Football is a subjective sport. This nature makes it easy for anyone to talk and look like a pundit. A simple comment and a loose suggestion about a match or any player would easily give any bloke a vague air of intellectuality and grasp of the game. That is why we see so many figures going up to give comments on television and newspapers, so many that we have lost count.
Of course, I am not going to be blunt saying that all of them are up there trying to look cool, because some of them are very commendable and deserve more credit. I like a football pundit who can judge a situation with honesty, common sense and a welcome dash of humor. But most importantly, a good pundit is someone who strongly backs his opinions with facts.
Politics are not welcomed in football in any ways, not even in the manner politicians would present themselves through their rhetoric. Football pundits, as much as the players, managers and fans, have a big role to play to raise the game, and they too have to behave correspondingly. They have to go beyond rhetoric, overpowering words and wits because you don't vote to win a football match.
Football has taken a nasty battering over the last decade for not being a gentleman's game. It hurts me every time football is put into comparison with rugby, in which the latter enjoy the regard of being more noble.
Football has been equated with un-gentleman-like behaviour such as cheating, diving, swearing and complaining. Players and sometimes managers are the ones responsible for this. And off the field, violence and racism marred the beauty of the game for so long. The fans are directly blamed for this. Football has endured enough pain to bear for another one, the one that kills the sport in the most insidious way - the association of football with stupidity, reflected by how football people talk about the sport.
Talking about football, a simple thing players, managers, fans, pundits, every football people take for granted.
Don't get me wrong, it is nice to see how much football is celebrated and talked-about, but too many people given space to talk about football gives more space for mistakes which are costly to the face of the game. To the casual observer, it all looked very easy and without relevant facts and numbers to back the opinion, the world's view on football being the sport for the mentally challenged will continue to stay.
There are so many columns on newspapers, so many shows on television about football, and even the guy sitting next to you can throw their opinions away if you are looking for responses after a certain football match. It is so easy to give opinions that we over-compromise the basic research to understand the subject.
But with football terms and the right connotations, it is easy to convince anyone that we know everything about football, when actually we haven't got a slightest clue.
It'd be the case for me if someone asked me to write about fashion; I might think I know and understand it, but I have no idea whatsoever beyond superficial level.
Any opinions without facts not only tarnish the image of the sport I love, but also operate intelligently to dumb down the football people. Ultimately, the sport will go into the direction the world have in it: to be a sport for the stupid.
I am not writing this just because I am beyond annoyed at how Rafa Benitez has been treated over these very hard few months for Liverpool. True, this might be one hard slap on his face, but this is not the hardest.
It's not always possible for any teams to win trophies, but good managers averaged a 50 percent win rate, and the top class managers were up around 60 percent. Benitez increased his number in his five year reign with 56%, and given how illustrious his rivals would catch him up and the amount of money they spent and the amount of money Liverpool had, he is one of the best manager European football has ever seen.
His win percentage is even higher than the great Bill Shankly himself, but of course, the percentage is not the only parameter up for comparison.
That is the kind of workings and contexts I made for my judgment which satisfied me every time. Sadly, the kind of effort were left out by most football people.
Football is very tactical, and it is very hard to explain any state of play with subjectivity alone. Science has pretty much consumed the facet of the game, and football people seem not to bother catching up.
It is a tedious effort to look up for statistics, numbers and history, so football people choose to compromise them with their baseless common sense which is easier to do.
Of course, the likes of Alan Hansen, Andy Gray, Paul Tomkins and Jeff Stelling never failed to assure me that while some other ignorant made it looked so easy to give football opinions which fit the assumption that football is a stupid game, football is a game for thinkers at its core.
I hope with the World Cup coming next year, people will not get too excited to give opinions that would not only make them look stupid, but the sport as well. Especially my countrymen, who have this strange penchant in doing anything for the sake of looking cool and up-to-date with the latest fad. I am fully sure that looking cool as a football pundit in any mamak stalls during the stage of football's biggest event is one of the thing they are looking forward to
I guess baseless opinions hit me not just in football, as a friend recently told me that I am a ladies man. I am not particularly sure how far he went to come with that opinion. But as far as I am concerned, the last time I checked, I have only 146 female friends out of 625 friends on Facebook!
I can go on, but you get the idea.
True, baseless opinion is easy.
P.S. The picture was taken to show how easy it is to pull a football pundit face. Even I can do it, casually while having tea and banana, with Wan Zahidi as the moderator.
