Covering Soccer

Lack of scoring? Yeah, sometimes. Lack of action? Great Scott, no. Just keep your pen at the ready and scribble scoring chances, goals, set pieces, themes, whatever.

A few good soccer verbs I've used in stories and shamelessly co-opted from fellow soccer nerdos: gallop, cleave, nod (headers), lash, ripple, fist, service, and of course 'laid siege.' All can be used in anything, of course, but they all work very well in soccer contexts. The thing I love about soccer gamers is the plethora of great active words available for it.

 

Wow. Just ... wow.
If I read a girls high school soccer gamer where the writer says a player "fisted" anything, I'm recoiling in horror. All those terms, themes, set pieces, etc., are great if you're writing for a paper in the UK or some other soccer-savvy land. If you're writing high school gamers for most American papers, you'd be well advised to keep that stuff to a minimum. It'd be like using "cagers" in a basketball story.
Rule No. 1 of writing -- know your audience.

 

Soccer is a perfect sport with which to, basically, write a feature around a score.

I'd suggest you try to do that.

But, if you must write strictly a game story, there are ways to do it well, particularly if you are knowledgeable and actually do know/understand what you're looking at.

Especially with girls' soccer -- which is often of much lesser quality and much slower than boys' soccer -- I'd suggest keeping an eye not just on shot totals but the quality of the shots/plays -- i.e. types, distances from which they are taken/forced to be taken, the types of plays that lead to them, the strength/precision of the passes and shots, etc.

I'd also suggest keeping track of throw-ins, again, especially if this is girls' soccer. The throw-ins themselves aren't necessarily that important, but a preponderance of them may reflect something important/interesting that could be discussed/analyzed.

In girls' soccer, especially, there is a tendency, particularly by mediocre teams, to frequently just kick the ball out of bounds at every opportunity -- a fact that may impact time of possession greatly, since the clock keeps running even as teams go chase down the balls.

A team that constantly does this, as opposed to maybe just employing the tactic at the end when it might be trying to strategically kill time, is probably being greatly outplayed and just trying to stay in the game long enough to get a fortuitous goal. Which happens a lot in soccer, where the-best-team-doesn't-always-win scenario plays out quite often.

The other thing to look at is not only ball possession, but control -- which team shows direction, progress, (in other words, thinking and skills) behind its play, and isn't just trying to, you know, "Win the ball!" just to do it, with no plan or indication of what is to happen next.

Soccer is all about execution, although style of play may be worth noting, discussing and contrasting, if that's appropriate, as well.

 

When I was working for our little college weekly, we went to press on Saturday nights, so if you were covering a Saturday game, you had to fill a specific hole. Twenty years later, that's easy, but back then, not so much.

One Saturday, I was assigned to a soccer game. I forget if it was #1 vs. #2 in the country (D2) or #1 vs. #3, but it was a big game. The editor tells me to write 24 inches. Game is played in 35-degree rain - no press box, of course - and ends in a scoreless tie that might have had two decent scoring chances. That was one day that I was very glad I knew a lot about the sport, because I had to do everything short of giving the players grades to fill the hole.

 

The one stat I keep up with religiously in a soccer game are corner kicks. To me, taking more corners is one of the surest signs of one team having more good scoring opportunities than the other. Throw-ins, not so much.

 

You need to talk to a player at least, plus both coaches. That takes up a lot of room.

 

This.

And my own ego demands I also contribute:

In more than a decade of covering the sport, I'm glad to say I've never used any of the terms spud mentioned. Nor did I ever use "side!!!" "pitch!!!!" "kit!!!!" or "pace!!!!!" Like Batman said, know your audience.

Soccer is probably the easiest sport to cover.

What makes it so easy is that there is only one statistic that matters: Goals. The other "statistics" are unreliable and unnecessary. Some coaches will credit their goalies with a save every time they stifle a cross that might have led to possible danger if a couple of players have the opportunity to get the ball and find open teammates. Some coaches credit an assist to a player who gets taken down in the box, leading to a penalty kick.

Watch the game. As JakeandElwood said, see if anyone is dominating possession. Take note of the biggest plays, which are pretty simple to spot since they usually happen around the goalmouth. If there are no goals, you'll need to detail a time or two that someone nearly scored. If someone is carded or commits a foul that leads directly to a dangerous chance, note that.

Do research, even if it only consists of chats with the coaches, and find out what the result means to the teams. Write about that. Ultimately, it's just a (prep, I'm assuming) soccer game. But don't fall on the crutch of statistics, as so many sports fans and journalists do.

During the dog days of the prep season when my creativity well would be dry and I'd be going to five games a week, sometimes two in a day, I fell back on this structure, at least to give me a framework:

Lead
Nut graph
Score and basics of what the game does to league standings or tournament status
Quote winning coach or key player
Detail first goal (if any)
Quote player who scored it or coach about how wonderful that player is
Detail second goal (if any)
Quote player who scored it
(alternately, detail goalie and defense's play, and quote one of those people)
More details, why a team lost
Quote losing coach
What's next
Quote winning coach

Have fun.

 

There is nothing difficult about covering a soccer game. You don't even need to watch it. I mean that literally. Get the box, talk to the coach, talk to players about the goals, or, if applicable, the shutout. Write your 400 words. Go home.

 

It seems like everybody's making it harder than it needs to be.

Absolutely keep your own stats. Don't rely on the teams. It's your game to cover and there's to play.
You get to decided what you saw.

But the biggest thing for me is that it's like covering any other sport.
What's the context of the game. What are the storylines coming in, and therefore, going out.
What did the game to change anything?

Covering any game in any sports needs very little WHAT HAPPENED.
And a whole lot more WHY, HOW, and WHAT DOES IT MEAN NOW THAT IT'S HAPPENED.

Really, I cover Big 12 football and basketball during the fall and winter and have forever.
And I cover prep soccer in the spring and have forever.
It's just like everything else.

 

If you speak Spanish, that could come in handy. Lawn chair, too.

 

Kerosene heater optional in winter.

 

Measure the grass before and after.