredible how young some of those people were and how kind of ancient they looked at that time.

And obviously we were a lot younger, but even now you look at a picture of Ian Rush and he's only like 33 or something, but he's got this moustache. He's about 50.

Yeah, my friend Mark says that David Seaman has a phantom tash. Even though he shaved it off, my mind still reconstructs it, as

also with Ian Rush. But Graham Soonas and Mark Lawrenson, however, have both achieved Tash escape velocity, which he's absolutely bang on with.
Graham Soonas has now passed beyond Soonis, definitely.

Yeah, like I don't think of him as a tashed man now. I think with Soones, though,

he was still in the public eye for quite a long time post-Tash.

You know, basically, I mean, apart from his early managerial career, I think it had gone by the time he sort of got to Blackburn and Newcastle, hadn't it?

So we got a long time, and obviously him being on Sky as well, we got used to it. And Laura, there was kind of a whole thing about him shaving off his tash when he was on Match of the Day.

That was like a thing.

Yeah, yeah, I think it was. Whereas Seaman disappeared from the public eye, quietly shaved off his tash without anyone realizing.
Yeah, must have been a divorce-related thing.

It must have been between wives. It has to be.
It's a classic move, isn't it? Oh, I change it. I'll change my ways.
Could have been for charity. Yeah, that's what.
Yeah, maybe. Oh, like when Dez Lynn

dyed his moustache purple, I think, for what was the Nintendo console in the early 2000s GameCube he did it for a GameCube actually

yeah he did bloody hell but I still see Lauro as a phantom Tash I do still think his top lip looks weird without it fair enough yeah well yeah I guess it goes at different times for different people really you just don't want to let it go by the way this episode is brought to you in association with Nord VPN for those who don't know VPN stands for virtual private network it secures your connection protecting your personal information and online activity especially on public wi-fi the vpn can also make your phone or laptop appear as if it's in another country which is great for accessing content while traveling say to canada where the elections have been taking place this week and mark carney's liberal outfit will wheeling out the big name candidates in some key districts canada is under attack only mark carney has the experience and character to protect us from mega ambitions i'm david beckham let's give sandwich gulf islands a real voice in caucus as part of a liberal majority and to keep Canada strong.

It's everywhere, this bloke. The candidate for the Saanich of the Gulf Islands, David Beckham.
His name is everywhere.

And nobody, nobody, not even a slightly ironic reference has been made to the, you know, the more famous David Beckham, Dave. Well, I mean, they're a...
centre-left party, aren't they?

The liberals over there. So, which unfortunately, you can't really shoehorn any right-wing references in, can you?

Yeah, he's inverted. Yeah, very good.
Yeah.

There was a Paul Lambert who lost out in the elections as well, Charlie. It's all happening over there.

I guess you could do a, without the right and left, I think you could do like, oh, Beckham's move towards the centre, which Becks did obviously do kind of later on in his career.

It's funny as I remember as a kid, my dad, we were away on holiday, and my dad just looked over and was like, oh, look, that's David, what I thought he said was David Beckham. I was so excited.

It turned out it was an old colleague of his called David Baker. And the disappoint, I was like, I had a split segment of being like, David Beckham is here.
Oh, my God. No, it's just David Baker.

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Oh, look at that!

That is wonderful!

Welcome back to Football Clichés. It's time for the listeners' Mezza Harlan dicks.
We'll call it April's, but it's actually May.

Let's kick things off with the three best fascinations from this month's selection. First up, Niall Nocton.

My fascination with football is when I'm watching a match with my girlfriend and I will ask her what country someone like Matty Cash plays for.

She will understandably guess England while I sit there smugly knowing that it's Poland.

It's pointless and it's fairly childish and I'm pretty sure it's getting to the stage where she knows if I ask what country someone is from, it's not going to be the one you expect. But it's fun.

Cheers.

Now, Charlie, this isn't our first dalliance with the slightly love-joy-esque subject of testing your missus's football knowledge. But in this particular example, this is literally gaslighting.

This is awful behavior. Yeah.
It's too difficult. I'm glad she's cottoned on and does that thing.

You know, when you'll say, someone like, how many times do you think that so-and-so thing has happened?

And then they obviously give like a ridiculous guess to undercut you, and you're left to be like, oh, well, yeah, obviously, no, it's not that. There's no solution to that, is there? Yeah, there is.

