If Sweden is to have a chance to go all the way in the European Football Championship, both TV viewers and Media Sweden will probably have to start cooling down their enormous expectations. TV4, which owns the broadcasting rights together with SVT, blows on with blue-yellow chauvinism and boundless speculation, perhaps still not so surprising considering what it means for their broadcasts about Sweden goes a long way, but I wrote it this week, and do it again: When has a favorite tipped and uplifted Swedish national team, regardless of sport, managed to carry a favorite team? Ever? A single match is usually bad enough, but favorite tipped in a big championship?
Here is a typical Swedish sports dramaturgy I have recognized since childhood. And probably our DNA in this respect can be traced back to at least the Swedish Bronze Age (and then I do not mean the men’s World Cup -94). We are always best at a disadvantage, excluded and calculated. There are exceptions, but I do not think I am completely out and about if I say: Rare exceptions.
As usual, the staff of employees to carry out a major sports broadcast in these times is enormous. They are presenters, reporters, experts, commentators, assistants and analysts in long lines, and it is also the case that nowadays it seems to define both competence and quality in these contexts, the more the better. Well, I understand, and I know, that a big championship in three or four weeks is a brutal round-the-clock struggle as a journalist on the spot, no two talking about it – but will there be twice as good football broadcasts with twice as many people?
Unfortunately, I am also of the sad opinion that among these hordes of employees, at most two or three really have something to contribute. There is a lot of fluff to add talk and after-talk, which above all seems to be produced to spread between the advertisements. Now a smaller proportion of us can follow the matches on TV4’s partner C More instead, when they are now not broadcast on SVT and avoid the limitless advertising breaks, but most find themselves watching at least 20 minutes of advertising per hour.
Has only followed two TV4 broadcasts so far, and there have been broadcasts on the dot like most TV4 has done in both women’s and men’s football coverage in the last 20 years. Some decent pre-interviews, experts on what they believe and do not believe, and then an eternal grind about the “huge audience” and the “incredible atmosphere” and the fantastic steps women’s soccer has taken. Swedish women’s football has been patiently and in headwinds built from the ground up, when you now talk about women’s football’s huge step and the financial investment, do not forget that we are talking about an extremely small clique of the elite who now seem to have the chance to approach the men, even though it’s still a thousand light years there – and do we want women’s football to be like men’s football in commercial terms at all?
Frida Nordstrand interviewed in the premiere broadcast, the Danish football star Nadia Nadim, who among other things told about a traumatic escape from the Taliban and Afghanistan almost 30 years ago. What everyone really wants to know about Nadim right now is why she chose to run as a PR ambassador for the World Cup in Qatar (just like David Beckham and a number of other stars). Her statements about how Qatar “helps people in need” provoked a wave of protests.
Nadia did not want to talk about it – and Frida Nordstrand accepted. If it was a demand from Nadia Nadim in advance, of course Frida Nordstrand should have stayed at home. If Nadim refused to answer the questions on the spot, Frida should at least have sent that piece, or actually gone from there. As a journalist, there are no other choices if you want to keep the honor intact.
Read more sports-in-TV chronicles by Johan Croneman:
I would like to see Forsberg and Asllani talk training and demands on TV
Brolin makes me suddenly forgive TV4 for all the shit music
Mats Nyström has everything that the Besserwissers missed