Football highlights are, for better or worse, part of the fan’s viewing experience. This is particularly true in the United States for two reasons.
For one thing, soccer recaps allow fans to catch up on games they missed due to other commitments. Whether it’s work, sleep, or anything else, European start times don’t necessarily align with American standards. Highlights allow fans to engage with other things. At the same time, they stay relatively informed about the world of football.
Second, soccer fans around the world follow multiple players, teams, leagues, or countries. Few fans say that they only watch one club’s games. This does not mean that they are not fans of a certain club. Instead, that club can only play twice a week. Meanwhile, there are games every day in some competition that overlap in start times. Soccer Highlights makes it easy to watch the biggest moments from across the sport while staying focused on a game as it happens.
On-demand games are an option, according to the league, since not all streaming services carry replays. However, just like live games, these are long affairs. Few fans have the time to actually watch every game in a league, even on demand.
Therefore, football recaps play a role in the viewing experience in some way, shape or form. The most common place to stand out is social media. YouTube has full game highlights. Twitter has highlights immediately after something happens. TikTok has compilations of soccer highlights for certain players or clubs.
However, these football highlights can be a hindrance to the viewing experience. People develop predispositions based on little clips rather than getting the game as a whole.
Do soccer recaps affect your viewing experience?
The highlights are, in most cases, objective. Some YouTube highlights providers, such as NBC or CBS, provide “full game” highlights. These videos are 10-15 minutes long and feature goals, saves, saves, or other dramatic moments. Other YouTube channels offer shorter highlights. Essentially, they’re just targets. Five-minute videos don’t draw much attention to the intricacies of the game. However, they do allow us to see who scored, how they scored and who is more or less responsible defensively.
The bad
This modified version of seeing the game does not balance it. He rewards goals more than defense. Of course, goals get fans on their feet a lot more than defending. The most storied moments in sport are goals, not blocks, sorry defenders of the world.
However, defensive midfielders can be thrown aside in these video highlights. One of Leicester City and Chelsea’s most integral players over the years, N’golo Kante is not one who would appear in a featured video. Casual fans don’t want to see an energetic midfielder win the ball back, they want to see Riyad Mahrez, Eden Hazard or Raheem Sterling, all Kante’s teammates, take on a defender and score.
The same goes for Rodri from Manchester City. Rodri is one of the best holding midfielders in the world. However, he takes a backseat in the video highlights against the much flashier Kevin de Bruyne or Erling Haaland, even though Rodri started the play from his core.
The fact of the matter remains, the highlights can affect our understanding of a player’s role. For example, Karim Benzema said that the modern game puts more emphasis on being the man at the end, rather than the one in the making.
“Football has become a game where players can play poorly for 90 minutes and then score a goal and be called Man of the Match and be the center of attention. I don’t want to be that kind of player.”
The highlight certainly plays a role, as the person on the record is the ‘savior’ of the day.
The good
Once again, it is give and take. When time is short in the day, some things in video highlights are sacrificed to see the defining moments of a game. In many cases, people find themselves watching YouTube videos between games or during halftime of other games. It’s devotion to the game in his case.
As a football fan, do you ever watch more highlights than actual matches? Why could that be?
PHOTO: IMAGO/ANP
