The New York Times - Expectations, Reality and You

Empty Stands, Mind Tricks and a Mourinho Myth

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Soccer journalism’s hottest ticket, for a long time, was a José Mourinho news conference. Whichever team he was coaching, however well it was performing, Mourinho was a sure thing: Before a game, after a game, regular as clockwork, he would deliver 30 minutes or so of one-liners and aphorisms and mind games and clapbacks. Mourinho was box office.

It was that ability to entertain — as much as that imperious run of success of his, stretching from the early 2000s deep into the 2010s — that made Mourinho such a natural fit for the Premier League, a place that has always been more an entertainment complex than a sporting competition, a soap opera that just so happens to be set in the world of soccer.

It is England, after all, that has always revered managers more as characters than as thinkers: Its pantheon is stocked by the sharp-tongued and the quick-witted, the likes of Bill Shankly and Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson, more than it is by the contemplative and the coolheaded.

Mourinho was cast in that mold, the man who declared himself a “Special One,” the man who accused Arsène Wenger of being a voyeur, who spoke darkly of conspiracies and breezily of his gifts, who picked fights with opponents and employers and hid in laundry baskets and railed against the fine words and empty trophy cabinets of soccer’s “poets” and “philosophers.”

To listen to the stories, to flick through his back catalog was a reminder that a Mourinho news conference was must-watch television. And to some extent, of course, that was all true. Mourinho, sometimes, was a compelling orator. Occasionally, he would say something hilarious, or outrageous, or venomous.

But most of the time, he does not. Most of the time, he is — if anything — studiously bland. Like all managers, Mourinho’s instinct is for diplomacy, at least in public. He is charismatic, of course, and mostly quite polite, but the bulk of his regular media appearances pass by almost without incident. He confirms which players are injured. He insists he wants to win the coming game. He shows his respect for his opponents. (Though not always.) And then he leaves.

The reason for the discrepancy between his reputation and reality, of course, is what anyone who has read even a bit of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman identified as the availability heuristic: We recall unusual events much more easily than the mundane; we remember exceptions, rather than rules; we think, in other words, in highlights.

This week, the Premier League returned to the field, exactly 100 days after its last outing. It opened with a goalless draw between Aston Villa and Sheffield United, a match enlivened only by a technological failure. Later on Wednesday evening, Arsenal was doing fine until David Luiz came on as a substitute. A 3-0 defeat soon followed. The Brazilian was sent off.

It was, all in all, a fairly typical evening of Premier League soccer: a major talking point, a familiar scapegoat, and two games probably best enjoyed by aficionados of the four clubs involved (well, maybe not Arsenal).

Except, of course, it was nothing like a typical evening of Premier League soccer. It was June, for a start. Nobody had played for three months. The stands were empty, and the crowd noise on television was fake.

All of which led the watching public deep into what might, in this context, be better described as the Highlights Fallacy, rather than the availability heuristic. Did the games seem a reduced version of themselves because of the altered surroundings? Had the absence of fans had a direct impact on the quality of entertainment on the field?

Or was this something else? For three months, we have nursed our nostalgia for soccer. We have, as a soccer-watching public, yearned for its return; ideally in its usual form, but if not, then in some recognizable shape. We have watched reruns of classic games and YouTube highlights and Facebook packages of goals from seasons past.

And, naturally, when we think of soccer, we think of the exceptions. We think of Tottenham coming from behind, at the last moment, to beat Ajax, or Liverpool roaring back to overcome Barcelona, or Manchester United snatching victory from Bayern Munich in the last minute. As with Mourinho, we remember highlights.

But what makes those games so memorable is that they are rare; if every game was like that, those examples would not flood so readily to mind. Instead, the vast majority of games are like Wednesday’s Premier League offerings: disjointed and routine and, at times, though we are careful not to admit it, quite dull. They are of interest, really, only to those who are emotionally invested in them.

Given the absence of soccer over the last few months, though, the audience for both games was much higher than it might have been. Sheffield United’s visit to Aston Villa, for example, might not even have been on television in normal circumstances. Fans were watching for a taste of this new world, happy just to savor the sight of soccer — in whatever form — once more.

When they — as some did — found themselves drifting away from the screen, the assumption was that it was the change in the surroundings that had done it; without fans, the sport itself seemed meaningless. Perhaps, for some, that will prove to be true in time: There is no question that soccer is improved by the presence of fans (and nobody, at all, has ever argued the opposite).

But perhaps, too, it was a trick of the mind, a trick of the light. It is not soccer as we remember it not because it is not soccer, but because we remember it wrong. We remember the highlights, the moments that take the breath away, rather than the often humdrum reality of life as a sports fan.

