The world’s most difficult jobs are journalism and football coaching.
Fred Chukwulobe
Everybody thinks they know what should be done, what should be written, who should be fielded, what tactics should be deployed, when substitutions should be made, and who should be substituted in or out. The situation has become worse with the advent of social media. Everybody is now a pundit and an analyst.
Every time you go on social media, there is an avalanche of posts, some sensible, many not. Spend your time doing extensive research and churning out interesting content, and only a few people will read it. Ironically, from those who don’t read will emerge someone telling you that your post is too long and asking who has the time to read it.
Because many don’t read, they also don’t comprehend what is written. They fail to understand that a football coach has his tactics and will deploy them as he deems fit. His target is simple: to win and keep winning.
Professional journalists are trained to set agenda for society and serve as the mirror through which society sees itself. Not anymore. Everybody now has a medium called social media. Unlike in the past, when journalists had identifiable addresses in the form of their organisations, today social miscreants and even Keke drivers have become “journalists” with no addresses beyond social media accounts. From there they rant and constitute the bulk of many so-called social media influencers.
Most of them simply want to trend and attract traffic. So they record every event and every incident that catches their fancy. Once they upload the content, they sit back and watch all manner of reactions pour in. Thankfully, many incidents that could have gone unnoticed were brought to public attention and solutions found. Fair enough.
Don’t get me wrong. There are genuine social media influencers, and we know them by the people they truly influence. There are also informed football pundits who analyse matches week after week and predict outcomes intelligently.
For those of us who studied Journalism or Mass Communication, it sometimes feels as though we have been subsumed by social media “journalists.” As for football coaches, many can be hired today and fired tomorrow, only to end up in private practice as football pundits or social media influencers.
It’s tough.
