Update 2.0: Why I will try to keep Talking Tactics free and open for everyone
Support the talent first, always, and not the agency behind them.
I certainly do not expect myself to write this article and another update this soon after the first update on this blog since I am working on another Dev Logs edition while also trying to keep up with the ASEAN U23 Championship. This will be a lot informal than what you usually see on my blog, but this article is just the place where I note down my thoughts after seeing a trending situation unfolds. Another heads up before I head into my train of thought is that this might be an unorganised wall of text, and if this is not what you want to read, feel free to ignore this article/email and wait for the next few articles from me cause I will get back to writing about football stuff very soon!
A bit of background
I do not have the authority or enough knowledge to comment on a VTuber’s situation even though I watch their content every now and then. However, seeing their current situation unfolds makes me feel sympathised for what they are going through and also allows me to reflect on my own creative journey so far. Without going into full details since, maybe, the overlap between my audience and the VTubers audience might not be very big at all, but the situation is the classic situation of a talent puts their trust on an agency and signs with them, only to be rugpulled by being betrayed or trapped under an absurd contract, and the agency gets away with a decent amount of money. It has, unfortunately, happened quite a lot within the music industry and it has happened in sports as well, so this is not the first time that something like this happened.
It’s sad to watch the whole situation unfolds because from the perspective of someone who also create things, all I want to do is to continue creating stuff for my audience. I do not want to deal with the legal stuff or have anything to do with a lawsuit that will take my energy away from my creative process. But when a situation like this happens that involves a reported amount of money that is at least $500k+ (yes, that is five hundred thousands US dollars and more, from what has been told from the talent themselves), you absolutely cannot brush that off easily. After all, that is half a million US dollars of charity donation money going missing and even more unannounced amount of money going missing from the talent themselves that we are talking about here. It’s a frustrating situation for the talent because they put a lot of trust into their agency, yet that trust gets misplaced and now they are the one who have to deal with the aftermath, having to file a lawsuit to chase that money down, then be the bearer of bad news to the charity, while the whole situation takes a huge toll on their mental health. That is all because someone mismanaged $500k+ and tried to cover their traces.
As I’ve mentioned just now, usually, the main thing that a talent wants to do, and it does not matter whether that is writing blogs, or painting pictures, or producing music and/or videos, or any kind of creative work really, is to keep creating things. Some talents do not have the energy to deal with the business side of things, which they then resort to trusting an agency or someone to deal with the remaining stuff like sponsorships, accounting, taxes, etc. Unfortunately, as the current situation and previous similar situations have shown, finding the right people to trust can sometimes be very hard, and I sympathise with what they are going through at the moment. I can only wish everything will be sorted soon so that they can be back doing what they enjoy the most, which is creating contents.
Keeping Talking Tactics independent and free
One of the things that I learned from the current situation is how hard our current system is for people who want to be freelance or go independent. Without the right people taking care of things for a talent, it will be hard to divide the energy and keep track of their own finances, doing taxes, and negotiating sponsorships, and those are just at the top of the surface. You essentially become a manager of your own company which you then have to employ other people to look after your stuff, which is something that I think not many creative people want to deal with.
As for me and this blog, I have made the commitment that Talking Tactics will be independent and free as long as I can maintain it. I know that I am lucky to have a full-time job that can put food on my table and allow me to do this for free, I will not take that for granted by any bit, but I am also doing a bit of freelancing on the side and just seeing the amount of invoices that I have to calculate for the upcoming tax time just gives me the sense of dread. If I monetise this blog, it means that there will be more work for me to do, and that will drive me away from using my energy and creativity to write things, which is also the last thing that I want.
Another reason why I am keeping this blog free, which I will discuss in a later article, is I believe in the power of inspiration. I usually think that the articles that I write and the stuff that I do, they barely have any meaning and it is just me writing down my thoughts for myself and nobody cares about it, I am just doing this as a creative outlet so that the thoughts and ideas that I have don’t get stuck in my own brain. But I also believe that if these stuff that I do can reach one person and inspire them to do their own things, then I will keep doing it until I can’t. I have been and will continue to be inspired by so many more people, so I want to at least give back and inspire someone else on their journey to go out and do your own thing because creating things is magical.
