‘Players have lost their voice’: Matt Barlow explains the difficulties of accessing Premier League footballers
As a student journalist, you are doing well if one in every ten interview requests is getting a response. The majority of replies will likely be dishearteningly brief explanations of why it will not be possible to grant your request. This will still feel like something of an achievement in comparison to those other nine pleas for help over email, text message or phone call that disappear into the ether of cyber space.
You may think it all changes once your studying is over. You have got a job in the industry and have picked up some contacts along the way, as well as a few methods for best utilising them to get the interviews that you want. But the process of accessing topflight footballers is not so straightforward, and it has only been further complicated by the modernisation of the media industry.
“Sometimes there’s loads of barriers; the club media officer, the agent, PR experts,” explains Matt Barlow before taking a drink of his Americano in one of London’s identikit coffee house chains next to Euston Station. “The player’s not really sure what is going on.
“Even when I came down to London at the turn of the century, players were used to talking to journalists. At Wimbledon they would drink with some of the journalists, I think the lads at West Ham did the same.
“You would regularly stop players in the car park outside a game and they would stop and talk because it was kind of routine, and then at the end of that conversation you would say ‘can I have your number? Keep in touch’. Some gave it you and some said ‘no, fuck off’.”
Football has changed a great deal since Barlow joined the Daily Mail as a football writer the best part of 20 years ago, and so has football journalism. Overprotective club officials and hangers on alike have damaged the lines of communication between players and journalists, but Barlow is in little doubt as to the driving force behind football writers losing the access they once enjoyed: “Agents and media departments.
“Media ‘specialists’ inside clubs say ‘don’t do that, they’ll stich you up’, agents say ‘we’ll do that for you, it’s part of the service’. Over time players have become conditioned to not talk anymore.
“It filters down from the top,” Barlow explains as he takes another sip of his coffee, seemingly enjoying the opportunity to take a brief hiatus from covering another chaotic season at Tottenham Hotspur. “Premier League teams have decided they are having massive media departments now; ‘we’re protecting our players; we’re telling them what not to say’. It’s boring. It makes player’s interviews less valuable.
“Tottenham will give us one interview per year. It usually hinges on some sort of charity, probably for their foundation. You have to photograph Son Heung-min talking to kids at a school and mention that at the bottom of the interview and you get 20 minutes with him in return. They’ll give the Mail one of those a year and they’ll give all of the titles one of those a year. They’re trying to be fair I suppose.
“Arsenal don’t give you any.”
With clubs now preferring to use their own in-house media departments to give players a platform to express themselves, interviews have become much like the Café Nero we are sat in – lacking personality and near-enough the same across the country.
A desire to create bitesize content that gains traction across Twitter, Instagram and TikTok means the façade of personality is portrayed instead of anything real. Rather than allowing players to be asked questions that may carry even a hint of controversy, we are instead now bombarded with ‘content’ that amounts to little more than hearing which team-mate takes the longest in the shower and whether Dubai or Los Angeles is preferred as a holiday destination.
http://twitter.com/Arsenal/status/1656282943793377283?s=20
Of course, Barlow would not have succeeded for so long in an industry as cut-throat as football journalism had he not picked up a few tricks to circumvent even the most powerful press officers. Experienced and humble in equal measure, he is more than happy to share some of his secrets with those still learning to ply their trade.
“I would always try and get in the mixed zone (the post-match interview area found at the majority of Premier League stadiums) because you want to say hello to players, make sure they know who you are” he says, coffee consumed and interviewer now conscious to offer to get him another to ensure this conversation continues for at least another cup or two. “I didn’t even have a lot to ask them, I sort of went for the exchange.
“The players get used to seeing you, knowing that you’re a journalist. They know that you won’t stitch them up. You want to develop contacts and get to know players even if you’re not trying to get an interview.
“If you can develop a couple of relationships with a couple of players at a couple of clubs, especially important clubs, then you can get an understanding of what is happening in the dressing room.”
Even though Barlow identifies agents as part of the problem in relation to accessing players, he was keen to stress that they can also be used to a journalist’s advantage.
“Journalists can try and go through the back door, talk to agents and say ‘your player has got the voice, let’s try and do something’. That’s the way some journalists have made it work and some players have made it work.
“You look around and see some players have much better media personas than others. It’s usually those that have been able to do that sort of thing. Their agents are active with the media.
“Contact with journalists is a good thing if you are a player. If I was an agent I’d be saying ‘talk to journalists’, develop these relationships. It’s harder to slag someone off in print once you’ve looked them in the eye after a game.”
Barlow re-emphasizes that the simplest way to build a relationship with a player is of course to ask them for their phone number. But there is now an omnipresence about media officers, and they are sure to be sitting in on any interviews you have set up through any sort of formal channel.
“I once asked for Jamie Mackie’s telephone number in an interview at QPR and got told off,” he goes on to reveal. “It was fine, but I just made up my mind not to do it again in that kind of environment.”
Whilst failed attempts to add Championship footballers to your contacts book and slaps on the wrist from over-sensitive media officers may seem trivial, Barlow makes it clear that the changes he has seen throughout his career have impacted the quality of sports journalism.
“It’s just one more barrier between the two important people; the footballer and the guy who’s publicising what they do,” he explains as this rare opportunity to answer the questions rather than ask them comes to a conclusion. “I don’t think it can be good, the best thing is to just have direct contact.
“I understand that the media now involves many more people than it used to. You used to rock up at a training ground like Wimbledon and there would be three of us there. Now at every pre-match media event there are dozens there from all over the world, loads of cameras. I sort of understand the need to manage that and not just have the player at the mercy of all that.
“But I think players have lost their voice. It’s a problem for them.”
