Press Conference Football Questions

A topic of interest is how different countries conduct interviews with football club coaches (managers).

In the United Kingdom, journalists are likely to ask six questions in a crisis (who, what, where, when, why, how) that relate to three broad topics: (1) what happened; (2) What caused it to happen; (3) What does it mean.

Whereas, if Brazil is compared the questions are more likely to be leading in a different direction. Instead of asking what happened the question might be more related to why didn’t you take a different approach like whatever they think is correct. In other words, some Brazilian journalists think they have the skill to perform a better job than the manager himself.

So instead of asking straight forward questions, journalist in Brazil prefer to be experts on the subject matter and steer coaches into having to explain why they hadn’t taken a particular path. And then if coaches entertain the journalist, they often put down the coach’s job because they know better.

Journalists don’t like to be told how to conduct an interview because it belongs to them, however, from a coach’s perspective on the subject matter it can be construed as an insult to their professionalism and knowledgeable expertise.

One man constantly in the limelight is Abel Ferreira, Brazilian Palmeiras head coach. During post-match press conferences, he gets grilled repetitively and often feels trapped by the impertinence towards him. After all, as an experienced international coach (manager) this type of questioning is quite bothersome.

Different to the United Kingdom that believes in respectful questioning without delving into why didn’t you do this question whereby journalists act as though they understand coaching better than managers like Abel.

Take care!

Prof. Carl Boniface 

Vocabulary builder:

Put down (v) = ridicule, mock, criticize, deride, disparage, deprecate, (ant) praise

Grilled (adj) = interrogated, examined, pressed, probed, cross-examine

Impertinence (n) = insolence, cheek, cheekiness, impudence, disrespect, impoliteness, lip, (ant) respect

Bothersome (adj) = troublesome, inconvenient, worrisome, vexing, difficult, annoying, niggling