Daily Inspiration Quote by John Motson

Motson’s line is the verbal equivalent of a raised eyebrow: a gentle, deadpan correction aimed at anyone trying to read a match through the tyranny of the scoreboard. “Not the first half you might have expected” assumes a shared pregame script - the big club dominates, the underdog clings on, the narrative behaves. Then he twists the knife: “even though the score might suggest that it was.” The numbers, he implies, are lying by omission.

That’s classic Motson intent: protect the texture of the game from the reductive clarity of goals. In one sentence he reasserts football’s most infuriating truth - control isn’t always convertible, and chaos can wear the mask of order. The subtext is almost admonishing: if you’re only watching the scoreline, you’re not really watching. It also flatters the viewer’s intelligence, inviting them into the commentator’s inner room where the “real” story is being kept safe.

The context is broadcast culture, where commentary has to do two jobs at once: narrate for the casual fan checking in at halftime and dignify the experience for the purist who saw every tackle, wobble, and near-miss. Motson’s phrasing threads that needle. It acknowledges what the audience sees (the score) while insisting on what they may have missed (momentum, luck, game state). In an era drifting toward stats and heat maps, it’s a reminder that football remains stubbornly, gloriously non-linear.