I Must Scream: Spanish football commentary

Harlan Ellison is a science-fiction writer. He wrote some of the original "Star Trek" series and one of the finest sci-fi short stories ever, "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream". The story ends with the narrator, Ted, turned into a blob by a supercomputer and condemned for all time to a hell of existence in which he cannot scream out at his pain because he no longer has a mouth.

Paco González and Manu Carreño are two Spanish football commentators. They most definitely do have mouths. Neither is a blob. They have mouths and they must scream. And boy, do they scream. Scream patriotically and partially. Ted's blob-like condition would have left him without eyes as well, but Paco and Manu have eyes - one each. They are the one-eyed, screaming monsters of the hell that is football commentary on Spanish television. This hell transcends merely football commentary. Spanish football has arrived at a state of its own parodical hell - the ball forever being passed from player to player, going nowhere, boring everyone (to hell), for all time and eternity, while Paco and Manu scream, aided by their one-eyed vision.

"¡Estamos en semifinales!" No question where Paco or Manu's sympathies lay at the end of the France match then. I don't know which one it was who said this, or rather screamed it, and it doesn't really matter. There is a blob-like quality to Paco and Manu, and that is that they meld into each other and become one, joined at the mouth. They are indistinguishable and indistinguishably awful.

Why you need two football commentators when one is sufficient I have no idea, other than to keep environmental protection agencies in employment, checking the scream-ometer for noise-pollution decibel levels. And there aren't just two, there are three. Fernando Morientes provides the expert (sic) insights. The one thing in Fernando's favour is that he doesn't scream.

Spanish TV football commentary does things in threes. The most comical or worst example, depending on your point of view, were the Three Tenors of La Sexta during the 2006 World Cup. "Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard" they didn't sing but could have done, Julio Salinas having been one of the three, of whom the most irritating was the late Andrés Montes whose name will forever be etched in the history of Spanish football for having popularised the term "tiki-taka" and who therefore contributes to the current-day hell that is Spain's football. The best that one can say about the Paco-Manu-Fernando Trio is that they don't sing. Or haven't done so yet.

This isn't just me taking a critical view of Spanish football commentators. Marcos Torres is a writer on such matters. Of Paco and Manu he says "ten for fanaticism, zero for professionalism". Someone responding to the article with this title adds that sports journalism of all sorts in Spain, be it broadcast or print, has suffered a degeneration and a "blatant lack of professionalism".

Pride in the national team's achievements is fine, but it has led to the one-eyed view of Spain's football. It is not without criticism, and hasn't been during the Euros, but the team's success has brought about a state of FC, footballingly correct, a state which has crossed borders and has become the panacea for all others to aspire to. Yet Spain's football would never have come about had it not been for FIFA having ruined the sport for all time in denying opponents the opportunity of kicking Xavi up in the air and getting away with it. Oh for the days when footballers were just a set of studs away from GBH and footballers were Peter Storey, Norman "Bites Yer Legs" Hunter and Nobby Stiles adorning England's midfield.

The consequence of FC is what we now have. The light-touched, effete ping-pong of tiki-taka. It can be admired, like paintings or classical music can be admired; it doesn't mean you like it though. There again, and by contrast, there is always England and football that is played from another planet, a very barren one at that.

Spain may well win the Euros, and if it looks as though they will, then I'd better unplug the TV as God knows what might happen when Paco and Manu let rip. Win it, yes, but it will be further confirmation of our all being condemned forever to the tick, tack, tick, tack, tick, tack. I have a mouth and I must scream, but for different reasons to Paco and Manu.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.