It is common knowledge that football is our life. And, just like life, we are always trying to improve our grasp of it. The joke is that it constantly frustrates our attempts, but that’s also something we try to optimise. Harun Farocki’s work Deep Play is made up of various perspectives on the final of the 2006 World Cup. We see the 'clean feed', the television networks’ raw material. We see individual players on both teams, but also abstract computer-generated representations of the flow of play. The intelligent network of relationships among players who are kicking, passing, receiving the ball and running – a network that absorbs spontaneous individual decisions as well as tactical ideas and habits rooted in the culture of the game – is endlessly complex given the size of the field. This roughly corresponds to the range of possible constellations offered by a group of guppies in a mid-sized aquarium. This may be sublime, but it also makes us sad. However the game is not only classified, assessed and transferred to other systems, for example by trusted experts who analyse and evaluate all quantifiable events. We also experience the majestic calm of a summer’s day as it draws to a close above the Olympic Stadium. We hear many soundtracks, from the police radio to the words of TV production teams from all over the world, alternating between commanding, consequential speech and contemplative reflections on events. Above all, what we experience is how the laboratory of football is able to exhibit the most advanced technology in the production and presentation of moving images. All fans and followers of simulation and documentation, movies, TV and computer games start running a little warmer as they watch. We see how eerily close the wishes of the consumers, the trainers and the police really are to each other. Just as they are in real life.

(Diedrich Diederichsen)