A Sports Report With a Skeleton But No Core: The Writer's Trap

One morning in Guangzhou, I opened an analysis template a young colleague had sent to the group. Title empty. Source empty. One-sentence summary empty. List of information points empty. But the structure was complete — nine sections, correct format, correct order, comparison tables, a risk matrix. Only the core was missing. He added one line: "I don't know what to fill in, but I'm afraid leaving it blank looks unprofessional."

I thought about that sentence all morning. In more than twenty years in this trade, I have walked through every kind of stadium: the Belgrade press stand in the early 2000s, a World Cup press room in Russia, and six a.m. training sessions where nobody but the groundskeeper is present. And I learned one thing: the most dangerous thing in this profession is not a wrong report. The most dangerous thing is a beautiful skeleton with nothing inside — because it looks polished enough that nobody checks it again.

In modern football, we live inside a paradox: the more analytical tools we have, the more stories are written from very little raw material. A team changes formation, and ten articles about the new system appear. A player goes three matches without scoring, and ten theories about the dressing room appear. Data platforms sprout every week, producing hundreds of metrics, and each metric can become a headline if the writer is skilled enough. But the raw material — what I call observational material — grows thinner.

In Vietnam, this trend is plain to see. The V-League's regular season gets more coverage every year, matches are analysed more closely, but the gap between "available data" and "on-site observation" remains wide. There are long, handsome, well-structured reports, but if you ask the author, "Have you attended any training session?" — the answer is usually no.

The notable thing is that none of them intend to lie. They are simply filling a template. And the template is always waiting.

The trap of an empty analysis does not lie in saying something wrong. It lies in looking correct enough that nobody checks. This is the crucial difference: fake news usually has one error you can catch. An empty analysis has no errors — because it also has no correct point to measure against.

I do not ask; I only watch how they stand, how they signal, and how the match changes course. That has been my rule since my first days. But that rule only has value if I am actually present. If I sit a thousand kilometres from the pitch and write about it, I am not observing — I am imagining. The problem is that an imagined report written in the correct structure cannot be distinguished from an observed one, at least not by the reader.

I witnessed this at the 2026 World Cup. During the France–Belgium semi-final, I stood in the mixed zone after the match and overheard a short exchange between head coach Didier Deschamps and an assistant about shifting into a low 4-4-1-1 block to contain Kevin De Bruyne. I interviewed nobody. I only recorded the moment Deschamps raised his hand to adjust Blaise Matuidi's position. Later I confirmed it with a French data analyst, and only then did I write.

That analysis carried weight because it rested on one specific moment — with a time, a person, and an action. If I had merely read the metrics and built an analysis from an empty template, I might have written something that sounded even more "professional" — and entirely wrong.

This is what digital sports platforms have not solved. One raised hand from a coach can explain more than a press conference. But a raised hand leaves no data. It leaves a memory, an image, a moment that someone had to be present to see. Data can be downloaded from anywhere. So when news systems must choose between the two, they usually choose the easier one: data.

The result is a paradox of quality: sports reports look more professional than ever — more metrics, more charts, more jargon — yet they are further from the pitch. Readers get the feeling of reading deep analysis while actually reading a filled-in template.

I am not saying data is useless. Data is an important part of this trade — I use PPDA, xG, minutes played, and head-to-head history in almost everything I write. But data only has value when it is anchored to a specific observation. What does a rising PPDA mean if I do not know why the midfield started pushing higher? What does a three-match losing run mean if I do not know the team is playing with three injuries? Data answers "what." Observation answers "why." And if you remove "why," all you have left is a meaningless string of "what."

I once watched a V-League match on a screen, then read three analyses of it. All three said the home side changed its defensive system in the second half. But when I rewatched the footage, I only saw them push ten metres higher and keep the same shape. The difference between "pushing higher" and "changing the system" is the difference between an observation and an inference. And all three articles chose the inference.

There is one small detail I always remember when I think about this. On a trip with a team, I watched an assistant coach stand on the touchline for thirty minutes, just to observe how a young defender turned his body when receiving the ball. No camera. No metric. But three weeks later, when that defender came on in the 70th minute and kept the right flank clean, I understood what the assistant had seen in advance.

Looking again at my colleague's empty template, I realised he was standing before a choice the whole industry faces. The choice is: when there is nothing to say, do we dare stay silent?

Sports journalism does not reward silence. It rewards output. Every day needs news, every match needs an article, every metric needs commentary. And when speed presses down on quality, the first thing cut is always presence. Nobody flies to a stadium just to record one small moment. They call, they read the data, and they write.

But here is the counterintuitive point: the standard template is not the enemy. It is a companion — provided you are honest with it.

There is a common belief that too rigid a structure kills creativity. On the contrary, I believe structure is what keeps us honest. When I have a framework with clear sections — opening, context, analysis, counterargument, conclusion — I am forced to ask myself: what do I have for this section? If the answer is "nothing," then the template has done its job: it has pointed to the gap. The problem appears when we decide to fill that gap with speculation instead of leaving it open.

They still tend the grass in an empty stadium, because they know one day the lights will come back on. That is the lesson of patience. A blank report not published today will have a better chance next week, when there is one more training session, one more match, one more answer. A report filled with speculation has already entered the reader's memory today — and is very hard to retrieve.

This is especially true in the regular season. When there is no big match, the pressure for output does not drop, but the raw material runs dry. That is when the empty template becomes most tempting — because it gives the feeling of working while actually avoiding observation.

I do not know how Vietnam's sports platforms will change their systems. But I know what I will do with that empty template: send it back, with one question — "Where is the source?"

If there is a source, we write. If there is not yet, we wait. The pitch is not going anywhere. And when the lights come back on, the only person still standing in the right position will be the one who was there from the start.