The people want commentators, not PR agents | Column
The real problem with football broadcasts in Israel is the lack of courage. Everyone wants to be part of the celebration and is afraid to spoil it. When you flatter officials and express surprise at violence in the stands, you are not respecting the viewers, but showing contempt for us.
It is very difficult to return from a World Cup to the Premier League. It is a bit like returning from Disneyland and standing in line for a slide at 'Yamit 2000': technically, both places have facilities, but it is hard to convince yourself that it is the same experience. And yet, already in the first round we are expected to hear one of the most tiresome clichés in Israeli football broadcasts: "It might not be the best, but it is ours." After it will come, of course, its little and annoying sister: "How we missed the Premier League."
No, we did not miss it during the World Cup. No one sat in front of England vs. Argentina and thought to themselves: "All this talent is nice, but when are we going back to Sakhnin vs. Ironi Tiberias?". If we thought about Israeli football at all, it was mainly in a more depressing context: how Uzbekistan managed to get to the tournament while we watched it from home again. And that is fine. You don't have to be ashamed that the Premier League is mediocre. It is supposed to be that way. The problem starts when those who are supposed to cover it try to convince us every week anew that it is some child with problems who needs to be hugged unconditionally.
"It is ours" is not a journalistic argument. It is an advertising slogan. The constant poeticizing about "our league" also does not advance it anywhere. On the contrary, it allows Israeli football to continue operating in a world where any criticism is perceived as treason. After all, when the "match of the season" explodes because of flares, no commentator will say with a smile: "Nothing to be done, this is our Premier League." When a match in Doha starts with a 40-minute delay due to a security failure, no one will rave about the authenticity. And when a small team demands 150 shekels from a fan of a top team to sit in an outdated stadium, suddenly that "our league" will turn into "our football that must change." You just missed it a moment ago, didn't you?
Stop being afraid of the viewer is the real problem of football broadcasts in Israel: not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of courage. Everyone wants to be part of the celebration, no one wants to be the person who spoils it. Commentators and analysts live today in the same ecosystem as the players, coaches, agents, and fans. They meet them, interview them, follow them, and are followed back. And above all hovers the terror of social networks: say a player was bad and you will get 100 messages; criticize the crowd and they will cut the segment for TikTok; dare to say that a central match was terribly boring and you will be accused of "lowering the product." So they raise the product. By force.
Precisely because of this, it is worth remembering the late Meir Einstein. When people talk about him, they remember first of all the voice. The outbursts, the drama, the "Goal! Goal! Goal!". But Einstein was also great because he did not see himself as a PR man for Israeli football. If the "match of the season" was bad, he was capable of saying that the match of the season was bad. If an official acted embarrassingly, he did not wrap him in cotton wool. And if the crowd behaved disgracefully, the crowd also did not get a discount in the name of "the atmosphere." He understood something that seems to have been forgotten: broadcasting a match is also a journalistic task. The commentator is not there just to shout the name of the scorer, and the analyst is not sent just to explain to us that the team "needs to move the weight of the game to the other wing." They are our eyes at the event. If the event is bad, it is allowed to say so. If the pace is low, there is no need to invent tension. If the teams are unable to connect three passes, there is no need to call it a "tactical game." Sometimes a football match is just a bad football match.
The same is true for the uglier events. Every time flares are thrown onto the grass, the constant ritual begins from the broadcast position: "We don't want to see these images," "It's a pity that this is the face of our football." As if it is not a recurring phenomenon. How much can one be surprised? If the same events repeat every season, the role of a journalistic broadcast is not only to regret them but to ask who is responsible, who failed, why it continues to happen, and what needs to change. And above all, you can stop being afraid of the viewer and simply respect them with the truth.
