The Performance of Passion

I’ve never really understood the fascination with live match watchalongs. Maybe that says more about me — and how old I am — than it does about them. Sure, I get the appeal of listening to someone who supports the same club as you, narrating the game with the kind of emotional investment that television commentators rarely show. But most of the ones I’ve seen don’t feel like authentic fandom. They feel like performance.

Because that’s what this really is, a kind of performative art. The camera is always on, and so is the person in front of it.

The format has exploded, with countless imitators trying to follow in the footsteps of Mark Goldbridge, the godfather of watchalongs. It’s not a coincidence that Mark Goldbridge isn’t his real name. The persona came first, a character built for reaction, rhythm, and rage.

His mix of sharp phrasing and comic timing gave the genre its voice. But for every Goldbridge who can twist frustration into something genuinely witty, there are dozens who can only mimic the outrage.

What stands out is that these channels usually find their audience when their teams are doing badly. The anger is the attraction. Their vocabulary leans heavily on insults; their rhythm thrives on fury. They rely on exaggerated emotion to fill the gaps where humour or insight might otherwise go.

And perhaps that’s the secret: they need the chaos. The defeats, the dodgy signings, the managerial drama. Those are the moments that generate clips, retweets, attention. You get the sense that, deep down, some of them are almost hoping for things to go wrong not because they hate their club, but because success is boring content.

I’ve seen a few of these appear around the club I follow, Liverpool. To be fair, they were probably there last season, quietly streaming into the void while the team was doing well. But joy doesn’t go viral. Rage does.

So here they are now, name-calling players, mocking new signings, ridiculing those who brought them in. Performing fandom rather than feeling it.

There’s plenty about the modern game that I don’t understand. Again, that’s probably a factor of age. Usually I just ignore it and file it away as something that doesn’t concern me. But then I see people on Twitter calling for a manager who won the title last season to be sacked at the first sign of difficulty, and I realise this mindset runs deep. These are people who almost need him to fail, just so they can say they were right.

What’s worse, I see it bleeding beyond online channels. The other week, a young fan sitting next to me shouted at Conor Bradley for some perceived mistake, not criticism of an error, but rejection of the player himself. Not good enough. In that instant, I saw a reflection of the watchalong artists who delight in tearing players apart for entertainment.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. You see this kind of behaviour everywhere now, especially in politics, where there’s no room for nuance and your opponents are automatically idiots.

I’d hoped football could be different. But it’s starting to look like it isn’t.

Cultured Football cuts through transfer gossip and noise to share football writing worth your time. Each week, we pick five stories that inform, surprise, and remind you why the game matters.

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