Newspaper, 26 June 2014

Newspaper, 26 June 2014

At this point, nobody cared what the score was. We didn’t expect anything. The betting market illustrates this. Perhaps, as much due to Costa Rica’s excellent performances as well as England’s exit, England opened the betting at 2/5, finishing as long as 3/4. Cost Rica were as long as 7/1, going in as short as 15/4.

Don’t let anybody tell you England fans weren’t expecting anything from this World Cup.

Newspaper, 24 June 2014

Newspaper, 20 June 2014

F***. And there we have it, despair. Typical bloody England. We’re all but out.

Gary Lineker @garylineker 20 June

“The whole low expectation thing didn’t help then. Getting knocked out still feels shit!”

An early England exit from a major tournament is a newspaper’s field day. All that time they’ve spent scraping around for stories has now been rewarded. It’s time to write with purpose. In enters our good friend hindsight.

 England should’ve done this, Gerrard’s not good enough, neither is Sterling, neither is Henderson, and especially Hodgson, he’s the worst of them all, he got the formation totally wrong, bloody foreigners know how to do it better than us, we should’ve got Redknapp, Mourinho, anyone.

 They wrote this with a more pressing deadline, just wait until the next edition where they can finger point more thoroughly.

This is probably the pinnacle of individual obsession. Wayne Rooney, portrayed as the squad’s pantomime villain and having scored the goal that the media craved, is no longer the focal point. Of course though, it’s Rooney related.

Imagine taking a picture of your mate’s kid crying and then putting it on Facebook. That is what this is like. Arguably encroaching morality, I’d expect much better from one of the more respectable broadsheet newspapers.

The Sun went with a similar picture. But with this headline:

“Don’t cry, Kai. If Italy beat Costa Rica today… then Suarez and co lose to Italy.. and Daddy scores a couple (or maybe more) against Costa Rica… WE’RE THROUGH!”

Despite the omission of a crass headline, the picture speaks for itself (res ipsa loquitur).

@1jacobwalker

Introduction

This is a study of the English newspaper narrative during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The methodology was simple. Purchase a newspaper each day from the beginning of the World Cup until the aftermath of England’s exit. I aim to illustrate how the media encourages the nation to accumulate expectation and optimism during an England World Cup campaign, through the articles in which they publish. Consequently, the pressure on the England squad and certain individuals is unnecessarily heightened.

However, I’d like to specifically note two points with this study. Firstly, I want to stress that the media is by no means primarily to blame. The players, managers and staff have primary culpability, of course. I am not scapegoating the media. Yet the issue I wish to raise is that the media create conditions which have a negative impact on both individual and team footballing performance. Secondly, this is not an attack on the newspaper in question. Rather, it is an analysis/critique of newspapers in general. I carefully selected a broadsheet newspaper because I felt a tabloid would be too easy to illustrate my point, given its irreverent style and particularly misleading standard of journalism. In fact, the newspaper in question could take it as a compliment that I have chosen them to assess, as in my eyes, they attain a very high standard of journalism.

Follow my wordpress and let’s pretend that the 2014 World Cup has begun again. We can look at newspaper articles with the same stupendous hindsight that they judged England’s trip to Rio with. Every headline and article I post has come directly from the same newspaper; there has been zero manipulation. It is their narrative. It will start tomorrow where we pretend that it is June 12, opening day of the World Cup, and two days before the first England game.

Jake Walker (a deflated England fan)

This is still very much an ongoing project so would love feedback, thoughts and other perspectives to add to future posts.

Twitter: @1JacobWalker