BackBreathing football
YouTube videos made by fans of their favourite footballers are changing the way we watch the sport
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Living in India is stressful. I find myself shuffling between immediate worries, such as taxi drivers refusing to take me where I want to go, to broader ones, such as rising communal tension. In between coping with these, I fret about something that might seem frivolous, but is as pressing a concern as any other: that India is three-and-a-half hours ahead of Spain, and, therefore, La Liga matches take place too late for us to watch live.
To live in these times and not watch Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo play football is an injustice to yourself—to the hair on your arms, which should be brought to attention by Ronaldo’s searing speed; to your heart, which should skip a beat when Messi casually lobs a pass over the defence; to your lips, which should be contorted into an O when either of them skips past an opposition player as if he was not there.
Luckily for those of us who live in a different time zone from Messi and Ronaldo, there is now a global web of sports fans who deliver the two players’ genius to us via the Internet. Just go to YouTube and search for “Messi best goals" or “Ronaldo skills" and you will find dozens of videos of dazzling feats performed to appropriately evocative music. These are not like the highlight reels that television channels roll out before important matches—they are made by fans and reflect the obsession with which loyal supporters follow their clubs.
Rathod wants to tell the story of Keane, who was once United’s respected leader but ultimately fell out with the manager, Alex Ferguson, and is sometimes remembered as much for his football as for his tendency to lose his cool and do rash things both on and off the pitch. “Only a supporter of a club can make a video about a player that truly reflects what that player meant to the club," he says. “For me, it is important to tell a story through a video and show how emotionally invested I am in a player or a club through it."
A Manchester United fan since 2002, Rathod has been making videos about the club since 2004, and his YouTube channel, Quality MUFC Videos, started in 2006, now has more than 36,000 subscribers. He also has close to 15,000 followers on his Twitter handle, @aditya_reds. Many of the sports fans who begin creating videos develop fan followings of their own. Javier Nathaniel, a Barcelona and Manchester United supporter from Jamaica, has more than 700,000 followers on his YouTube channel; a channel called HeilRJ, run by a Brazilian football fan, has more than 1.6 million followers; and many football videos, particularly those featuring Messi or Ronaldo, rack up more than a million views.
This is a big part of the reason football fans have extended their viewing habits beyond live matches on television. On YouTube, they can watch videos that focus on the specific things about the game that they love—long-range passes, back-heeled goals, sliding tackles and much more. There are even videos that take a match and compile footage of all the touches one particular player had during it.
“The difference between a video made by a TV producer and one by me is that I watch every minute of every game Arsenal play," says Culann Davies, a UK-based supporter of the Arsenal Football Club who has been making videos about the club since 2007. That allows Davies to make observations about players that only passionate supporters would. For example, he and a few other Arsenal fans had noticed how often striker Olivier Giroud played excellent one-touch passes, and he made a video that compiled the best of them.
Both Rathod and Davies have not learnt film-editing formally. They, like most of the fans who make football videos, have taught themselves how to use a simple editing software—Rathod uses Sony Vegas—and rely on their knowledge of the team they follow to make decisions on what visuals to use where. They are both part of a network that exchanges ideas—Rathod recently sent across some songs that he thought may suit a video Davies is making about Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain—through social media and forums.
That network also extends to the millions of fans who tune in to watch the videos and then leave feedback and suggestions. It even extends to footballers. Rathod has had his videos shared by Manchester United players Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand—who follows him on Twitter—Falcao and Nani.
Back in 2011, he made a preview video for the Uefa Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona. It used some intense visuals of United players set to a motivational voice-over. An Israel-based subscriber to his channel put Rathod in touch with Tony Strudwick, head of athletic development at United, part of whose job then was to show the players motivational videos before matches. Strudwick wrote to Rathod and ended up showing the video to the entire United team. “It didn’t work," Rathod laughs. United ended up losing that final. But years on, fans are still clicking on that video, sharing the chills it sends down their spines with United fans everywhere.
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