MOTD

[Brazilian Villain]

I think you’d have preferred Turning Point’s All-American half-time show BV.

Nah, just wanted to watch a Super Bowl half-time show that was at least mildly entertaining (given the game itself was rather boring). Shakira and Jennifer Lopez managed it. Bad Bunny didn't. Sorry.

[Monty]

And that's a fact.

[Percy McCarthy]

A slightly more expansive review than BV’s ‘shite’:

“I watched Bad Bunny deliver the most American halftime show I have ever seen. Then I came home and watched it again. And I am not OK. In the best possible way.

He sang every single word in Spanish. Every. Single. Word. He danced through sugarcane fields built on a football field in California while the President of the United States sat somewhere calling it “disgusting.” Lady Gaga came out and did the salsa. Ricky Martin lit up the night. A couple got married on the field. He handed his Grammy, the one he won eight days ago for Album of the Year, to a little boy who looked up at him the way every child looks up when they dare to believe the world has a place for them.

And then this man, this son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, stood on the biggest stage on the planet and said “God bless America.”

And then he started naming them.

Chile. Argentina. Uruguay. Paraguay. Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Brazil. Colombia. Venezuela. Panama. Costa Rica. Nicaragua. Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. Mexico. Cuba. Dominican Republic. Jamaica. The United States. Canada. And then, his voice breaking with everything he carries, “Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos aquí.” My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here.

The flags came. Every single one of them. Carried across that field by dancers and musicians while the jumbotron lit up with the only words that mattered: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”

I teared up. I’m not ashamed to say it. I sat on my couch and I wept because THAT is the America I believe in. That is the American story, not the sanitized, gated, English-only version that small and frightened people try to sell us. The REAL one. The messy, beautiful, multilingual, multicolored, courageous one. The one that has always been built by hands that speak every language and pray in every tongue and come from every corner of this hemisphere.

That is the America I want Jack and Charlotte to know. That when the moment came, when the whole world was watching, a Puerto Rican kid who grew up to become the most-streamed artist on Earth stood in front of 100 million people, sang in his mother’s language, blessed every nation in the Americas, and spiked a football that read “Together, we are America” into the ground. Not with anger. With joy. With love so big it made hate look exactly as small as it is.

And what did the President do? He called it “absolutely terrible.” He said “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” He called it “a slap in the face to our Country.” The leader of the free world watched a celebration of love, culture, and everything this hemisphere has given to the world, and all he could see was something foreign. Something threatening. Something disgusting.

Let that sink into your bones.

The man who is supposed to represent all of us looked at the flags of our neighbors, heard the language of 500 million Americans across this hemisphere, and felt attacked. That’s not strength. That’s not patriotism. That is poverty of the soul.

And then there was the Turning Point show. Kid Rock in a college arena in North Dakota. Three million viewers watching a man who once wrote a song about sex with underage girls perform as the “family-friendly” alternative to a Puerto Rican artist celebrating love. They called it the “All-American Halftime Show”, as if America has a velvet rope. As if this country belongs to some of us and not all of us. As if you need to sing in English to count.

Here’s what I want to say to everyone who posted about that show tonight, who shared it proudly, who turned away from Bad Bunny’s celebration because it was in Spanish and the flags weren’t only red, white, and blue:


Your children will see those posts. Your grandchildren will find them. The internet doesn’t forget. And one day, when the history of this moment is written, when our kids and their kids look back at 2026 the way we look back at the people who stood on the wrong side of every bridge and every march and every moment that mattered, they will know exactly where you stood. They will see who chose Kid Rock over a hemisphere of flags. They will see who called love “disgusting.” And they will carry that knowledge the way all of us carry the knowledge of what our ancestors did when they were tested.

I don’t say that with anger. I say it with sadness. Because hate is an inheritance nobody asks for, and yet it gets passed down just the same.
Bad Bunny didn’t say “ICE out” tonight. He didn’t need to. He just showed the whole world what America looks like when we are not afraid of each other. When culture is shared, not policed. When language is music, not a threat. When a flag from every nation in this hemisphere can walk across a football field together and the only words you need are the ones he gave us:

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

Well over 100 million people saw that tonight.

And no Truth Social post can take it away.”

[Percy McCarthy]

Sounds pretty transcendent to me.

[Toronto Villa]

I thought Bad Bunny was great. The whole production. He has a massive following. Arguably the biggest of any male performer in the world. And it was a wonderful middle finger in the eye of Trump and his MAGA wankers who had their own concert streaming on YouTube with Kid Rock. Who is literally the only person they ever get for their twat racist followers. And the amount of their lot who didn't get the ending, the football stating Together We Are America, that America is all of the Americas, north, central, south and the indigenous and not just the United States tells you just where a lot of the US is today as a nation. And more importantly how the current admistration views the non white part of that geography and around the world. The music might not have been for everyone but the message was something most could get behind.

[Brazilian Villain]

A slightly more expansive review than BV’s ‘shite’:

It's certainly an expansive way of saying a Puerto Rican bloke called Bad Bunny sang in Spanish, Democratic Senator Michael Garret is rather idealistic and doesn't like the current President and his administration's policies, and got a bit teary. He clearly 'enjoyed' the show more than I did, though funnily enough he didn't mention the music. That's nice.

[Dave]

I think it was no better than alright. Great staging. The music didn't really do it for it for me. Glad I watched it though, it's always good to hear what hundreds of millions of people who Aren't You are listening to.

Probably won't go back to it.

But it was certainly no musically or culturally worse than had it been the Red Hot Chili Peppers or U2 or something that presumably wouldn't have got a load of fragile internet losers crying about it on Twitter. Or in the White House.