You kind of deserve it, but it is annoying. You certainly deserve it in this instance.
I mean, the difficulty level here is just massively unfair, Dave.

Like, it's just, I mean, it's just psychological torture in many ways. The first, dropping it in the first time is the interesting move.

Like, if you're going to, if you, if you are making a thing of it, at least then there's a little bit of recognition and you maybe you're sort of slightly acknowledging the fact that you're doing this.

But I'm intrigued that he went with down that route, first of all, rather than just sort of pointing out.

I don't like it. I mean, I will often ask Luce to guess guess the names from the three-letter abbreviation at the top of the screen.
And I think that's a good game.

I think that's gettable for a non-football fan. And I'll sometimes get an absurd answer and it's really good fun.
But I will never ask her to

guess the national team of a naturalised citizen with an English name. I think that's disgusting behaviour.
How many such players are there, really?

There's not loads.

I mean, like, Ashley Barnes is always a good one, isn't he? Because he represented Austria at youth level. That sort of a ghost.
You've got to throw that caveat in. Only at under 20s, though.

Yeah, who did he represent at under 20 level? I suppose you've got that clutch of sort of English-born Jamaicans, Trinidadians, maybe.

Yeah, but it's sort of not as

fun, is it? Like Matty Cash being Polish is. Yeah, you're not going to get that.
Oh, Robbie Yale played for Jamaica. To Mick Aletonians.
Yeah.

Imagine what scenario that could possibly have. Oh, dear.
Well, I mean,

that kicks us off in sinister style. Next up, Chris Finn.

Well, firstly, I I wasn't sure if this fascination is maybe a bit too much of a niche Scottish complaint, but I feel like it could probably still apply in England.

So when I'm watching Sports Scene, which is the Scottish match of the day for the uninitiated, I want to watch the highlights of the games, but I don't always really want to take in the analysis thereafter.

So this leads to scanning, i.e. skipping the programme.
So

I've turned it into a little game whereby I watch a game and then try to form at least a partially educated guess on how long the analysis will be, and then skip the show on iPlayer to see if I can land right at the start of the next game.

Now, particularly with Scottish football, it's important to consider how long the analysis is going to be for each game.

You've got to consider who's playing, what was the score, red card, penalty, did VAR get involved, that type of thing. So there's three landing zones for this, okay?

The first, think like an archery board. The first one is gold, okay?

Now that is when you skip to the point exactly where the presenter is introducing the next game or during the commentator's brief introduction while the lineups are being displayed.

After that, we have a silver landing zone.

That's where you land in the next game, but it's still nil-nil on the highlights, so you haven't missed anything. And then bronze, I mean, I'm calling it bronze, but it's really just a failure.

And that's when you land while the analysis is still going on.

They've not reached the next game yet, or you've actually gone too far and you've landed in the next game, but it's already won, even 2-0 to someone else. Okay,

so I'm just wondering if anybody else does this.

Probably not.

Now, we'll get into the unfolding insanity of this in due course, Dave. But I did quite like that Chris Finn thinks this might be a purely Scottish thing.

I was like, what's uniquely Scottish about this? Yeah, I didn't quite like that. The sport seems infamously long punditry after each match.
Is their analysis more boring than match the days?

Better, if anything. Yeah.
It may be more variable, which we'll get on to.

I mean, because I'm intrigued by him saying that, because there must be a fairly tight windows of how, like, I don't imagine that they go on way longer if a game's really eventful, do they?

I'm not sure. I've never, like, I imagine.

It's not standard, you're right. Yeah, exactly.

So I wouldn't, and I have done this before, not to this extent, but I've obviously, if I'm, if I'm fast-forwarding to a particular game, I'll make an estimate based on

kind of where I think it might be even in the running order. But yeah, I wouldn't think necessarily, oh, loads happen, so they'll take a lot longer on it.

As a kind of seasoned analysis skipper myself, Dave, I'm quite well-tuned to doing this myself, but I don't choose random points in the timeline.

I slide along the timeline on iPlayer, and it will bring up the preview of the bit of the screen. Do that until you see some green, green pitch, and then get get back in it.

Yeah, modern technology has certainly helped with this for sure.

Like, and even if you've, you know, it's like when you're on the TNT or the BT Sports app and they just pick out the goals for you and you can skip straight to it.

But I do, I do recognize the sense of achievement and satisfaction when you hit bang on the money.

