The end is always hard for a player, because without hope you don't really have much of anything
WWYD is one of those fun acronyms that has fallen into disuse because people don’t really know how to respond. Or if they do, it’s within the template of the action they want to justify.
FC Barcelona just signed Ferran Torres. But because of Liga FFP strictures, one player likely has to go before another can come, which of course leads to the march to the scaffold. In asking which player, there are the usual answers. There was even a Twitter debate about the idea of “useless” players, tempered by the tribalism that shapes the prism through which we view sports.
We want the best for the teams that we support, and we unite in looking at solutions that we think will provide that answer. The tribalism feeds itself, makes us think about things, makes us dehumanize other humans (no they aren’t — they’re footballers and footballers aren’t human) in a quest for the excellence that will provide us with that vicarious thrill, that xenophobic buzz of success.
What we don’t stop to think about, or rarely do, is what if you’re that person, that “other” who everyone wants gone? How would you function, how would you act.
In 1996 I went to the national championships that were also the U.S. Olympic trials for those with a legit shot at making the team. It was late enough in my sprinting life where I knew what was going to happen. But I went, because hope. What else are you going to do, when you aren’t yet willing to admit that hope is lost? The inevitable happened, but that result was the necessary thing. You don’t give up on hope until you have to.
If you are Phillippe Coutinho or Samuel Umtiti, or even Riqui Puig, what do you do? No. Not what YOU, tribal club supporter would do. Try to put yourself in their shoes, and ask what YOU would do. You’re at FC Barcelona, one of the biggest clubs in the world. You’re making millions, traveling with the team. You’re working your ass off in training, eating right, even going vegan, all with the hope of impressing the manager enough to get back to where you were, which is in the frame.
You aren’t sitting there thinking, “I’m in Barcelona making millions, and you’re going to have to drag my ass out of here.” You’re thinking, “This is the place I have worked my entire athletic life to get to, and will work my ass off to stay.” You have that hope, that desire for something good to happen. You have to have it. All those training days and matches as a kid, as a youth player, the climbing the rungs of success … There is nothing in the makeup of a top-flight athlete that will make them willingly give up on that hope.
We as supporters don’t understand that. We think, “Why is that wastrel stealing money from my club. He should go somewhere and be useful.” Hope is one of the hardest things to relinquish, and we forget that because we don’t understand, can’t understand. We probably have wanted something in our lives, maybe even had something like the hope that buoys a player on the downward slope of a career. Not everyone can land in Paris, make their day job a side hustle and still make millions. For a player like Umtiti or Coutinho, that admission is an embrace of a brutal reality.
When Carles Alenya moved to Getafe, what must he have been thinking? He had the luxury of being young, of having the illusion that he would play well, impress other teams, maybe even his boyhood club, and work his way back. When you’re on the business side of 28 years of age, or have knees that are no longer capable of that topmost performance level, what do you have? When you leave, that’s it. There’s no way back, and you know it. And if we as humans can’t understand what that’s like, it’s because we aren’t willing to.
Empathy is a weird thing, because it is usually an impossibility. We can hear about a situation and think we have empathy. But the necessity of putting yourself in a place where you can understand how that other person feels, too often eludes us. It’s easier to say, “Why are they stealing money from my club? Get out.” And boo them when they warm up, or expect the worst from them when they play, which meets the necessary expectation of our tribal urges.
Human nature is to not want to leave a great situation. None of us would do it. Human nature is also to hope things will happen that won’t require us leaving a great situation. Hope is also human. It’s innate and so much deeper than mere optimism. We go on dates, buy lottery tickets, apply for jobs, say “Hi” to attractive strangers, do so, so many things. We’re hopeful they will smile and say “Hi” back. We’re hopeful that lottery ticket will come in, that we’ll be able to afford that apartment, that the job isn’t taken and that we will get it. We have so much hope, yet we are so often incapable of understanding that same quality when it exists in a way that run afoul of our tribalism.
One day a player looks in the mirror, usually after another squad not made, or another match on the bench, and reality sets in. And a hard decision is made. And so few of us can imagine how that feels. Sure, you can keep playing the game, but it isn’t the same. Maybe you’re in Portugal, or Russia, or Brazil. Or Turkey. And you’re playing the same game, but it isn’t. It can’t be because it isn’t at the same level.
Empathy is imagining the pain of that realization and the bleakness of the next, and necessary, decisions. Few players are lucky enough to do what Xavi did, retire on top, surrounded by all the trophies. Most players spend lives defined by nail marks on rungs of ladders, claw indentations as their hands slip down, lower and lower. It isn’t just love of the game. It’s love of the game at a certain level.
It’s easy for us to say, “Get out of my club.” What’s hard, verging on impossible, is for us to imagine that sleepless night, that painful call to an agent, that acceptance that feels like failure and giving up. Because we watch sport, but we don’t understand it. And maybe if we understood it more we might enjoy it less. Maybe. Or maybe we would just have more empathy for humans, humans like us even as they lead lives we can only dream of, as they reach the end and make decisions they dread.