About the Renato Sanches Mystery

The fact that journalism is still barely hanging on these days when we needs facts and truth more than ever should not blind us to its flaws, many of which help explain why it is not rebounding from its enfeebled condition. And one of its most enduring weaknesses, easily spotted in even the most highly regarded newspaper and aggravated by publishers’ hunger for online clicks, is its innate susceptibility to naive intellectual fraudulence in its many cheaper, easier forms. Journalism too easily stoops to cliche, echoes false narratives, overreaches, pads, misinterprets, plagiarizes, lazily reviews what is already known, pretends to say more or something other (usually catchier) that what is really being said.

The latter two sins — the lazy recap and the fake compelling angle — is the one on my mind right now, thanks to a column in The Guardian by Stuart James about Bayern Munich’s Renato Sanches.

The copy editor saddled James’s piece with this click-bait headline: How can Renato Sanches be so bad at one club and so good at another?

(Always, by the way, look askance at a newspaper headline that asks a question.)

It would certainly be interesting to find out the answer to the headline question, and you would read the article with that objective in mind. What is the explanation for that Sanches mystery, and who came up with it, and do others agree that it is the right explanation?