And I don't really ever find myself watching Match of the Day or football on sort of iPlayer or skippable things. So it doesn't doesn't really happen to me with football.

But quite often it happens when you're watching when I'm watching something on Sky, like a,

a TV show on Sky, and there's the ads that are baked in, but

you have to fast-forward them on the remote if you want to get through them quickly. And landing bang on when it comes back to the program is such a good feeling.
That's satisfying. Wow.

The real genius here, Charlie, is gold, silver, and pro.

Yeah, that, I mean. Silver's class.

If I'm skipping and I land at 0-0 on the next game, I won't rewind. I'll happily rewind.
Really? Would you not? Yeah, no, I'm not. I missed a key incident, though.
It might miss a yellow card.

I'm always annoyed at myself that I will because I'm like, oh, probably nothing's happened, but the completes to me is like, oh, but quite, I do just want to see it in case.

Just want to hear Jonathan Pierce's opening line.

What was top of the pops the last time T-Max won here?

Dave, you mentioned there a minute ago, BT Sports. Dave, you mentioned there a minute ago, TNT Sports have that little sort of ball symbol on their timeline during live coverage to signify a goal.

If I have indeed missed some action and I am the proverbial someone who's just come in from work, I work from home. I'm still here.
It's fine. But clicking on that ball is a very satisfying thing.

Like from a, I don't know, a UX perspective. I really like clicking on that ball and being taken to the 20 seconds before it goes in.
And they've timed it just right.

Like for most goals, it pretty much takes in the entire sequence that's necessary for that goal.

Yeah, I don't understand why this hasn't been more commonly rolled out in other broadcasters' apps as well. Because it's been around for like for 10 years now and it's really good.

It does sometimes fall down when there's a flurry of goals in quick succession, and the goals are too close together to properly be able to click on one or the other.

I think you should definitely write in a letter of complaint about this. Your balls are too big on your timeline.

Charlie, I mean, we might well get some really boring emails from people explaining why this is the case, but Sky need to get their acting. acting gear, don't they?

Like, why is Sky Go so shit compared to TNT spots? Like, you should be able to rewind Sky Go.

Yeah, I don't know if it's like, they're really really strict on this sort of thing. And I don't know if that's to do with selling boxes and not wanting to disincentivize people.

But yeah, and even like full, you know, like Prime will chuck like a full replay of a match on. You don't get anything like that on Skygo.

I mean, some people might be questioning why I don't just watch it on my tele. I'm using my father-in-law's account on my laptop.
That's why.

To make this even more nerdier and niche than it already is, my own another version of this for me is when I'm editing this podcast. And I've done so many of them now that I'm back myself.

If I need to sort of go into like the multi-track and like get a little bit of audio or clean something up or do something, I back myself to be able to like recognize the words from the waveform.

And it doesn't always work, but sometimes when you get it, you just land on, you think, well, I reckon this bit's about there. And then you press play and if it's right.

It's a nice, that's a good, that's gold. Jesus Christ.
And some people are having a go at me for being able to identify a game on a screen in the the back of the background of a picture.

And there you are being able to tell words from waveforms. Get on this guy instead.
Give him some mild abuse. I've got that with some of my friends with voice notes.

I can sort of tell if there are certain things that we might send each other fairly regularly. I could sort

guessing from the waveform. Oh, I wonder what this might be.
Okay. Okay.
Let's claw this Mesa Harland dicks back from the mundane brink with Ruth. Guard.

I love it when co-commentators and pundits use the present or present continuous tenses when they should be using a hypothetical.

So for example what they'll say is if player X passes the ball there, player Y is scoring all day long.

Or if player X doesn't deflect the ball there the goalie is saving that ball nine times out of ten.

And I just love it because what they should be using is the subjunctive tense, which is

if something had happened, something else would have happened.

Extremely pedantic, but I really love it. So the overall message here, Charlie, and it's one I fully subscribe to, is that football is essentially stuck in the present tense.

There is a real aversion to the past tense in football reporting. I think sort of increasingly so.
And the various forms of football reporting as well.

Interviews, analysis, and kind of match reports as well. Why do you think football is stuck in the present tense? Is it kind of like an immediacy thing, urgency, being in the moment? Yeah, I think so.

Immediacy is a a big part of it. And maybe it's just, it feels a bit too clunky, you know, with the subjunctive, like he would have scored.

I mean, and I think we've talked about this before, but I have found myself doing this sometimes.

