Be it selfie culture or faux normalcy, I don’t need to see fans during matches

I don’t care about football fans. Wait! Let me elaborate before you crack out the flaming torches and head for my house.

I don’t care about seeing football fans react to moments in matches.

This isn’t a new thing born of virtual watching parties, but rather a long-standing, “why?” sighed into the ether at every cut away to stands and terraces. Other than watching a footballer completely whiff a free kick or shooting drill during the warm up, resulting in the ball shanking off into the crowd and smashing someone in the chops, I don’t need to spectate the spectators.

Now that the stands are filled with cut-outs, I don’t need to see the two-dimensional faces blankly staring at the pitch, limply placed against the folded seats. I definitely don’t need to see the clutch of fans watching the match with their live faces in front of webcams, waiting for the cut away to loft a scarf or emphatically grab and shake the badge on their shirt.

Making their voices heard. ?@CourtofRoyals are loving this match in our @SecretDeodorant Virtual Watch Party, Powered By @Google Meet!#HOUvUTA | #NWSLChallengeCup pic.twitter.com/ZwpwGR0pSQ

— NWSL (@NWSL) July 18, 2020

It exists in the same bracket as the fans who go to matches (or went to matches, 89 years ago when it was still safe to) and film themselves, documenting their own reactions to – for reasons unknown – share online. Fans who spend half the match double-checking that their face is perfectly caught on frame so when they throw their hands against their foreheads at every missed chance, the footage will be perfectly framed.

Community

You’re a fan, you support your team, you might wear a shirt or scarf, hat or any other paraphernalia, you might not. But the need to clutch at the badge should a camera pan to you, to react for the lens thrust in your direction feels so emphatically hollow.

There is a community and a sense of belonging that can come with supporting a team or club, which isn’t something I begrudge or wish to deny anyone. Just as I don’t want to refuse fans their own watching party to keep that sense of togetherness. But so much of the behaviour we see on our screens feels so forced, so put on; people reacting to the cameras rather than the match.

Unnecessary

The need for virtual watch parties to be broadcast at every goal or significant miss is an unnecessary one. Yes, it’s normal for the camera to cut away to the crowd during a football match that boasts fans in the stands – again, I don’t care for such in normal circumstances anyway – and there is a logic to trying to ape similar during the times we’re in, but it’s surely not needed.

During the NWSL Challenge Cup, not only were there the standard virtual crowds; a chequerboard of faces ready to react, but the screen was additionally broadcast on the jumbotron at the Zions Bank Stadium where the majority of matches were played. It made for a bizarre image, like a live stream from the top of Mount Olympus; Zeus and co’ watching over a football match.

Now, I’ll let you get back to complaining about the entirely too high volume for the fake crowd noises.

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