Okay folks, grabbed my coffee this morning knowing the big Real Betis vs Man Utd pre-season friendly was happening earlier. Wanted to catch it live but totally forgot about the time difference again. Classic me. Here’s how it went down trying to watch the highlights later.
The Setup Phase
First thing, after kicking myself for missing the live broadcast, I fired up my laptop. My brain defaults to searching just the match name – “Real Betis vs Man Utd” – hoping for a quick highlights reel. Big mistake.
Typed it in and… boom. News articles. Injury reports. Lots of people arguing on forums about players. Like, pages and pages of stuff. Scrolled way down. Nope. Just links to other places promising highlights. Super frustrating.
Getting Specific
Took a breath. Changed tactics. Added “full match highlights today” to my search. That helped filter out the junk a bit. Saw a couple of promising links pop up. Clicked the first one. Landed on a page plastered with ads. Video player looked suspicious, like one of those really cheap ones. Hit play. Buffering… buffering… then just stopped. Dead. Nope, not today.
Closed that tab fast. Went back to the search results. Found another link that seemed more legit, maybe even from a broadcaster’s partner channel. Clicked cautiously. Loaded up pretty clean. Actually saw Man Utd in their new away kits. Sweet relief! Started watching.
The Watching (& Hunting) Process
The highlights were pretty decent quality. Got the main bits:
- The early back-and-forth action
- That nice goal from Garnacho cutting inside
- Dan Gore getting stuck in midfield
- Even Betis hitting the bar later on!
Lasted maybe 6-7 minutes? Solid summary.
But here’s the thing. I always worry about missing something cool that happened off the ball, or maybe an interview snippet. So I went back to my search results, kept hunting. Found another channel that had basically the same key moments, but added that extra clip of the manager talking to the sideline reporter. Bingo! That was the piece I felt was missing.
The Final Wrap-Up
Took maybe 20 minutes total? Went like this:
- 5 mins of panicked searching
- 5 mins of dodging scam sites
- 10 mins watching on two different channels
Felt like a mini mission accomplished!
Biggest pain point? Avoid spoilers! Social media is brutal. Accidentally saw a score notification pop up when I unlocked my phone during lunch. Almost ruined the surprise. Oops.
What I’d Do Better Next Time
Learning from today:
- Bookmark the Official League Hub first thing in the morning. Duh. They always post highlights fastest.
- Set a goddamn phone reminder for the actual match time. Time zones get me every single summer.
- Mute keywords on Twitter/X before checking my phone. That spoiled score notification sucked.
- Be patient and skip the dodgy sites. Stick to broadcast partners or league feeds to avoid the buffering hell.
Watching highlights shouldn’t feel like detective work, but sometimes it just does. Happy I got to see the lads play though, decent workout overall. Here’s to finding the next game easier!
