The highlight reel is accessible to a fault. When I miss a match, I can find a condensed version online within a minute. Why it feels so cheap and unsatisfying to watch, and the accompanying highlight reel guilt I suffer from, is something I’d like to unpack.
It must be that watching a highlight reel is like walking into a theater to catch just the last scene of a play or reading only the epilogue of a book. How can you appreciate the pivotal scene if you weren’t invested? To see a highpoint, or low point, without the context of the achievement or suffering is to witness the quotidian. The goals in a highlight reel all start to look the same.
Consider the following: Edmond Dantès' discovery of the treasure, Rachel getting off of the plane, Scarlett's return to Tara, Fredo's betrayal of Michael, Federer's capture of the French Open, and Iker Casillas' departure from Madrid. What these events share is that they lack resonance without the power of their rich backstories.
While all of the above are climactic moments in themselves, each is rendered a non-event without the appropriate appreciation for its emotional significance. To see a goal without the buildup is the same anti-sensation. A highlight reel is to watching a match as downing In-N-Out in your car is to enjoying an omakase meal. One is a quick, cheap thrill—the other, an experience.
Supporting a football club is like riding a roller coaster, but not for the reasons you might anticipate. It’s a known fact that the ride’s enjoyment factor is proportional to the amount of time spent waiting in line—the longer the wait, the better the ride. And so to cut the line is to eliminate the bulk of the pleasure in the experience. The highlight reel is the equivalent of the amusement park goer’s Fast Pass. There is no joy in the distilled three-minute version of a 1-0 victory.
As the roller coaster example sought to demonstrate, soccer embraces a waitlist mentality. Our suffering is directed at a very specific aim—to make our glory that much greater. You know the adage: All goals and no draws makes Jack a dull Evertonian. It’s that much more gratifying to get a last minute reservation or off of the standby list for a flight because the long wait consecrates the act of suffering. I’m reminded of a scene in Clueless where Cher’s lawyer father commends her negotiation skills,
Mel: You mean to tell me that you argued your way from a C+ to an A-?
Cher: Totally based on my powers of persuasion, you proud?
Mel: Honey, I couldn't be happier than if they were based on real grades.
The lawyer in Mel predicts that he values Cher’s negotiation acumen more than her ability to earn her grades fair and square. His philosophy speaks to the idea that overcoming obstacles to achieve success is much sweeter than straightforward winning. Would we remember Istanbul 2005 if Liverpool never conceded three goals in the first half?
We look down on the highlight reel because we believe our suffering is proof of our worthiness. The lean years are always respected and time invested is the easiest way to measure sincerity. Disparaging a bandwagon fan is the same as a kid yelling, “You’re not my real mom!” at his father’s new wife. Take Real Madrid’s journey to La Decima, riddled with heartbreak. Picture Sergio Ramos, devastated after 2013’s bathetic semi-final against Dortmund. His match-changing header in the 93rd minute of the Champions League final versus Atleti was poetry at its most just. The setbacks en route to La Decima served to make its achievement all the more meaningful. Ramos is living proof of Tacitus’ statement "the miserable have more fury and greater resolution".
In the Stanford marshmallow experiment, three to five year old children were offered a choice of one marshmallow immediately or two marshmallows after waiting fifteen minutes. The study found that picking the second option, delaying gratification by deliberately electing to forgo the instant reward, was an indicator of intelligence. By this logic, Arsenal supporters must be geniuses. The only way to rationalize being an Arsenal fan is the expectation of an ungodly payout upon a Sisyphean victory. The highlight reel is the single marshmallow. The choice evinces a failure to grasp the superior value of putting in the time.
It’s not that surviving on a diet of 0-0 draws is a noble endeavor. The point is not to endure Park the Bus matches for the sake of asceticism. The point is to enjoy a match in the context of a season—to enjoy it as part of a narrative and as one of the climactic moments at the beginning of this essay, rife with meaning and emotion.
Again, this is no purist condemnation. One of my favorite matches was experienced entirely through a live feed on my phone. On April 8th I had Periclean Athens in Cohen Hall during the 13-14 Champions League quarterfinals. Chelsea had lost the first leg 1-3 at home to Paris Saint-Germain. Part of me was glad I didn’t have to watch a torturous second leg on an illegal stream. Instead, I got to neurotically refresh the feed under my desk. At the Parc des Princes, AndréSchürrle scored in the 32nd minute. We needed another goal (and a clean sheet) or else we’d go out on away goals. I grew desperate as class drew to an end and it looked like PSG were going through. I allowed myself one last perfunctory refresh and glanced down. In the eighty-seventh minute Demba Ba scored. It was a consummate “get in there you beauty!” moment.
If you’ve ever wanted to scream or cry or laugh in a situation where social propriety forbid it, then you know how I felt. I desperately wanted to emote because the closeness with which I follow Chelsea forces me to care deeply about the result of that match and every other. It didn’t matter that I was privy only to sentence fragments imperfectly describing the action every couple of minutes.
There are wholly valid non-pure consumptions. I have no problem with alternative methods, just lazy ones.
Certain stories lose very little when they are distilled into concentrated versions of themselves. Take Young Adult novels for example. A Wikipedia summary is often preferable to slogging through chapters of decent ideas and bad writing. You lose hardly anything when condensing a work that has little nuance and few layers. But if a work has depth, there is no way an abridged version can do it justice. A summary of Proust or Joyce or Woolf wouldn’t work because the story is not plot driven. Counter-intuitively, neither is a soccer match. Though you can follow a live feed, much of the experience cannot be conveyed.
Every match has depth and depth is the highlight reel’s primary victim. A highlight reel of a 0-0 draw sounds like a paradox, but the 0-0 draw can be one of the most telling results when watched in its entirety. It means that the match favorite failed to capitalize on opportunities or that the underdog had an incredible match. Or it could mean that one side was really lucky, that the other was unlucky, that one side dominated and failed to score, or that the match was utterly neck and neck. The 0-0 highlight reel is just a montage of off-target shots. It’s jejune to think the highlight reel could ever compare to the real thing.
Ideally, I’d watch every minute of every match my club plays. I’ve argued that in doing so I would achieve maximum emotional investment and thus maximum emotional fulfillment. I’ve said that the trudging and toiling through dull (but deep) matches is what imbues a season with meaning—and that is how I feel, for the most part.
But, having discovered that MLS in mid-July can rival the good feelings of a Champions League quarterfinal, it’s also important to be able to justify spending the better part of two hours watching a scoreless draw, regardless of what country it’s taking place in.
The crux of what drove me to self-reflect is: If you starve yourself, anything will taste good. And during the non-European league months, one can get desperate. Without the Premier League or La Liga competing for attention, MLS’ appeal is greatly enhanced. When starved for soccer, Orlando City SC versus NYCFC more than fits the bill. And so to find oneself entertained and, more or less, satisfied with MLS begs the question, is nothing sacred?
Imagine yourself in August before any European soccer has started—would you rather a highlight reel of El Clásico or an MLS match? I know my answer. MLS has the potential to rival top-tier European soccer because there’s prospect for a story. As with every league around the world, there shines through a human element in MLS that is not transferable to a highlight reel. In ninety finite minutes, there are players to detest and get attached to, coaches to pity, and fans to admire. You simply cannot eke a story out of a five-minute highlight reel. The match as a chapter in a longer story, ultimately, is what gives sport meaning.
