The relationship between Luis Enrique and the press it has been bad for many years. Before his arrival in the Spanish National Team, the coach had been a player with character and trained great teams, and his ways and those of some journalists have never married.
Already at Euro 2020 the climate was very negative, but in the current World Cup in Qatar 2022 everything has reached highly exaggerated levels of tension. For part of the press, the straw that broke the camel’s back was that Luis Enrique opened a (successful) Twitch channel.
Like others before, the now known as “Luis Padrique” wants direct contact with the fans, without filters, so many days he is broadcasting for an hour answering questions and telling first-hand everything that happens in the concentration.
The tone is generally very good and interesting for the amateur. Faced with questions that are often absurd from the press (along with other interesting ones, let’s not just stay with the bad), Luis Enrique is asked a lot about football on Twitch, and he answers. In addition, in a couple of sessions he has not broadcast alone, but accompanied by assistants such as the psychologist or Rafel Pol, assistant and physical trainer. Able to see how they openly tell what they know and how they work has been a privilege for many fans.
A strategy that has been ridiculed until it reached something typical on the Internet: misinformation
From the press, Luis Enrique’s decision to open up to a new (not so new) medium such as Twitch was criticized and ridiculed. He did not like that he began to use his influence to answer questions at his whim, since some of those same questions he was no longer answering to the press. The ridiculing part starts when you start to deliberately lie about the large numbers that Luis Enrique reaped from the beginning in audience live and on display.
As our Magnet colleagues review, Luis Enrique “has reached a peak of 152,078 simultaneous viewers, with an average of just under 100,000.” Figures that are a resounding success if you know how the platforms work. Being also the time at which stremeacoinciding with interesting World Cup matches such as Brazil or France.
After several broadcasts, the press (or part of it) still does not take Luis Enrique seriously on his Twitchand the last notable thing that has happened has been in “El Partidazo de COPE”, where a manipulated audio cut has been broadcast on Luis Enrique and the psychologist of the National Team in which they are exposed as macho at a time when the subject It is very hot, with the recent controversy over the announcement of the Ministry of Equality and Pablo Motos.
In the audio broadcast on COPE, something from the coach’s mouth came out as if the woman in the audience to whom a few words were being dedicated had “got horny for sure”. In the unedited version of the Twitch live, it can be seen that the quotation marks came from Luis Enrique’s mouth, yes, but literally reading the chat message and not as a personal opinion.
This has been known thanks to a tweeter, @ alvarito7697 has made it public in this way:
Eye @Notepad. JA Alcalá’s friend manipulating an audio from Luis Enrique’s Twitch, in one more example of his ethics and professionalism. (40 sec). pic.twitter.com/pHNPl5nPza
— Álvaro (@ alvarito7697) November 30, 2022
And here where he gets the fragment to edit the audio. https://t.co/hce9FFJH0m
— Álvaro (@ alvarito7697) November 30, 2022
The casuistry can be very varied. It is possible that a listener sent the already edited audio, it is likely that the person responsible for editing it is not one of the people who appear live in the COPE video, etc. But the reality is that in the face of such criticism, edited cuts cannot be issued, when what is shown is something so serious.
Taking into account the tension already existing between the press and the selected team, it’s just throwing gasoline on the fire. And there are not too many arguments to think that it is a mistake of the person responsible for the edition. Juanma Castaño, director of the program, has apologized for issuing the audio like this.
The edition of an audio by Luis Enrique last night in El Partidazo put in his mouth a phrase, jokingly, from a viewer in the chat of his Twitch channel. The most angry is me, I assure you, and I apologize on behalf of the program. Sorry.
— Juanma Castaño (@juanmacastano) November 30, 2022
Not to be left alone with the manipulation, leaders of the young press such as Miguel Quintana, director of a program on Radio Marca and on DAZN, thus praised the premiere of Luis Enrique on Twitch:
The first test of Luis Enrique is a streamer, which ends with a 10. He has addressed interesting topics, he has told different things, he has explained tactical aspects, he has sent several necessary messages to the group… It sounded good in theory, it has been better in the practice.
— Miguel Quintana (@migquintana) November 18, 2022
If you ask me for my opinion, I think it’s wonderful. It’s interesting, it provides content, it helps me better understand things that I have to explain later… It’s information, basically. I delighted.
— Miguel Quintana (@migquintana) November 18, 2022
The Internet has changed the reach of what is said on the air
It is likely that the target audience that listens to Cope’s El Partidazo live listens to something like Luis Enrique’s controversial audio and does not run to contrast the barbarity they have heard. That, probably, has been very misinformed in other times, when programs like this were not also broadcast live on networks, YouTube and were recorded on video and podcasts.
Now everything comes to light, and it is likely that the younger audience, hearing something like this, or having listened to Luis Enrique at 8:00 p.m., will be surprised when they listen to COPE’s cut live or on a podcast. The media have long embraced social media and other platforms, and while benefiting from their reach, they also see that their strategy goes very wrong if they are not honest.
The honesty that Luis Enrique seems to show in his live shows has earned him many followers for his cause, and it was not easy. Due to the way he expresses himself and the role of the press, the fans were very divided. Now it is the press that is seeing his image seriously damaged by how he confronts a person in whom the public believes more and more.
The world of football still needs the press, or someone to do their part. And their role, or a certain part of the role, has been shown to do so too. streamers like Ibai, Gerard Romero and many other people. There is always a debate about whether what they do is journalism or not. But there is also the debate about whether the press currently does journalism. And what is clear is that these controversies do not help to answer “yes” to the latter. Right now, Paco González, director of Tiempo de Juego de COPE is a trend on Twitter for this matter, and all are bad comments about it.