I won’t hide it, but my biggest inspiration on my creative journey so far is the Swedish DJ, Avicii. I don’t just enjoy his tracks, but it’s also the journey that he went through that has guided me a lot. His music has inspired many to kickstart their own journey and a few of them have now become top electronic producers or DJs because of his music. I want to do that as well, giving people a spark to start and create things. I tend to look forward most of the time because I feel uncertain about what the future holds for me, but sometimes I remind myself to look back and realise that maybe I have achieved that to some extend. My earliest work was writing scout reports in Vietnamese on a Facebook page that is now gone, and I was doing that at the time just because no one in Vietnam had scouted Nordi Mukiele when he moved to Leipzig, yet I did not see that what I had done (along with a few others’ work) basically kickstarted a whole movement that brought scouting players and tactical analysis onto the forefront of the Vietnamese football community for a short period. I still don’t attribute that success to myself because I don’t know how much I contributed to that movement, but seeing people mentioning me as part of that original movement really moved me and it tells me that I have left a little bit of impact like I had wanted, and I will continue to do that here with the articles that I write.
Getting paid
Have I considered opening up a paid subscription for this blog? The short answer is: yes, a few times. But I don’t want to do that because I still think the stuff that I do doesn’t really deserve your money, dear reader, and I am too inconsistent to provide you with the value that you will pay. I have kept that line of thought because I am a perfectionist and I set a very high standard for myself, I want the stuff that I create to meet those standards for me to share them out into the world.
There have been countless times where I had to completely rework my original draft for an article or even scrapping an idea entirely just because I thought what I had done was not good enough. I have embraced imperfection more and more recently, and that means coming to terms that I can only finish a certain piece of work to a certain level at that point in time. However, that perfectionist still leaves inside and sees that because it doesn’t meet the standard that I had originally hoped, it means that I cannot ask people for money to read or to use something.
One example that I can think of is my first version of the Scouted Handbook, a blatant copy/inspired by Scouted Football’s Handbooks at the time. I originally created also for the Vietnamese community because I realised that not many Vietnamese people would have had the chance to read Scouted’s Handbooks, so why not create something homegrown instead? So I singlehandedly designed every graphics in my own Handbook while also wrote most of the reports in there, then released it free of charge to everyone because I thought what I had designed looked quite bad. There were calls from people about asking for a bit of money that was equivalent to a cup of coffee for the Handbook, but I turned it down because I thought the Handbook didn’t hit the standards that I wanted and didn’t deserve the money that I would be paid for, even though I had spent my entire summer in high school to work on that.
And I did say ‘first version’, because there was supposed to be a second version after I felt the reception for the first one was quite good. I had completed designing the player graphics, which felt like a step up from the first batch and you can find them here, and also finished writing a few reports, including two for Angers’ Rayan Ait-Nouri and Valencia’s Ferran Torres, which I also have made public. But then the entire version got scrapped because I did not have time to complete everything on my own again. And yes, before you ask, I did try to find people to collaborate with, but most people said ‘no’, so I decided that because it was my idea, I should make it happen. Nowadays, I don’t really do much graphic designing even though I still have an itch for it, and you can still find me scratching that itch with the visualisations that I create.
But, long story short, I won’t try to make money from the football stuff I do for now and unless it is a job. I don’t expect this blog will get sponsored anytime soon, but if it does, I will only be willing to shill out for anything that I actually use and think that might be beneficial for my audience. I feel a sense of responsibility to my audience, and because you have put your trust in me and come to my blog to read the stuff that I write, I don’t want to betray that trust by shilling out a random product or, even worse, a betting service or company. I want to make that very clear and saying this here is also me trying to hold myself accountable for anything that I do in the future.
Final words
This has been a long-winded way of me saying that the blog will continue to be free until I cannot keep it that way anymore. But I also want to share a bit of who I am and how I have gotten here to show that I really do care about my audience and the stuff that I do. At the end of the day, I just want to continue writing things and create things. I don’t want to be tied to any company, agency, or agent, and with how scummy that industry is going, I think it’s better to continue being independent until I can find the right people to trust, and yet that might also be a tough task.
Lastly, I hope that everything that I have done will inspire you to create something. It’s never too late to start and I do cringe a lot when I look back at my previous stuff, that gets even worse since I’m a perfectionist and I’m being very harsh on myself, but I always take that as a challenge to improve every next things that I do and make it better and better every time. So, don’t be afraid to start and find your own audience, even if that’s just 1 person.
One last message that I have to edit in after publishing: If possible, please donate to any amount that you can to a charity that aligns with your values and causes. It makes a world of difference because someone that you might never meet will get a meal or the medication that they need for their disease, and that is a big difference. Make the world a better place, one bit at a time and in your own ability, and bring some positivity back into this current mess that we are finding ourselves in.