Like, I will say something like, you know, oh, I do think if he, if he passes there, then they score or he scores. Like,

it does, it feels kind of a bit more... immediate and emphatic.
But Dave, you can sympathise why someone would slip into that as Charlie has done. It's kind of football speak.

But he would be talking about an incident that might have happened within the last 90 minutes or so. But if you take a scenario and say, six months ago, he's scoring that.

Yeah.

You know,

I don't know. The Chierian Re of Old, he scores that.
Paul Merson loves doing this.

There's something quite satisfying about that. It's just, obviously, it's just so deeply ingrained in football speak that we do it unthinkingly.

But I think it's maybe it's partly because you're sort of playing out the game in your head live. There's like this sort of game picture in your, there's a picture

in your head as you're talking through these scenarios.

Well, certainly with players who are being interviewed, we've talked about this before.

It's what screenwriter Jack Rosenthal calls the football continuous tense.

So a classic scenario, Charlie, being, yeah, I've just hit it and yeah, thankfully it's gone in. Which is just like a ludicrous tense to use.
Yeah.

I have hit it and thankfully it has gone in. Like it's like

the third choice tense at least. Yeah.

It is is great yeah it does um there is something quite satisfying about it but the maddest one of all dave and and we see this all the time now on social media uh ahead of big games that evening um they'll say something like who's winning this one

or who wins who wins yeah again do you think it do you think it's that sense of immediacy makes it more appealing to be engaged with like it's who's winning who's going to win it tonight

actually it's probably the same tense isn't it actually now i i think about it um who will win it what's wrong with that but it doesn't sound as good does it not doesn't get you in the moment as much i don't think it does fair play i think it's but it's it's sort of like you know you could you can as we you know as we all want to do we pick these things apart but the beauty of it all is it all works and yes it's not it's completely improper and not using the correct tenses or whatever but if you did change it and you suddenly everyone started speaking absolutely grammatically correct it would all sound completely mental wouldn't it start yeah start using the past tense like blanket in football charlie and be like that was ages ago what are you talking about that's ancient history now but also you see that like something like who wins do you remember like on big brother it was who goes you decide it wasn't you know it wasn't like who is going to go like there is a snappier maybe that's where

that could easily yeah i mean i think it's just it's it is far catchier to do that to give it its immediate it's present it's happening right now sure there's an interesting example when i'm editing um pieces on the athletic about specific matches or a player who does specific things, they'll often have screen grabs from televised football.

So the rest of the article will be, you know, he has been and he scored 23 goals last season.

And as soon as you're into the scenario of a screen grab from a piece, suddenly it's player X picks up the ball on the left wing and

sees the run of player Y inside. And you think, whoa, okay.
And as an editor, you're like, ah, okay.

I can see how the tense might naturally change here. I'll leave it.
It's fine. Wow.
Yeah, no, I would always do that with screen grab pieces.

As soon as you, as soon as you talk about screen grab, for some reason, it just feels... You become a commentator.
It just feels right.

I mean, there's no real reason to do it other than bringing people into the moment. So in that sense, it's quite effective.
But as long as you do it quite elegantly, I guess you're all right.

I think as well, because you're trying to, with that... with those screenshots, you're trying to make a sort of wider, universal point.
It's less about kind of the individual moments, maybe.

So it feels like it works to be like, this is a thing that's happening.

Because often you're using those screenshots to say like, this is very very typical this is indicative of what I'm talking about so it's kind of like yeah this is a thing that's constantly ongoing there's a vitality to it and it and and you notice the absence of it when you see highlights where that are in the past tense and they're not as they're not as enjoyable as present tense highlights fair enough when you've got someone commentating over a goal and player X picked up the ball and crossed it in on the right and striker Y came in to nod it home.

It's not as good as it being commentated on as if it's happening in real time. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. Yeah, especially these days.
You know, you want it to be

as live. So yeah, you can't have that distance anymore.
That's really interesting. That takes care of our listeners' fascinations.
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That is wonderful.

Welcome back to Football Cliches. We've taken care of your footballing fascinations.
Now it's time for your irrational irritations of the game.

First, before we get into our final three, Dave, I want to give a shout out to Alex from No Score Draws who sent in the nichest MHD irritation of all time.

They suggested when players do an end of season lap of the pitch and get handed their national flag by some fans in the front row and you can see the creases in it because it's brand new and only just been taken out of its packaging.

