Is There a Gap Between Football Coverage and How It's Wanted to Be Consumed?

Slaven Bilic let go of a small sigh and then began. "Look, it's the first game of the season, and we are already talking about these kinds of decisions," the West Ham United manager said with frustration at the post-match press conference following his side's 2-1 loss to Chelsea in the opening round of the Premier League season.

Bilic was only minutes removed from a frenetic and heated London derby at Stamford Bridge. His disappointment was palpable, but as he often is, he was prepared to be open and engaging about his team, interested in discussing the dynamics of a game that had shifted throughout. And yet, his sigh came because no one else seemed to be; three of the first four questions put to him centred on the referee and Diego Costa.

"I'm a manager, I'm not an eagle eye, I'm not Howard Webb," said Bilic. "I want to talk about the game."

This writer was at that press conference and was reminded of it this week as Jurgen Klopp so brilliantly held the camera for almost an hour on Sky Sports' Monday Night Football.

The Liverpool boss, with Jamie Carragher alongside looking adoringly at him, was both entertaining and insightful as he discussed the themes of his management and his progress at Anfield.

Particularly interesting were his comments on defending from the front—"no playmaker in the world can be as good as a good counter-pressing situation"—on the split between zonal and man-marking at set pieces, on his idea for stopping and playing through the "No. 6" and on systematic fluidity mattering more than systematic definition.

It was one of the most prominent and respected men in football discussing football—the game itself and not the circus that comes with it; the thing Bilic had wanted to discuss, too.

That night, the Telegraph's Jim White called Klopp's appearance a "masterclass," and plenty agreed. Search "Klopp MNF" on Twitter and you'll find little but glowing praise, the underlying message along the lines of I could watch him talk about this for hours.

Sky would have been thrilled, but it gave rise to important questions: Why exactly was an audience so transfixed? Why did this feel so massively different to the norm? Outside this, has there grown a disconnect between the way football is typically covered and presented and the way it's wanted to be consumed? 

It's interesting to ponder. For the fan, the weekly coverage of football tends to involve a lot of damning assessments pushed at them. The reaction to a weekend more often than not focuses on those who are struggling; headlines rarely go for nuance; "look what this person said about that person" forms a large portion of hard news; by television, managers are often shown discussing controversy before anything else. 

Is this delivering what's wanted? This is not intended to be an existential question or an assassination of those who drive the weekly cycle, not at all. This writer is involved in that, and football media inherently has many of the strengths and weaknesses of other news-based domains. It's also full of excellent professionals doing their job diligently, bringing the game to an audience that would be poorer without such a function. But has a gap opened up (or has it always existed?) between the coverage and that audience?

As Klopp took centre stage on Monday, it was difficult not to conclude that one of the reasons why viewers were so captivated by him is because they're somewhat starved of intellectual football discussion from those within the game.

For those with the chance to go, press conferences are a great opportunity to develop a certain understanding or a portrait of a manager. There's no substitute for spending time in the same room, learning the way someone talks and their range of responses, gaining a small insight into how they think. For the fan, though, what often comes out of press conferences is managers defending their turf through the discussion of team selection, refereeing decisions and contentious moments. 

It's true that many managers drive that line of discussion themselves for their benefit, and the news cycle needs quotes that provoke a wide interest to tick. The product of that, though, is the way football often falls into a personality-driven affair, talking heads bickering among themselves. There's a reason why the "soap opera" charge sticks.  

Does too much of football's coverage, then, fall into line with such a narrative? Does that need to be challenged more? Is the viewer/reader getting what they want from the mainstream? (This writer doesn't claim to have any of the answers, only the questions.)

WANG ZHAO/Getty Images

The key factor in Monday Night Football's popularity is the strength of the pre-match analysis of the weekend. Dispensing with cliches and off-the-cuff judgements, Gary Neville and then Carragher have heightened the wider football discussion, adding a sense of sophistication and research to an area that has often missed that. The guess is that there are plenty of viewers who watch the programme for that and not the game after it. 

It's not just television, either. The rising popularity of audio and written work in what might have once been niche areas seems to suggest there's a yearning for football to be presented either more intellectually, with more diversity or with greater depth.

Graham Hunter's podcast series The Big Interview is immensely popular, exploring the lives and thoughts of some of football's big names, regularly delving into technical elements of the game, asking how football is played. The fact that it raised more than £40,000 from listeners in a Kickstarter campaign to ensure its continued production said a lot.

Also on offer in the podcast world is the always-entertaining Football Ramble or the more serious but very informative Spanish Football Podcast. A number of excellent club-specific titles are also heavily subscribed to, such as The Anfield Wrap, Arsecast and The Rant Cast from United Rant. Others such as Football Weekly and Men In Blazers have sold out ticketed live shows. 

In the written sphere, it's similar. Football tactics in particular has been a boom area. Michael Cox's Zonal Marking is incredibly popular, Sam Tighe's work at Bleacher Report is a favourite of readers here and countless of the inquisitively minded have read Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid.

Beyond tactics, the "Far-Flung Adventures" series from The Set Pieces appears to be developing a strong following, and in the realm of video, Copa90's regular forays into fan culture are well received.

These are not meant to be ringing endorsements of the aforementioned titles above others; it's simply a selection of the work this writer has come across. The striking thing, though, is that their popularity does not seem to be only tied into the popularity of football, but also into the demand for football discussion to be taken to another level. 

On Wednesday night, it was refreshing to hear Diego Simeone discuss tactical strategies when given the chance following Atletico Madrid's 1-0 victory over Bayern Munich in the Champions League. 

"With Fernando Torres we tried to stop Xabi Alonso from coming out, and with Antoine Griezmann we tried to do the same with Arturo Vidal," he said, per Marca. "Against [Philipp] Lahm and [Jerome] Boateng, if we won the ball we knew we would have space to run into and that was how the goal came about. The team read the game tactically in an impressive way."

Interesting? This writer thinks so, or at least would like to hear more of it. However, it's also entirely possible that you're reading the words of a self-confessed football nerd who is interested in things that don't at all interest the wider audience of the game. And perhaps nitty-gritty football discussion needs the point of contrast that is more mainstream coverage to survive. 

But as Klopp engaged an audience that typically hears little of such insight, it raised the question in this mind of whether a gap has opened up between delivery and presentation and what's wanted. The never-ending search of many fans to go deeper into the game itself through a variety of mediums seems to support that. 

At Stamford Bridge, Bilic was clear: "I want to talk about the game." But that's not really where the discussion went, not the way he meant. 

Follow @TimDCollins