About a thousand years ago when I was a working man, I was assigned to review Kid Rock, then all the pop cultural rage. That was my job, so okay.
I checked set lists, listened to all of his music, read articles, did everything I could to educate myself about a performer who, artistically, I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on if he was on fire.
The show got a rave review, not because of what my views were on his music, but rather did he do the job he was there to do, and how well did he do it?
A classical music critic who I respected a lot, the late Robert Marsh, told me two things about live event criticism:
— Never applaud, show pleasure or scorn. The publicists know where you are sitting, so show nothing.
–The second, most important one was you are there to review the performance, not what you think of the performer.
When Flick selected Ronald Araujo to be in the starting XI against Newcastle, the reviews of his performance wouldn’t really need a match to be written, because they were what people thought about the performer, rather than the performance.
“Pfft. He was pretty good in the air, but that’s about it.”
“He didn’t do anything to help Lamine Yamal in attack.”
“The Newcastle goal was his fault. Just another clown moment.”
After the match, Flick essentially said he was supposed to defend, and defend he did, so he was satisfied.
Nobody else was.
He is a player whose career at FC Barcelona is defined by three moments: the PSG red, the Chelsea red and the Acerbi goal. All of the other good to excellent performances he has delivered for the club he now captains, are immaterial. Supporters expect the worst when they see his name, because of those moments.
Is that correct?
Obviously, no, but correct has nothing to do with logic. Even when you break down what happened with the goals or reds, it’s immaterial to the “reality” of perception. He is bad. Even when he is good, he is just a play away from being bad. Good moments are greeted with silence, because that isn’t what people are there for. They are there for the bad stuff, the Tweets and comments pre-written.
Gerard Martin is another player on the same path. He has to have a fantastic match for people to say “He was decent.” His life has been defined by when he was still finding his legs as a fullback, and got danced a few times by tricky wingers. He is a bum in waiting rather than a fast improving player who Flick now trusts fully.
The weird thing about seeing what preconceived notions tell us to perceive is one of the fascinating things about psychology and how people perceive an event. What we expect becomes what we see, because expecting nothing is a challenge that requires a weird mindset.
“Kid Rock’s music sucks, and because the music sucks, the show sucks,” was always a very useful way to identify critics who weren’t very good, because they reviewed what they thought about the performer rather than the performance.
You could go minute by minute and document the good defensive plays that Araujo made against Newcastle and people would still say that he was poor and the goal was his fault. Psychology can’t be overcome, but asking the question about HOW we see what we see is interesting — at least to me.
My first reaction to seeing him hobbling back up the pitch right before the Newcastle set piece was, “Why didn’t he sub off, I hope he doesn’t try to switch with someone just before the play, because yonder lies madness.”
So when he stopped at the top of the box, presumably to deal with lofted balls or aerial threats that wouldn’t involve him cutting or sprinting on a cramping calf, my reaction was, “Cool.” Because everybody had zones covered, until they didn’t.
My reaction to the play was tempered by the tumble he took before the goal, the calf that was clearly bothering him and the way he gimped up the pitch. So everything that he did made sense.
What others saw was very different, and relates to how everyone sees an event. My mention of Rashford being lazy on the initial pass wasn’t something many mentioned, but it mattered because in the context of a team being a collective that protects individuals, his first reaction should have been, “If the winger gets that ball, Cancelo is in trouble.”
My guess is when managers break down goals, it is likely very different from how supporters break down goals, because managers see the game differently. Flick probably saw all of it, we can surmise, because he mentioned the lack of covering on Barnes.
Cubarsi had an excellent match. Cubarsi also was done for pace on three different occasions, but teammates picked him up by either making plays or working the offside trap. But maybe, just maybe, part of why Cubarsi was so good was because he had a defender on the right side. Maybe. It all depends on what and how you see what you see.
Nobody’s way of looking at an event is right or wrong. It’s just what they see, how they are programmed. “The right fullback is supposed to be primarily an attacker who plays off Lamine Yamal so that he can be at his best.” When a fullback doesn’t do that, they had a bad match. In their context, their assessment of a performance is correct.
Football, for such an objective endeavor, is quite subjective, right down to who performs an individual action and the consequences of those actions. As a fun psychological experiment, ask, the next time you react to a play, good or bad, what your view would be if a different player made that play.
Thirty years of assessing performances with an empty mind and a bloodless pen have made me look at everything in a different way. What happened, and how? The who is irrelevant. For me, it has to be. It’s how I am wired. When someone else who is wired differently suggests a different idea, we discuss it, hopefully with respect and understanding of the other person’s view.
But the biggest challenge in evaluating a subjective event is removing the evaluator from the event. Football, music, dance, visual art, whatever. Asking “What do I think about the performer and how is that affecting my reaction TO the performance” is one of the most useful things we can do as observers.
Asking that question, and answering it, doesn’t even need to change what anyone might think. Just asking the question has value. Back in the day, good copy editors would come back at critics during edits, with something like, “What does this have to do with the performance? This reads like you are putting yourself in the review.”
As critics got questions like that more, they got better at the selfectomies necessary to evaluate events. It’s worth thinking about for all of us.