For God's sake. Like putting on one of those folded up shirts that you haven't ironed.
Yeah.

What a thing, what a thing to preoccupy you! Wow, well, I think I know this isn't the actual submission, but it does just spoil the magic, doesn't it?

You want you don't want it, you don't want it to have just come fresh from the packet, you don't want them to be waiting there with the packet. It's like Salah's selfie the other day.

When you find out that it's all a Google Pixel advert, it ruins it. You want it to have happened spontaneously.

Well, on that Salah thing, actually, Charlie, I was going to save it for another adjudication panel. Well, let's talk about it now.
There's been a

moderate uproar about the revelation that it turned turned out to be an impromptu marketing stunt rather than someone's random phone from the crowd.

And all I'm saying is, it's a lesson to us all to not, just to stop getting preoccupied with these moments in football.

And it's the same with the Ana slot sort of returning the favor to Jurgen Klopp with the song in the centre circle.

I've seen about 15 videos of it from official sources, just basically instructing us all to sit back and go, wow, what a class.

Just let it happen. Don't worry about it.
Don't force us to enjoy it. Exactly.
But we're so desperate for these kind of moments and glimpses into the real people.

I'm getting really sick of moments, Dave, in football. I want to enjoy them on my own terms.

I'm sick of being presented with moments. Football's all about moments, though, isn't it? It really is, isn't it? It really is all about moments.
That's what football is all about.

Well, this is what Mesa Holland Dick's is all about. Your irrational irritations.
Let's kick things off officially with a guy called John Stead. Fair play.

My niche football and irritation, which you might not get as much anymore because I've not heard it for a while, but you'll have a commentator say something along the lines of fantastic save from Salah.

And they don't actually mean it's a save from Salah, they mean it's a save from a shot that's been taken by Salah.

It'll actually be Pickford making the save, but for some reason they choose to commentate it in this strange way, which provides for a brief moment of confusion.

Where, especially if you've just tuned into the match, you're thinking, oh wow, is Liverpool's goalkeeper being sent off?

And for some bizarre reason, they've chosen to put Salah in there rather than one of the bigger players. And I just find it, yeah, I find it very irritating.
Right.

Um, Charlie, as well as I simply refuse to believe that Johnstead thinks Salah has ever going to be in goal for Liverpool at any random point in the game.

This is very much the MHD entry that I can file under. I'm so glad somebody said this.
I noticed it years ago, and I wish somebody else would agree with me. It's spot on.

I think I first noticed this when watching Saves Galore, VHS tape from

1989-90. And I was like, whoa, that's a weird way of phrasing it.
I had exactly the same thing. This is one of my first memories of like weird football linguistic quirks in about the mid-90s.

Yeah, when I was watching football, and I just, I mean, it didn't irritate me, but I just, yeah, I just thought it was odd.

And I can't say I ever, while watching it, suddenly thought, oh, has an outfield player gone in gold? But yeah, it was,

I do just remember thinking, why are they doing that? Like, that's so clearly wrong. You know, Dave, we're treating it as

a quaint, quirky little wrinkle in the language language of football. This is a genuinely unhelpful way of saying it, isn't it? Like, this isn't how it should be constructed.

But again, it's one of those things, similar to the tense discussion we just had. It fits perfectly.
It works and we understand it.

It's not something that I've ever really... remarked upon and thought that's weird.
It's just it just is what it is.

Is it also a little bit related to something that Keesy was going on about the other day in his in their in their relaxed live stream about not crediting goalkeepers enough and always talking about it from the from the shooter and the outfield players perspective oh certainly um i mean but then you could go even further charlie and say okay if you if you did sort of construct it correctly and say um what a save from martinez for example well it shouldn't be from anyway it should be by right it should be say by martinez still from it's a very strange thing i feel do i do feel quite keysy talking about this but i've done it now yeah there are there there are there are often i mean they're all ablative by with or from there are some weird overlaps sometimes where you think it should be one and people say it's the other.

How do you feel about

say

Liverpool took the lead in the 33rd minute with a goal from Salah? How would you feel about that? Why should From be in the equation here at all? From should be invited to the party.

But that's just so

that's sort of okay because it's from him in the sense that he's bringing it. Yeah, he sort of brought it to you.
I don't mind that.

He hasn't made it. He hasn't brought it.

He's sort of produced it.

