For Doumé and Everybody Else Who Cares: How to Find Highlights Online

Reader Doumé left this comment in a previous post:

Laurie,
Speaking of Nico’s double, I couldn’t find the goals anywhere, it seems Youtube and Dailymotion forbid highlights. Every time I click on something, it’s a still picture with a crappy link - sometimes to a porn site, but I didn’t think Anelka did that kind of highlights.

First off, Doumé, thanks so much for putting that thought into my head. Please pass the brain bleach.

Second: Shhh! Don’t tell anybody! I’m going to give you guys a deep, dark blogger’s secret.

As anybody who’s searched for game highlights knows, they are closely guarded, doled out with parsimony by stingy FA types who are terrified of the thought that somebody might see them without paying and…oh, I don’t know, become a fan or something.

(The big exception here is the US’s MLS, which has embraced YouTube as a way to reach out to fans and makes all of their highlight videos available to anybody who wants them. Let’s hear it for the enlightened ones!)

Fortunately for fans and bloggers, there are some hosting sites that just don’t care what the FAs want, and then continue to post highlights anyway. How they get away with this I have no idea, but so far so good. And on top of this, we have some great sites that take these highlights (hosted elsewhere, so the sites themselves aren’t technically breaking the law) and organize them so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. The two best:

101 Great Goals, and
TVGolo

And, since the original discussion was about the Anelka goals last week, here they are. First, the one that may or may not have been a handball. After watching it three or four times, I’m thinking it probably bounced off his upper thigh?

Second thing about Anelka: He’s scoring a bunch of goals this year, especially recently, but is anybody seeing a trend toward what one might call “lucky goals”? Or, as Martha once said regarding Trezeguet: “The guy could be standing on the sidelines flirting with a pretty girl and the ball would bounce off his butt and into the goal.”

What do you think? Has Chelsea turned our Nico into a simple goal poacher?