[olaftab]

Sounds pretty transcendent to me.

Very good write up and it's good to know that there are forces against evil in US of A.

[Monty]

Notable difficulty here with the 'if I don't understand something that makes it bad' fallacy.

[olaftab]

Well over 100 million people saw that tonight.

Pfffft... A mere fraction of nearly a billion around the world who are going to tune into an innocuous game of cricket on Sunday.

[Drummond]

A slightly more expansive review than BV’s ‘shite’:

“I watched Bad Bunny deliver the most American halftime show I have ever seen. Then I came home and watched it again. And I am not OK. In the best possible way.

He sang every single word in Spanish. Every. Single. Word. He danced through sugarcane fields built on a football field in California while the President of the United States sat somewhere calling it “disgusting.” Lady Gaga came out and did the salsa. Ricky Martin lit up the night. A couple got married on the field. He handed his Grammy, the one he won eight days ago for Album of the Year, to a little boy who looked up at him the way every child looks up when they dare to believe the world has a place for them.

And then this man, this son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, stood on the biggest stage on the planet and said “God bless America.”

And then he started naming them.

Chile. Argentina. Uruguay. Paraguay. Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Brazil. Colombia. Venezuela. Panama. Costa Rica. Nicaragua. Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. Mexico. Cuba. Dominican Republic. Jamaica. The United States. Canada. And then, his voice breaking with everything he carries, “Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos aquí.” My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here.

The flags came. Every single one of them. Carried across that field by dancers and musicians while the jumbotron lit up with the only words that mattered: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”

I teared up. I’m not ashamed to say it. I sat on my couch and I wept because THAT is the America I believe in. That is the American story, not the sanitized, gated, English-only version that small and frightened people try to sell us. The REAL one. The messy, beautiful, multilingual, multicolored, courageous one. The one that has always been built by hands that speak every language and pray in every tongue and come from every corner of this hemisphere.

That is the America I want Jack and Charlotte to know. That when the moment came, when the whole world was watching, a Puerto Rican kid who grew up to become the most-streamed artist on Earth stood in front of 100 million people, sang in his mother’s language, blessed every nation in the Americas, and spiked a football that read “Together, we are America” into the ground. Not with anger. With joy. With love so big it made hate look exactly as small as it is.

And what did the President do? He called it “absolutely terrible.” He said “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” He called it “a slap in the face to our Country.” The leader of the free world watched a celebration of love, culture, and everything this hemisphere has given to the world, and all he could see was something foreign. Something threatening. Something disgusting.

Let that sink into your bones.

The man who is supposed to represent all of us looked at the flags of our neighbors, heard the language of 500 million Americans across this hemisphere, and felt attacked. That’s not strength. That’s not patriotism. That is poverty of the soul.

And then there was the Turning Point show. Kid Rock in a college arena in North Dakota. Three million viewers watching a man who once wrote a song about sex with underage girls perform as the “family-friendly” alternative to a Puerto Rican artist celebrating love. They called it the “All-American Halftime Show”, as if America has a velvet rope. As if this country belongs to some of us and not all of us. As if you need to sing in English to count.

Here’s what I want to say to everyone who posted about that show tonight, who shared it proudly, who turned away from Bad Bunny’s celebration because it was in Spanish and the flags weren’t only red, white, and blue:


Your children will see those posts. Your grandchildren will find them. The internet doesn’t forget. And one day, when the history of this moment is written, when our kids and their kids look back at 2026 the way we look back at the people who stood on the wrong side of every bridge and every march and every moment that mattered, they will know exactly where you stood. They will see who chose Kid Rock over a hemisphere of flags. They will see who called love “disgusting.” And they will carry that knowledge the way all of us carry the knowledge of what our ancestors did when they were tested.

I don’t say that with anger. I say it with sadness. Because hate is an inheritance nobody asks for, and yet it gets passed down just the same.
Bad Bunny didn’t say “ICE out” tonight. He didn’t need to. He just showed the whole world what America looks like when we are not afraid of each other. When culture is shared, not policed. When language is music, not a threat. When a flag from every nation in this hemisphere can walk across a football field together and the only words you need are the ones he gave us:

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

Well over 100 million people saw that tonight.

And no Truth Social post can take it away.”

Leeds would have taken more.

[Baldy]

Joe Harts analysis of the two villa goals against Hammers was the best punditry I have seen for many, many years.

I gave a lot of credit to catweazle for SJM goal but after seeing his analysis it was all down to Sancho.

Micah take note, that's what a proper analysis is all about.

P.S. Last post on this thread was 10th February. Have none of us been watching MOTD in last 6 weeks?   

[Somniloquism]

Yes good, although I also suspect that the players knew it could be a possibility beforehand and to exploit it if they got a chance.

As an aside, I've noticed that Troy has decided that a team of the week can have three at the back consisting of Tarkowski, Cash as central defender and Neco Williams as the other one with Rat Features as one wing back and Sunderland's Rigg as the other. I seem to remember he stated he would never just pick players randomly but have them in a realistic position.

[Baldy]

Yes good, although I also suspect that the players knew it could be a possibility beforehand and to exploit it if they got a chance.

As an aside, I've noticed that Troy has decided that a team of the week can have three at the back consisting of Tarkowski, Cash as central defender and Neco Williams as the other one with Rat Features as one wing back and Sunderland's Rigg as the other. I seem to remember he stated he would never just pick players randomly but have them in a realistic position.

Yes, it was like a Plan B or C. To analyse the discreet 'hand signals' was clever. Rogers was still expecting a cross.

Poor Troy, a villa victory does knock him out of shape.