Without a doubt, The Guardian’s writers are some of the best football writers in the world. Their podcast is first class. And even for an American like me, their writers and collaborators are well known: Sid Lowe, Jonathan Wilson, Raphael Honigstein and others. The fact that they wish to contribute further to the already rich history of football must therefore be welcomed with open arms and enthusiasm. So, The blizzarda new quarterly football publication.
The story of how the idea for The Blizzard came to be is also quite excellent. Sitting in a pub, watching a football match, they agree on the concept over a pint. I’ve tried to replicate this experience many times and have yet to find anything as interesting.
The Blizzard is a collection of stories, analysis and essays on a wide variety of football topics. And when I say wide variety, I mean wide variety. You move across continents and the timeline covering everything except the informal soccer league that must exist in Antarctica. Wilson explains that while watching the game, he and his colleagues argued over the best format to bring deeper soccer content to the sports world, and he touches on deeper points that define the problems of modern media. They rejected writing a book because the time and effort required to write it wouldn’t accomplish what they hoped for, but a magazine wouldn’t allow for the depth needed and required a more business plan. solid and regular content. Wilson says: “I realized that I was not alone in thinking that there was something missing in journalism as a whole, that there should be more space for more in-depth articles, for , detailed history and analysis. Is there a way, I wondered, to accommodate articles of several thousand words? » Their way of doing this was to self-publish a collection of these writings by a variety of excellent writers on subjects they enjoyed.
Before criticizing their business model, I want to address the content. For context, my favorite magazine is The Atlantic because writers have the freedom to write about a variety of topics and go in-depth to a degree that lighter newspapers or magazines would not allow. In many ways, The Blizzard emulates this model. Writers take a subject and, no matter how mundane it may be, immerse themselves in it. For example, Andy Brassell delves into the tragic history of Corsican football clubs and how the political situation is linked to the violent behavior of supporters. Michael Cox explains how New Labor’s political strategy resembles Dennis Bergkamp’s style of play under Arsene Wenger. The kind of conversations we all have at a bar, right?
Of course, The Blizzard touches on more mainstream topics, like a point/counterpoint between Ouriel Daskal and Raphael Honigstein on the merits of the much-discussed European Super League, with Daskal encouraging the Super League because it would emulate the commercial success of the National Football League . . His argument is weak, but my analysis may contain personal biases. Regardless, the content is diverse given the limited writing pool. Logically, it is Europe which has the most articles (19 out of 25 according to this author’s count), but they talk about Argentina, the Portland Timbers of the MLS, Chinese football and the exploitation of African national teams. There is a fictional account of Iain Macintosh managing a German lower division team, inspired by Football Manager. Although all but one of the stories are factual, they range from match analysis (Jonathan Wilson describing Red Star’s historic European Cup semi-final victory), rankings (Rob Smyth’s list of the most unexpected results of the European Cup) and editorial/philosophical articles. reflections (Gabriele Marcotti’s thoughts on whether doping is ethical).
Of course, no discussion of The Blizzard is complete without a discussion of payment. Let me start by noting that figuring out how to get people to pay for top-notch content is a struggle for all media types: how to get people to pay for (and how much they should pay for) content that goes above and beyond. beyond anything that can be found on the Internet. Even the EPL Talk Network follows this process with EPL Talk Pro: The content behind the paywall is far better than anything found for free on the Internet, so how should people pay the site for this content? The Blizzard system is more flexible. The zero problem was pay what you want; The first issue (to be released in June) has a recommended price of £10; a four-issue subscription costs 30 pounds in Britain, 40 in Europe and 50 outside Europe. The digital or recurring rate (one issue every three months) has a recommended price of ten pounds per issue plus shipping if you want a hard copy. That’s the price of a full-size book and, at least in the United States, more expensive than a regular magazine.
So, the ten pound question: is it worth it? My answer is very political: perhaps. Issue Zero is a great read with content beyond what can be found in almost any other medium; even though the writing style was similar throughout, I enjoyed each story. I applaud Jonathan Wilson and his colleagues for branching out and trying something different, something that could contribute to the football library without the primary aim of lining their pockets.
My suggestion for later issues is to diversify the authors even more: call on Grant Wahl, Steven Goff, or even a few bloggers to diversify the topics beyond Europe. Maybe they’re considering it. I also want to see if this is sustainable – can these writers continue to dedicate their efforts to this pursuit without a defined source of income or subscriber base? The price is a bit high, especially when conversion rates are taken into account for a non-UK audience. I may eventually be a regular subscriber, but for now I may send money for issues one and two to see if they have the same quality as issue zero. If they do, I might consider subscribing. For now, I’m going to keep number zero and enjoy this wonderful experience, whatever comes of it.
