You ain't seen nothing yet!

"...Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet"

Al Jolson; The Jazz Singer 1927

"...indeed let us be frank about it – most of our people have never had it so good"

Harold Macmillan; General Election1959

"...Go Ahead Eagles, who the bloody hell are them?"

Peter Fleming; Sky Eredivise coverage 2016

For the armchair football fan of 2016 able to afford satellite TV subscriptions they truly never have had it so good.  There is now live coverage of top level football in England, Scotland, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands.  Add to this the Champions’ League, the Europa League, MLS in USA, Australia, the Football League and National League, the choice is truly bewildering.  Only 40 years ago the only live football we got was the FA Cup final, European finals and the World Cup.  It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that the odd live league match was trialled and of course these were dark days in the English game.  So it wasn’t until Sky invented football in 1992 that regular live football hit our screens and it seems to have increased exponentially since then.  Now on a lazy weekend it is possible to catch 10 live games by making no more effort than pointing the remote control and opening another bottle of beer.  If you follow Go Ahead Eagles then you are well catered for, unlike the Hull City fan of 25 years ago.

The quality of the coverage now is excellent with multiple camera angles and super slow-mo available from cameras all around the stadium.  Gone are the days of a single shaky camera on scaffolding or some dodgy gantry.  Even the pre-match build up and punditry is much better, though I do have regular Twitter rants.

Highlights packages are superb too; we can now see every goal scored in the top four divisions, something unimaginable twenty years ago.  If you followed a division 3 or 4 team then, tough.  If anything there are just not enough leisure hours in the week to watch it all.  I may have to take early retirement soon just to fit it all in, and that’s without Soccer Saturday and the magnificent Jeff Stelling.

So what’s the problem? *nostalgia klaxon sounds*

Sometimes I feel there is just a little over exposure.  As a lad growing up in the 1970’s Kate Bush and Debbie Harry did the same things to our hormones as Rhianna and Miley Cyrus do to the youth of today; only doing it with more clothes on.  In the 1970s and 1980s the chance to see Brazil and their great stars was an event to look forward to and perhaps we appreciated it more because of the wait.  Young fans now can see the stars of Brazil in European league action week in week out and miss a Brazil friendly match, don’t worry there will be another in a month or two.  No longer the pleasure of delayed gratification unless you enjoy the 'suspense' of the transfer window.

Sometimes simple is best.  Lots more live radio coverage is also available but to me nothing will quite compare to the coverage there used to be on radio 2 with the peerless Peter Jones and Bryon Butler.  The actual broadcast quality was abysmal by current day standards, sometimes being relayed over a telephone live but they were so evocative.  They could make teams such as Ujpest Dozsa, Carl Zeiss Jena and Hajduk Split sound glamorous (though often they patently weren’t ) enough to capture a young mind before the Champions League came along and made it a closed shop.

Would I go back to the football coverage?  Not a chance but I do think that young fans of today did miss out on something.

Anyway back to the Rayo Vallecano match on Sky!!