A wonderful scientific study of Owen Hargreaves' terrific use of incredible superlatives

I undertook the not-insignificant task of rewatching the Champions League second leg between Atlético and Real, taking notes and keeping a tally of the superlatives used by Captain Positive

Owen Hargreaves really is wonderful at what he exceptionally tries to do

Owen Hargreaves wakes up from a wonderful night's sleep. He puts on his terrific dressing gown, walks downstairs and makes an immense cup of coffee. He looks out the window, sees it's raining and decides against walking to work. There's absolutely no chance.

Instead, he gets on a wonderful bus, driven by an exceptional driver, and makes his way to the studio. There, he has an amazing snack in the green room and gets in the mood for another night of work. It will be a remarkable night of football, no question.

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First things first: Owen Hargreaves is clearly a lovely, educated man. In an industry characterised by gruffness and why-am-I-here-again misery, his enthusiasm in the commentary box is a breath of fresh air. He loves football and he loves those who play it well – this is very much a good thing. To be clear, then, the rest of this article comes from a place of love.

But love can be a rocky road, especially when it is blighted by enough sickly-sweet superlatives to make your teeth turn to dust. Hargreaves, you see, has such a sunny outlook on life that everything he sees is amazing. In small doses, this is adorable; over the course of 90 minutes, it's enough to drive a person loopy.

In an attempt to better understand the phenomenon, I undertook the not-insignificant task of rewatching yesterday's Champions League semi-final second leg between Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid, taking notes and keeping a tally of the superlatives deployed by Captain Positive. Here are the results of this scientific study:

Methodology

Superlatives were tallied by minute and by object of praise. Those used to describe a person's actions were ascribed to that person (so "Koke is terrific" and "tremendous pass by Koke" both count equally). The word "great" was discounted because it's not up to the standard of the others used. More descriptive adjectives (electric, beautiful, etc) have also been left out, leaving us with only the purest supply of superlative goodness.

The grand total

The first, most basic finding is this: Hargreaves used a total of 87 superlatives over the course of 90 minutes plus stoppage time. That's a 0.9666 a minute.

Superlatives over time

The table below shows the cumulative number of superlatives used over the course of the match. As you can see, he got a great deal of work done early on, largely spurred on by Atleti's two early goals. There were a total of 11 superlatives deployed in a three-minute period around the Saúl header alone.

There was an odd lull between 23 and 35 minutes – perhaps some other scientist will look into this later – but a blitz of three utterances of "incredible" in nine seconds after Karim Benzema's strike really kickstarted things again, and Hargeaves made it to the interval with a solid 39 superlatives on the board.

Interestingly, the second half was even more profitable despite the lack of goalmouth action: there were 48 after the break, with many of the late efforts attributable to the atmosphere at the Calderón.

Word-by-word breakdown

My working thesis, developed live during the game on first viewing, was that "wonderful" was Hargreaves' favourite superlative. And so it proved: he deployed that one fully 25 times during the match. "Terrific" gave it a good run for its money, though, and honourable mentions go to "incredible", "brilliant" and "magnificent".

The stragglers included "spectacular" (used to describe the atmosphere), "amazing" (also the atmosphere) and "immense" (the match).

For any non-scientists reading, here’s that same data represented in a really rubbish version of one of those word clouds:

Superlative distribution

We begin with the home side, for whom Yannick Ferreira-Carrasco was the chief beneficiary of Hargreaves' excitement. He garnered eight superlatives, with Saúl and Jan Oblak amassing six and five respectively. All three subs got some love, but the most praise went to the team as a whole, which you imagine would please Diego Simeone.

Owen Hargreaves really is wonderful at what he exceptionally tries to do

Real, by contrast, didn't earn a single team superlative, although in Benzema they had the single most eulogised player. Keylor Navas and Isco were the other big winners, but Cristiano had to wait until after the interval to receive his single superlative ("wonderful”).

As you can see below, the sum total of superlatives handed out to Atleti trumps Real's figure. I imagine that this metric will probably overtake expected goals in stats-nerd circles at some point in the near future.

There were other objects of praise beside the teams and players, with the fans at the Calderón, the match itself and even the referee getting a slice of the action.

Player-by-player usage

I was also able to map the preferred superlatives for each player. When there was a tie between more than one adjective, the first superlative used was given primacy.

The teams line up like this:

Atlético:

Real:

Workings

In the interest of transparency, here are my workings for this study. Drink them in and, if you have time, send me some links for PTSD treatment over Twitter.

(Jack Lang (Jack Lang)

Conclusion

This has been a wonderful experience, full of magnificent highs and remarkable lows. Really, I see this study as the start of a great movement, meaning I will refrain from drawing swift lessons and instead invite others to use this as a resource in their own work.

One thing, though, is clear: It has been a special, exceptional few hours in my life. No question.