Hobbes I’m not ready to talk about the Champions League as a tournament just yet. It’s too much, it’s too good. We would be here all day and we don’t have time for that.
Just know, for now, that Champions League nights are special. They’re Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the biggest cities around Europe and they’re opportunities for clubs, players, and entire fanbases to show how much it means to them to march towards a continental crown.
We will get to it eventually, and just as an aside you should know that Arsenal went out of the competition in this year’s quarterfinals, which was the best they had done in a decade and a half and the run itself really was wonderful until it wasn’t.
But forget about all that for now.
Let’s talk about commentary. A soccer commentator can have such an outsized affect on the experience of watching the game.
Let’s talk about Ray Hudson.
Ray is polarizing. People do not feel apathetic about him, it’s pretty much either love or hate.
I think I hate him.
But I once loved him.
Maybe I do still love him. But he exhausts me.
(Let’s not forget, Hobbes, that in the entertainment business the opposite of love isn’t hatred, it’s apathy, so in that sense Ray Hudson is actually doing great.)
That picture of the red stadium flares is from a game that Ray Hudson called earlier this week, a Champions League semifinal. Borussia Dortmund had traveled to Paris to try and hold on to a 1-0 lead earned in Germany the week before, to try and earn a spot in this year’s Champions League final.
The thing is that Ray Hudson has built a persona around his use of over-exuberant metaphors. He’s British and his voice sounds strained even from the start of a match, like he’s been watching soccer all morning in the buildup to the game and has already worn his voice passionately down with all of the spectacularity he’s seen. And then anytime a goal is scored there follows a period in which Ray tries to describe his excitement in terms as far removed as possible from soccer.
This, for example, is what he said in Dortmund last week, when the home team earned the 1-0 lead that they’d subsequently bring to Paris:
“THE BALL LED TO ABSOLUTELY ARCHIMEDEAN PRECISION AND THEN THIS HIT IS ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATTS OF POWER, AN ABSOLUTELY ASTONISHING SKILL IN THIS ROBINHOOD ARROW OF A HIT.”
I can see how it’s not really fair to paste that quote out of context. Here’s the video of him saying it in real time, which might help give you a better sense for what he’s trying to get at.
I still think it’s a bananas sentence to drag out in the middle of a soccer game.
But also oh my goodness, Hobbes, that goal is sublime.
I think the thing that exhausts me about Ray Hudson is the same thing that exhausts me about the stereotype of Spanish language soccer commentators, where a goal goes in and then they yell “GOOOOL” for as long as their lungs will allow. I imagine there was once a time when this reaction was an honest representation of the I-don’t-even-know-what-to-do-with-myself joy brought on by a priceless goal. But by now there is a moment, after a goal is scored, during which those commentators hesitate, taking a big breath, and it almost feels like they’re already tired, like they’re going to do the thing, they’re going to say “GOOOL” for the next twenty seconds, but only because it’s in their contract.
Here is what Ray Hudson said during the second leg of that Dortmund vs. PSG matchup, when the German side scored to make it 2-0 on aggregate:
“THIS IS MEASURED AND ANGLED AND DRIVEN TO ARCHIMEDEAN STANDARDS BY JULIAN BRANDT… AND HE’S HANDED THE KEYS TO THE BLOOD BANK, AND HE IS DRACULA THERE.”
I think the reason I loved Ray Hudson when I first heard him, in high school, was because he was saying things like that about Lionel Messi, when Messi was on Barcelona and was God on a soccer field. And on the one hand I’d never heard anything like Ray Hudson during a soccer game, and then beyond that, for a teenager coming to terms with the greatest player of a generation, those screamed absurdisms really did seem fitting for the moments that Messi was producing on a regular basis.
But Hobbes it has been over a decade since that particular moment and Ray Hudson is still rambling poetic in the aftermath of every goal, whether it’s sublime or else just a routine header. Not every moment in a game needs be heightened via metaphor.
You know whose commentary I don’t actually remember all that well? Doc Emrick. I mean that as a compliment. Doc is retired now and never commentated soccer, he was mostly a hockey guy.
I don’t remember Doc Emrick’s commentary because the takeaway wasn’t supposed to be him.
Doc Emrick felt like a professional. And I know that Ray Hudson is a professional and let me just insert here that I might make fun of him but Ray Hudson really is flat-out hilarious. During that Dortmund vs. PSG match the ref ignored a player asking for a foul and Hudson yelled, “PRISON RULES”. I get that Ray is a professional, but his brand of commentary feels so aware of itself, it feels like he’s always trying to fulfill his contractual obligation to be the guy who says wild and hilarious things.
This must have been a trick that Doc Emrick played, because he was surely no less aware of his own professionalism, his own brand and the contractual obligations that came with it.
Here’s an anecdote I like: Doc Emrick kept a page of words in front of him while commentating, although more accurately I image he kept a whole folder of pages in front of him, but one of those pages in particular was filled entirely with synonyms for the word pass, and throughout a game he had a system for marking the words as he said them, to keep track of usage and not overdo one or the other.
Otherwise all I really remember is how Doc Emrick said “SCORES” in the moment after a hockey puck hit the net, stretching the “O” briefly out to shape the word into an arc.
And then even while I was writing that anecdote about Doc Emrick and his sheet of synonyms, I realized that there’s a non-zero chance Ray Hudson might actually commentate with notes in front of himself too. Maybe Ray’s sheet, instead of synonyms for pass, is filled with metaphors that can be dragged out into any given European night.
Hobbes I present to you a Champions League semifinal in all of its over-exuberance:
“AND HE’S OFF LIKE A SCALDED CAT.”
“HIS FEET CONTINUE TO DANCE AND HE’S SKIPPED BY THE DEFENDER, DRAGGING HIM IN LIKE A SPANISH BULL FIGHTER AND THEN IT’S OLÉ.”
“THEY’RE STILL SHARPENING THEIR SWORDS OF LETHAL INTENT.”
“SMOOTH AS A ZAMBONI WHEN HE’S ON IT.”
“AND THIS GUY CAN DROP A PINT OF BEER INTO A SHOT GLASS.”
“SOFT AS A MOTHER’S KISS WITH HIS CONTROL.”
“A GARLIC MILKSHAKE OF A FINISH, RIGHT IN FRONT OF GOAL.”
“HIS RIGHT FOOT TURNS INTO A SIZE NINE JELLYFISH.”
“NOTHING LESS THAN STUPENDOUSLY MAGNIFICENT… THEY HAD FANGS LIKE A WALRUS WHEN THEY CAME OUT OF THE LONG GRASS AND HUNTED.”
Garlic milkshake?!