I think it's all right. Okay, fine.
I suspect a lot of other people will agree as well. Right, second irritation this time comes from Richard Illingworth.

One of my many football-related irritations is when companies draw on popular football discourse or things that we love to hate.

And I'm thinking specifically here about the Weetabix advert that refers to VAR as a national problem.

Lad Brooks is another one that does this in referencing, oh, VAR, we all hate VAR. Why does this annoy me so much?

Maybe it's the insincerity and instrumentalization, football being something I love, and corporations pretending that they're part of this just feels kind of distasteful.

But I don't think it's that, to be honest. I think it's the laziness of it all.
Oh, it'll be funny if we reference this thing that everybody apparently hates.

I think it's it's cheap, it's easy, it's unimaginative, and frankly, we should boycott their products until they stop. Instrumentalisation.
What a lovely word he's used there, Dave.

Dave, I immediately have the Paddy Power Man's voice in my head when I think about this phenomenon.

VAR has been around since about 2019 in the Premier League, and perhaps that is the right amount of time, especially given the endless discourse about it that's happened in that time, for it to become the butt of football-adjacent jokes.

it's it's so ripe for parody, right? So, I can understand why advertisers have tucked in gleefully. Yeah, but it's it's all about tone of voice, about knowingness, about how it's deployed.

You know, you can do these things well, you can do these things badly, and more often than not, they're done badly.

And I think that's probably a function of just in similar ways to when we talk about people getting football wrong in dramas.

That there's just there's probably not loads of people that absolutely love football to that sort of granular level who work for ad agencies.

VAR, I think, Charlie, has been manna from heaven for advertisers. If you think about

in the rounds, you've basically got a very highly publicized thing that everybody seems to hate. You've got the procedure of VAR, which is so deployable for various kinds of advertising scenarios.

You've got...

Essentially like a three-stage adjudication process that can basically be massage into anything.

And

as Dave says, they've done a four out of 10 job of kind of recreating it. So, like, take the dominoes above, which I'm now going to have to by law go domino.

Um, that was the VAR scenario for that. And I just, I said, I hate how generic all the kits are in it.
And I hate the fact that VAR has been deployed for that as well.

So, in summary, I think this might be the worst thing about VAR, the fact that it has now been used for these purposes. But this is interesting as well, because I remember

when it would have been a couple of years ago, probably, I was having having a debate with a friend as to whether do you remember when like who wants to be a millionaire jokes were so awful and so ubiquitous you know like can I phone a friend or something like that?

It's that level. It really is.

And I was saying that VAR was getting to that point. And I think this is confirmation of that.

If mainstream, if brands are using it like that, then I think we are almost at a point where your really unfunny relative is going to make a like, oh, it's gone to VAR type joke.

Like, I think we're there. We must be there if

brands are doing it. And even the fact that you've got the signs you can do with your hands, there's so much potential.
But it's awful, yeah.

You can see how it's caught hold as a kind of joke construct, Dave. But I'm desperately trying to think what came before VAR in this cross-cultural sense.

What from football could be packaged up in this way? I don't know, like a transfer? Like a transfer market? Something like someone being unveiled as a new signing? Yeah, transfer window, deadline day.

Yeah, basically. Yeah, deadline days probably would have have been a thing, wouldn't it? Yeah, deadline days of making a late signing.

We've made a new signing of our own.

Red cards. Red cards are basically, that's the nearest you're going to get.
It's like we've been shown the red card. Do you want to watch the advert in question?

We should deliver Weets of Bix to where it's needed most to whoever's in charge of fixing potholes.

VAR. Yes.
And drivers who park like this.

I mean, the interesting thing though is when we finally get to the VAR depiction there, Charlie, it's just like a really nerdy bloke in a short-sleeved shirt and glasses.

Not even in the sort of referee's kit. It's just a bloke looking like a sort of, you know, security guard or a scientist.
A boffin. Yeah.
Classic boffin.

I mean, at least with that, there are a few other things. It's not just VAR.

But like the generic one, which I mentioned before, is the kind of like, it will be for a cereal or something, and it'll be a breakfast scene.

And it's like, mum passes to dad, dad passes to mum, and it's a goal. And it's like, what is this?

Let's look at that one again. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. An action replay.
That's what it would be, an action replay of an incident or something, as if that's like a thing in football.

Action replays of

the milk being poured and super. And now in super slow-mo.
And then a co-commentator voice comes in.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe this is the final nail in the VAR cultural coffin, Dave. We've had enough of it already, and now we have had enough of the depictions of it as well.
In five years.

