Change Your Face: Love Never Lost

Last week, when I sat in the Instagram comments section of a montage I can only describe as filled by hate-watching, I wondered something to myself. Why would anyone ever hate their own team’s player like this? How could they? 

The montage was focused on Trent Alexander-Arnold, the Liverpool academy product who created what may be the club’s greatest play ever. Corner taken quickly is baked into the Klopp era as the moment of breaking through, from one of the big five but always falling short to finally on top.

And yet, here was a compilation of clips, including that set piece, that framed Alexander-Arnold as a snake and a fraud.

Fans have had a long-running trend of feeling personally insulted when their favorite players ask to be traded or sign elsewhere, while feeling betrayed when those players are moved. Somehow, this contradiction is never really called out.

Think of the great players this has happened to. Pacers fans now laugh at Paul George, the man who led to some of the most exciting playoff moments in Indiana basketball history when facing LeBron James. Warriors fans root against Kevin Durant, years after sneering at the rest of the league, condescending in part to the dominance Durant extended.

This is not a holier than thou call to love thy athletes no matter what. I cover the Timberwolves, and yet I hate Rudy Gobert more than any Wolf, no, any player, I have ever seen play. Even with the longest period of Wolves success, I just hate the man. I will celebrate when he no longer plays basketball in Minnesota.

I hate his politics, I hate the quotes he gives, and I hate how it feels like I can’t complain about him without fellow fans yelling at me. In that way, I understand the feeling of hatred for a player on your favorite team.

I understand falling out of love with players, or growing out of them, or simply understanding that they are not who you wanted them to be. I get not liking someone. That’s not what this is about.

I don’t understand going from love to hate because a player moves on. 

When Kevin Love requested a trade and left the Minnesota Timberwolves, there was a video that did the rounds in a similar way as the Trent Alexander-Arnold one. However, Wolves fans found a different angle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3svPkthjWcM&ab_channel=MikeBrody

A symbolic jersey burning, an understanding that the team sucked, and a heartfelt albeit goofy goodbye to another failed franchise star all bundled together in a minute and 30 seconds.

This is what goodbyes should be from where I’m sitting. They can be serious and sappy or they can be stupid and funny. Why should they be so jaded and mean?

If you’ll bear with me for a second, I obtained FIFA 24 recently in preparation for a summer Olympics event I do with my friends by playing sports games all day. I started a manager save file, claimed a third division British side, and began building my team.

The first player I signed was a striker from Fiorentina. Christian Kouame came over on a two loan deal, scored 46 goals across 24 games, and then pulled the team nearly singlehandedly into promotion. 

In an attempt to extend his contract, I attempted to end buy Kouame’s contract on a transfer, securing his place on Stevenage FC as the face of the team, only to find out that I had far surpassed my spending budget for the year. Fiorentina ended the loan, insulted by my offer.

My star player was gone. Even two years later in the simulation, when Kouame had grown into one of the best strikers in football at only 26, I couldn’t bring him back.

So I sat at my desk and made a “thank you” graphic for a player I had never heard of before I had started the save file hours earlier. I sent it to Kouame on Instagram. I explained how, in an alternate, digital universe, he’d brought tens of thousands of digital fans their first taste of the ones and zeroes of joy.

He hasn’t responded. He hasn’t seen it. The graphic still only sits in two spaces: his DMs and my graphics folder.

This is not just an experience that exists only in FIFA. People develop genuine, real-life connections to players through the games they play. Madden Franchise YouTubers reminisce over their greatest draft picks, with computer generated faces. Multiple generations of kids have developed an appreciation for the NBA career of Chris Smoove, a career that does not actually exist. 

Compassion isn’t just strength. It’s fun. It’s creative. It is a joyous embrace of the goofy little quirks that make the world light up. It is in being thankful to the hours I spent with Christian Kouame and the crucial minutes that Liverpool fans watched Trent Alexander-Arnold and the terrible, no good, very bad Kevin Love years of Minnesota basketball that I find the joy of those sports.

I would never trade that, no matter how they end. I treasure them. I would implore you too as well.

There is joy to be had in extending kindness. Change your face. Smile. Be happy.

But even if you don’t, if I can be kind and thankful for a player that I only ever knew as a pixel that followed my direction, I see no reason that fans can’t do the same for someone who lived through it with them.