The match as text is necessarily incomplete. Not everything can be captured or mentioned and it is hard to know what to notice. Not every action or movement is obviously crucial, though, similarly, as in any interrelated, complex system, it is impossible to know the effect of the absence of an event or the importance of one that has happened. A defender casually strolling across to the left-back position may not be recorded or remembered, but his lethargy could be the reason that a goalkeeper launches a long ball rather than playing it short, which in turn leads directly to a goal. The importance of an event is always determined retrospectively and written records or spectator memories will misremember things, see what has not been seen because of what then happened. The text is incomplete: the major details are captured one way or another, but the reason, the decision-making process, the truth if you will, is obscured because a certain action escaped the record.
The transmission of texts is also a haphazard affair, privileging some readers over others. In this way, football is the same as any discipline: only some people get access to the Bodleian or the British Library. Only some people can get to certain games, others have to rely on television or match reports. It is not just what is available, but what is chosen. Some people will watch anything, or have to because it is their job; others will only choose to watch their team or a certain player. Some will watch teams if they are hipster, some if they are non-league. The choices that broadcasters make are inflected by an appreciation of their market, and so, of course, some teams will be available to see more than others, assuming TV is your primary medium of consumption. A fan of Arsenal watching MOTD will have a more complete ‘text’ over the course of a season than a fan of Crystal Palace. It is also worth noting that the records themselves, the recording generated by television before editing and transmission, are unavailable and may not even be kept past a certain point. The point is that the body of work that constitutes ‘football’ as has happened is fractured, incomplete, and subject to whim and fashion and choice and so on.
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