You know, the Weetabix advert, they could have gone further and gone, instead of delivering Weetabix, they just said to deliver it to to VAR. Yeah, it's rubbish.
Stockley Park.

Maybe Stockley Park is branded. You're not allowed to use it.
Who knows? But yeah, Richard Illingworth, you are ahead of the curve there. Absolutely right.

Let's wrap things up for this edition of the Listeners Meza Harlan Dix with Michael Zwiauer. My biggest irritation of football is

when players during a penalty shootout celebrate the penalty, and I feel like this has been going on a lot recently that a lot of players have started started celebrating scoring a penalty way too much.

And it's such an awkward moment because you don't really know whether to celebrate at all because you don't want to jinx the penalty shootout result.

But yeah, I feel like a lot of

players recently have been over-celebrating penalties, and it's really annoyed me because

it's really not that big of a deal because you've got five. So a return day for the waves in the background for listeners, Vesa Harland Dicks.
Jack Pierce in your heart out.

Easter getaway, April getaway place where you might just live on the coast.

Yeah, true. Dave, I think this is a valid observation.
I do think, you know, as we've seen with players celebrating blocking a cross to concede a corner, or indeed winning a corner, or

indeed during Arsenal PSG, both happening at the same time, which is incredible. There is a general trend towards kind of telegenic celebration now.

But I hadn't really picked up on it in shootouts. But I think it is a case.
I do watch penalty shootouts and think, think,

have you celebrated that particularly innocuous penalty in the grand scheme of things too much? Yeah, there's a line.

I think there's obviously going to be a release of tension when you score a penalty. And, you know, obviously Stuart Pierce is the most famous example, perhaps.
But you get it, especially

and kind of g-ing the crowd up for the next penalty. Come on, we're still in this or whatever.
That makes sense. But yeah.

Is it also maybe because on average

it feels like more penalties are scored these these days. Maybe they are a bit less tense because players seem a bit more confident and

they're a bit freer. But, I mean, will we ever see a knee slide after a penalty scored in a penalty shootout? In the middle of a shootout.
In the middle. That's a very good question.
David's bottle.

Everyone running to the player and then being told, like, can you go back? It's only 2-1. Davis bottom here, Charlie.

The traditional celebration, if you could call it that, of a penalty in a shootout is a release of tension, a release of

the kind of pantomime stage-managed tension of walking up to the ball. So Stuart Piers being a great example, as if you add in the historical context for him as well.

So it's always going to be, yes, I've done it, and a sort of brief fist pump of relief, essentially.

And they're usually quite angry celebrations. They're very rarely kind of smiley, I've achieved something celebrations.
What do you think is the limit? I mean, we've suggested knee slides already.

That's absurd. What do you think is the most mid-game style goal celebration you could do for a penalty shootout and it not look weird in 2025? Oh, that's really hard.

I mean, just quickly before trying to answer that, I do generally think I am pretty sympathetic to people celebrating penalties just because how nervous they must be.

That I think any sort of what looks like a genuine release of that tension, I'm sort of all for. Yeah, when things go a bit over the top, that's a bit much.

But yeah, think about what's could they wheel away?

Would you stomach a player wheeling away?

Because i just don't think it would look natural i think the the point is like it has to look natural i mean all i've got in my head now is a kind of mbappe folding an arm arms and how ridiculous that would look like just running away with a little finger whack maybe you could do a little finger whack just especially if you're a player who's been doubted you know who's missed a few penalties that's that's maybe understated enough if we go more traditional dave like a shearer style running away with one arm in the air like it's just there's no reason you would you certainly would the referee wouldn't book you for doing it but it would look odd but would it be too premature to celebrate like that Depends much.

It depends which direction you're running in. I think if you score your penalty and then you run back to your teammates, you can do something on the way back, maybe.
That still looks so weird.

But if you run towards the corner flag, it's different. Here's one that's maybe because it always feels a bit not meeting the moment in normal actual play.

The Harry Kane celebration, that's quite a weird thing anyway, that sort of like jump up, jump and punch. That's quite economical, isn't it? That

wouldn't be seen as excessive. That's what I mean.

