Blogg: Sašas «Tour de France»

Det er slitsomt å være på plass, men herregud så gøy.

Tekst Saša Ibrulj

Did you know that when a journalist covers the major tournament, the thing that we do
the least is watching football?
You write, you rewrite, you edit, you record, you take photos and videos, you write again. You drive, sleep in the train station, eat triangle sandwiches in the service station,you run between mixed zone and media centre. You do the dishes, ironing, you are missing your family – oh, how you miss your family – you are getting mad at organisers for doing a terrible job, you are standing in queue for coffee for one hour, you are standing in queue for toilet for another hour. You return to your hotel/flat/room, have a beer, write some more, and pass away.

Three hours later you are on your feet, running to the airport or the station or your car,
heading to another town, another city, another stadium, another media centre.

We do everything but watch football.

The guys back home, they can watch three matches a day. Sit back, hug their partner and kids, open the beer and enjoy. We on the other hand can usually watch one match. The one that we are visiting. But, even that one, you can't see the whole match.

No, because bosses back home want you to tweet, post videos on Facebook, Instagram, show people the atmosphere. Then they want to have a report, filed by the final whistle.
Or, if you are lucky, ten minutes later. So, this means you have to write your report while the match is still running. And to write the report you need to look at your computer, not the pitch. After that you run to the press conference – it usually takes at least 20 minutes.

Someone tells you that the next match has started. Nice, you say. What’s the score, you ask, even though you don’t care. You don’t even remember who plays. Then you go to the mixed zone. The place where journalists are supposed to talk to players so you guys could read their impressions. In fact, that is usually a garage or a basement or just a street with a fence and hundreds of people waiting for 22 of them to walk out. And they usually do that – walk out. One or two or maybe three stops and gives you five phrases. Then you run again, because of course, you want to have online as soon as possible.

You write again, you rewrite again, answer more calls, publish it the quotes, publish
more quotes. The third match starts in half an hour? Really? We want to eat and watch it, but we can’t find a place. So we see just the second half. Or last 15 minutes. Because we do everything, but watch football.

And I do love this job.