Jürgen's Legacies

Greetings, gentle readers. 

As I subject myself to hours of commentary from the American Fox Sports network, I've realized a couple of things. The first is that I've underestimated the cultural impact of Jürgen Klopp's move to Liverpool FC ten years ago. The second is that Ariane Hingst has a top notch sense of humour. 

Watch What You Say 

When Jürgen Klopp made his managerial move to England a decade ago, he was already a media darling. With his brilliant megawatt smile and easy charm, he was always good for providing a quotable quotation or a verbal quip perfect for headlines and clickbait banners. Sports reporters hung on his every word. When he described his footballing philosophy as "Heavy Metal Football" it rattled around the sports journalism circles for years. 

Fox Sports commentators have picked up his phrase of "mentality monsters" and have used it to describe multiple teams both in the Women's Euro 2025 Championship and beyond. But the most telling turn of phrase that he used was one that he employed when he had a German concept in his mind, and was trying desperately to think of an English equivalent. To buy time, he would stall using the phrase "in this moment" or "in these moments." 

John Paul Dellacamera doesn't use the phrase very often because he spends most of his on-air time serving up softball questions to his colour commentators to fill dead air whenever a fullback has blasted the ball 80 yards downfield at a corner flag and it takes the players forty seconds to get a foot on it again. However, every colour commentator has used that phrase extensively when trying to formulate a clever or incisive response to one of JP, Jacqui Oatley, or John Strong's puff questions like, 

"As a player, how would you react to finding yourself three goals down in a group-stage game?" to which the answers invariably sound like this: 

"Well, it's in these moments that you really have to look around and determine..." before the colour person eventually gets around to the point and actually says something interesting. But it's Jürgen Klopp's phrase that has become common parlance for "I'll give you an answer after I think about it for another two seconds."

Goodbye Julie Ertz

The departure of Julie Ertz from the Fox Sports One Women's Euro Championship desk not only deprives viewers of her eerily accurate predictions (she foresaw Spain scoring six against the Belgians), but also of some of the more entertaining banter between guest pundits.  Watching Ari Hingst bristle in mock-umbrage at being called a "frumpy old woman" was positively hysterical.  We can only hope that future guest commentators will enjoy such lively exchanges.

Medical Update

Hope to get my fingers working again soon.  Strength is returning to them, but now it feels as though I need to retrain them in the functional use of a keyboard.  All of the sensations feel foreign and all of the muscles are atrophied and slack.  The electro-stim TENS unit seems to be accomplishing something positive, so hope springs eternal.

Until next time, goodnight England and the colonies.

—mARKUS