2023-24 UEFA Champions League/Europa/Conference Discussion

Man. If only.

 

This article was written for the soccer board

Spoiler

Hate is great.

This is my starting point and from there, a brief and immediate diversion to a caveat. Hate isn’t really great. Revelling in hate implies gleeful aggression or violence and there’s far too much of all that in this crazy mixed-up world of ours without me adding to it simply because I’ve been told to fill a 900-word space with something about why rivalry in football is joyous at this stage of the season.

Hate isn’t quite right. I don’t hate anything in football. Correction: I don’t hate anything in football apart from VAR and surely that’s understandable. Oh, and I hate xG, precisely because it isn’t understandable. And referees, obviously. And football boots that aren’t black. And goal music and stupid sock holes. And young people. Plus absolutely every single club — players, managers, owners, directors, fans, sponsors, mascots, f****** ball boys — apart from mine and quite a lot of the time, I’ve utterly detested mine as well. I hardly think that makes me a monster.

Spite is right? Hmm. No, that’s awful. Let’s retreat to hate is great, but it’s not really about hatred. What it is about: sitting in the pub with a mate on Wednesday evening watching the Champions League and suddenly becoming aware of a shift in the air. That the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of (mostly) neutral observers at missed chances from Manchester Cityand Arsenal were morphing into titters of laughter or half-throated cheers.


Arsenal players look on at the final whistle in Munich (Michaela Stache/AFP via Getty Images)
Take City vs Real Madrid. For much of it, you could only marvel at the speed of movement, the speed of passing, the single-minded intent of Pep Guardiola’s gorgeous, fluid team to win the match — until the moment when something changed and you could sense that maybe, just maybe, Real were going to grimly hang on. And that this, in its own way, was a victory for football; not the style of football or the purity of it, but its capacity for wanton acts of comic brutality.

The end brought a cheer because City deserved to win comfortably but lost uncomfortably and, let’s face it, unless you support them, it could only be hilarious.

The same with Arsenal, except more so because Arsenal being very, very good but not quite being brilliant will never not be very funny to everybody else. My boss, who is a Tottenham Hotspursupporter, had a very specific reason to find this very funny, although the effect of all this laughing is a massive dent to England’s co-efficient and therefore a car crash for Tottenham Hotspur’s hopes of getting into the Champions League, which, of course, is also incredibly funny, just less so to him, which is also hilarious to me.

Eventually — and it’s way too complicated for me to work out — this co-efficient disaster could well trickle down the division and prevent Newcastle United from qualifying for any kind of European competition, which will be really annoying and then my boss will be laughing at me, which I suppose is fair enough. But if the choice is between being po-faced about the co-efficient or laughing at other people’s misfortunes, then excuse me, but f*** the co-efficient.

In fact, add the co-efficient to the list of things to hate.

On the subject of Newcastle fans, a regular chant of theirs is: “You laughed at us when we went down, but who the f*** is laughing now?” And the idea here is that Newcastle are no longer a club of mad, befuddling decisions who were relegated twice during Mike Ashley’s ownership, which was thoroughly agonising for Geordies and tremendously entertaining for everybody else, you callous, un-empathetic b****rds.

This is something we don’t consider enough. Here at The Athletic, we stroke our chins and publish roundtable think-a-thons about which team will win the Premier League or should win the Premier League or the best comebacks we’ve seen or the biggest issues facing the game and yawn, blah, yawn, blah. As the nights get lighter and buds bulge on trees, the thing that matters most is rejoicing in pettiness in a way we wouldn’t have done in October or November because who cares back then?

If you admire the competitive nature of sport, if you have a natural empathy for the underdog, then wouldn’t it be great and valuable if Arsenal won the title? As a football fan: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, they’ll bottle it again! See also Jurgen Klopp’s final season at Liverpool and the emotional heft of his imminent departure, that powerful human story. As a football fan: HAHAHAHAHAHA cry more!


Liverpool’s defeat against Palace will have pleased some fanbases (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
In this context, it would be funniest if Manchester City won the title again, which in itself isn’t very funny. But it would also be funny if they didn’t win it four times in a row, preferably on the last day in dramatic fashion, although the funniness of that would be balanced by the unfunniness of whoever did win it. And how funny you find any of it will be determined by proximity, geography, history and just how pathetic a human being you actually are. For the record, the more pathetic the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Arsenal winning it and thereby laughing at Spurs who are laughing at them today would be funny for a lot of people, but whether that’s funnier than Arsenal losing it, I’m not sure. Liverpool winning it AND Everton going down would be perfect for Liverpool, but also funny more widely because Arsenal won’t have won it and Everton, like Newcastle were, are a big, unwieldy, restless club and therefore everybody else is duty-bound to laugh at them.

So, as you can see, hate being great is actually quite a serious and important subject. Please chip in with your preferred outcomes on the pettiness/funniness stakes for what remains of the season, whatever the division or competition. And don’t forget to click ‘Meh’ on the way out

 

I hope they finish the season off unbeaten. Would be the best way to cap off how insane a season they’ve had/are having.