It actually might, that might be be more appropriate for a penalty rather than when he's just scored a massive goal in a big game has um or has gareth bale ever done the heart thing

when he scored a penalty in a shootout maybe he can't do it because it doesn't officially classify as a goal so it doesn't count as a goal celebration you can still dedicate a uh yeah a penalty i think that would feel fine yeah i don't think that would feel over top what if he jumped into the arms of your goalkeeper

you know you don't want to distract them too much too

Yeah.

You couldn't do like, you know, like a player who's got like a trademark celebration, like the Harry Kane one's a good example because it's quite muted anyway, so you could probably get away with it.

But, you know, Ronaldo, how can you do sort of a half-hearted Ronaldo Sue? Sue.

Or like Robbie Keene, could he just do like the

little pistols without the forward roll?

What you see quite a lot of now is a player scoring a penalty and then obviously so the relief like washing over them that they're then emboldened to go and talk to their goalkeeper and be like, he's going to go that, you know, because he's going this way.

Because they feel like, I've just got a bounty. I can do fucking anything right, you know, because you must, like the relief you must be feeling.

And so that sort of powers them on to then think they can take it upon themselves to give the goalkeeper advice. Yeah.

And I think one thing that you we might see at some point, because I've noticed they're becoming more and more half-hearted, is the players who are doing the bow and arrow celebration.

Like Solanke scored that goal at Anfield on Sunday, and he just sort of, he kind of did it.

His arms were sort of just relaxed and limp, and he just sort of did it sort of in a shrugging sort of way, because he, I think, maybe just the general way of the season's going.

And I could sort of see a player just trotting back after they've scored their pen and just sort of doing a half-hearted little arrow pull without committing to.

Got to do it still. You're right.
That was such a weirdly half-assed apologetic bow and arrow.

You're not contractually obliged to do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it.
Now, the vibe of this debate so far has been about essentially reading the room.

Like, what is acceptable body language to do in front in the context of scoring a penalty in a shootout? But as always,

there is science behind this.

We can defer now to Norwegian penalty whisperer Geir Jordat, who 15 years ago, actually, so this is long before he became a household name in penalty analysis, co-authored a study published in the Journal of Sports Sciences.

And from the abstract, it says players who engaged in certain celebratory post-shot behaviours were more likely to be in the team that ultimately won the penalty shootout.

In particular, celebrations including both arms

were associated with winning the shootout. It was more likely that the next kick taken by an opponent was missed after a player displayed these behaviours after a goal than when he did not.

So if you use two arms in your celebration when you score a penalty, no matter what stage of the shootout it is, you're more likely to win it. So if you do at least a shearer, you've got a 50% chance.

this is great I love the two arms aspect of this I wonder though whether his study has counted players geeing up the crowd with two arms as a celebration

that's controversial isn't it that doesn't count as a celebration to me that's that's the next phase that's different that's a different task isn't it I hope not I would hope not.

And back in 2010, maybe players weren't doing that as much, but

maybe they were during a shootout.

That's quite a traditional shootout thing, isn't it? To get your crowd going behind the goal. So I hope that doesn't count.

On a related note to that, I had a moment while I was watching, I was down at the London Marathon on Sunday watching and cheering a few people on.

And most of the time, you've got people lining the barriers, cheering everyone on, calling out people's names from their fests and all that.

There was a couple of moments that I noticed where things just, the natural lull just happened. And there were a few runners who were running it, who were going, come on,

come on, support us. This This is it.
This is football inspiring the rest of culture. Like, come on, get the crowd going.
I think I did that in my first marathon and then resolved never to do it.

It's like, it's a waste of energy.

Don't get involved. Did you get your desired response, though? Probably, but even so.
You're gone, though, by the time you've heard it.

Yeah, exactly. You're doing it for the benefit of the people behind you.
What's the marathon equivalent of blocking a cross and conceding a corner in order to justify geeing up the crowd?

Turning a corner, going past the cutty sark? No, doing it. you've just done a mile at a good pace.
You're like, so it's not, it's not a decisive moment, but it's a helpful one.

You know, well on your way to anything on your way.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
All right. Michael Saviour, you opened a can of worms there.
Excellent stuff. Right, Charlie Eccleshare, thanks to you for going through this month's listeners' mesaholidics.

Thank you. Thanks to you, Dave Walker.
Thank you. Thanks to everyone for listening.
We'll be back on Tuesday.

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If you don't, you get a full refund. Axel makes sure you never miss an opportunity to save on travel.
Visit helloaxel.com/slash pod to start saving today.