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Hello, everyone!
I suppose I’m on the footballers in music videos beat, so I will share that Lionel Messi and wife Antonella Roccuzzo are in the music video for Residenté’s latest effort, “Antes Que El Mundo Se Acabe” (Before the World Ends). Full disclosure, though: the video is almost eight minutes of different couples making out and that the Messis are only in it briefly, so maybe you’ll want to skip it.
Ramble of the Day
The Bundesliga continues building its new habit of being around when most other sports aren’t, and it seems like the experience is always reinventing itself. The experience itself is inherently new — football without fans, players who aren’t match fit, a lot of people wearing masks, and starting this week: imported crowd noise!
An operation by Sky means only for the television audience, it’s clear those responsible for it explored a lot of scenarios. While watching RB Leipzig’s 5-0 victory at Mainz, I heard a lot of different cheers and even ambiguous stadium announcer sounds when one of the teams was making substitutions. During Bayern Munich’s 2-0 win at Borussia Dortmund, you could hear some whistles after some refereeing decisions that would be deemed incorrect by home fans, but for the most part, the sounds have pretty positive.
Broadcaster Derek Rae translated an article from Bild about the operation:
Using this he can then play in shouts, cheers, whistles & goal celebrations relevant to the respective sides. With the fan noise, it’s a matter of using sound samples from previous games involving the 2 clubs as well as recordings from past home games.
— Derek Rae (@RaeComm) May 26, 2020
I find it to be an interesting choice that the crowd sound didn’t die down a bit as Leipzig kept scoring on Mainz over the weekend. I’d interpreted the choice for crowd sound as simulating what that particular home crowd would sound like, and I’m cool with our nonexistent supporters being generally positive and relatively kind towards away teams and referees. What I question is why the crowd noise didn’t get quieter, or less lively, while the home team was getting demolished.
I’m guessing those with the deciding power have a different feeling, though. I wonder if they’re going for utopia of sorts, where everything’s pretty good all the time. Again, I think that’s mostly fine though I am getting Yesterday vibes from that — the film explains why the Beatles disappeared, but the disappearances of cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and Oasis aren’t and I wonder if those disappearances are directly related to the Beatles’ or not.
In the end, projecting happiness isn’t a totally terrible idea: we could all probably use a dose of happiness, and clearly the attempt is deliver some normalcy. Those could hardly be considered bad ideas.
tl;dr: Some thoughts on Sky’s Bundesliga crowd noise experiment, which I think gives off a slightly Yesterday feeling, but is definitely not a bad idea.
Links of the Day
Morecambe defender Christian Mbulu died aged 23.
The World Trade Organization ruled that Saudi Arabia is behind the pirate TV service beoutQ, a ruling that could jeopardize its takeover of Newcastle.
Bournemouth’s Aaron Ramsdale was one of the two who tested positive for COVID-19 in the latest round of testing in the Premier League.
OL Reign’s Megan Rapinoe will host the ESPYS remotely along with the Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird and the Seattle Seahawks’ Russell Wilson on June 21.
David Squires remembers the Anglo-Italian Cup in his latest cartoon.
Today’s longer read: Joey Lynch on Ferenc Puskás’s forgotten but influential time as a manager in 1990s Australia for ESPN