The Guardian reinvents the match report as picture story

06 February 2012
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This is a small thing, but something I really like: a story well-told with lots of pictures and a few words, but a story of the kind that's usually told with one picture and about a thousand words - a match report.

It's the Guardian's piece on Wednesday night's Classico at Camp Nou, where Real Madrid crashed out of the Copa Del Rey to Barcelona, made entirely in pictures and captions but - obviously - on the web and not in the newspaper.

Harking back to a format developed at Life, Paris Match and Picture Post, it starts with a portrait of Mourinho's twisted face and a teaser: after a first round home defeat and leaked stories of a split in the squad "only a victory tonight would he salvage his reputation" Over 13 further pictures the drama unfolds:

The next two images show Madrid's early missed chances, then comes Barca's two goals before half time, Madrid's incredible fight back to 2-2 (Renaldo's incredible hairstyle), lost hope with Ramos sent off, Barca holding out to the final whistle, then celebrations as they go through to the next round, 4-3 on aggregate.

Mourinho, evil genius reviled for defensive tactics and gamesmanship, is defeated by swashbuckling Barca. It's like Rupert Bear or Marvel Comics and related in much the same way - but only on the web, of course; in the newspaper it was business as usual.

The Guardian picture editors and caption writers have combined brilliant sports photography pulled from three different agencies (AP, Getty, Reuters) with tight, concise, clever caption writing. It takes a new journalistic mentality to appreciate that the internet offers these kind of possibilities after years of economy imposed by scarce column inches. The web has limitless space and here they use it well to combine the best of news and magazine journalism.

And, interestingly, the quality of this piece is amplified on the iPhone app by the form of the device and resolution of the screen, by the ability to swipe from one picture to another and to push away the caption. You just don't get the same feeling from the web version here or from the pics below, so do it justice and check out the gallery on iphone or ipad if you can. but it's also delightful when viewed on an iPhone or iPad.