Goalissimo has been part of my weekend routine for about 14 months now, after starting to watch last summer during the close-season. Broadcast sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, then again on Saturday morning on Channel 4, it’s a weekly round-up show of goals and highlights from around the world.
It’s a strange and somewhat charming little show in that it is very restricted in what it can actually show by it’s obviously miniscule budget (when it’s broadcast in the middle of the night on Channel 4, there are advert breaks with no adverts, just previews of other shows, so clearly not a ratings winner). It tries hard however – making up for not being able to show the Premier League highlights by showing photos of the previous weeks matches.
The format tends to be pretty regular – goals from a few matches in a couple of leagues, and then extended highlights from a couple of matches – currently these tend to be Swedish, Brazilian and American. They either have a globetrotting commentator travelling the world to provide commentary, or some poor lackey in a studio somewhere talking over the already edited highlights.
Each week, there’s a few interview pieces, often featuring global projects to improve an area using football, or an interview with a big star at some promotional event. For some reason, they tend to sit on these interviews for a while before broadcasting them, meaning the content can quickly become out-of-date.
Highlights wise, currently we have Portuguese, German, Swedish, Brazilian, American goals. Occasionally we take a trip to Africa for highlights of some international matches (often several weeks after they happen) or African Champions League coverage. It’s usually quite scattergun, almost as if they get a list of fixtures and put it on the wall, chucking darts in the general direction to pick which matches they show.
It’s early in the season, so new TV contracts mean some leagues will disappear, or might take a while to come back – currently Serie A and Ligue 1 haven’t reappeared on the show after being show last year. Unfortunately it seems for the show, their portfolio is decreasing in direct proportion to increasing amount of money in football, pricing them out of rights to show highlights.
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