Over the last few months, as soccer faded from view, perhaps we allowed our expectations to rise too high. We forgot that we do not, without fail, find ourselves glued to a game in which we have no tribal interest, whether the stadium is packed or not. We forgot that we watch more games that fail to spark than we see fireworks.

We forgot that not everything, with Mourinho, is a zinger; that not every game, in soccer, is a highlight reel; and that what keeps drawing us back is not the guarantee a game will take our breath away, but the possibility of it. We forgot that the parts we remember are only a small fraction of what soccer is. They stand out because they are rare, and that, in a sense, is what makes them special.

Cherishing the Most Predictable Outcome

Unusually for Bayern Munich, the championship came the hard way. Both during the game on Tuesday night which sealed the title — a gritty 1-0 win against relegation-threatened Werder Bremen, made all the more complicated by a red card for Alphonso Davies — and over the course of the season as a whole.

When Bayern lost by 5-1 to Eintracht Frankfurt back in November, it seemed its seven-year grip on the Bundesliga trophy was starting to loosen. The squad seemed in dire need of rejuvenation, caught in that no-man’s-land between generations. Nico Kovac was fired as coach. RB Leipzig, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Borussia Dortmund seemed well-placed to take a shot at the crown.

How it ended is how it always ends in Germany: with Bayern capturing yet another title. That is eight in a row now, and that is cause more for concern than celebration. But, in the circumstances, it should possibly be set aside for a moment, because Bayern’s victory is, to an extent, a victory for German soccer as a whole.

In May, the Bundesliga took a risk in becoming the first major league, in any sport, to return from its coronavirus lockdown. It was a month or so ahead of all of its rivals in Europe, and a couple or more ahead of the major leagues of North America.

And yet, there are now only two games left in the German season. It has crowned a champion, fair and square, on the field. It is within sight of the finish line, and it has got there smoothly, calmly, and with a minimum of fuss.

“We have done something for ourselves, something that links us together,” as Christian Streich, my new hero, put it. Germany did it the hard way. But it has made it, still. And that is reason to celebrate for more than just Bayern Munich.

Stick to Sports

In the two months or so since Matt Hancock, Britain’s health secretary, declared that it was time for the Premier League’s footballers to “play their part” and — for reasons that were never made entirely clear, and were never applied to musicians or actors or any other high-earning individuals — help pay for the National Health Service, those same footballers have:

• joined together to create a fund, #PlayersTogether, to contribute directly to Britain’s health service as it copes with the coronavirus crisis,
• persuaded the Premier League, an organization so apolitical it can only be read as a political choice, not only to adorn jerseys with a Black Lives Matter badge, but to replace players’ names with the phrase Black Lives Matter,
• informed the Premier League they would be taking a knee immediately after kickoff at each match to show their support for the movement,
• and, thanks to just one of their number, Marcus Rashford, forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn (broadly speaking: Rashford was in favor of children having enough to eat, and the government was against; the latter has now changed its mind).

All of it is a reminder that, whenever athletes are told to stick to sports, it is generally because they might use their power and their platform to achieve things either beyond politicians or anathema to someone else’s ideologies. It is a lesson of the pandemic that athletes may not forget.

Choosing Is Hard When the Buffet Is Stacked

The feast, then, has started. There is basically soccer on television constantly, now, until the end of July. It’s a welcome return, of course, but somehow a daunting prospect, too. When there is so much to take in, how do you know where to start?

Well: two games stand out from the first full slate of Premier League games: Friday’s meeting between Tottenham and Manchester United — José Mourinho up against his former club, currently in possession of what he covets above all else, a theoretical Champions League place — and Sunday’s Merseyside derby at Goodison Park.

Liverpool cannot claim its first title in 30 years on Everton turf — Manchester City’s impressive win against Arsenal on Wednesday ensured that — but the game does, at least, bring up a fascinating philosophical quandary. A core of Everton fans has spent the last three months insisting that none of this soccer means anything. Their reasons for that are not hard to fathom, but it complicates how they might react to beating the champion-elect. Would that not be a legitimate result, either?

The timing works out so that, by the time Everton has sorted out how much a win means, you can switch over to Real Sociedad against Real Madrid. The Spanish title race — Madrid can move to 2 points behind first-place Barcelona with a win — is much more interesting than the English (or the German), anyway.

Before all that, RB Leipzig faces Borussia Dortmund in a sort of unofficial second-place playoff in the Bundesliga on Saturday afternoon. A win for Leipzig would guarantee its place in the Champions League next season. Those four games should just about sate your appetite.

Correspondence

Unlike me — who has spent the last few days furiously revising the names of players I have completely forgotten: who or what is an Eric Dier? When did Ross Barkley sign for Chelsea? — Ross Dunning has a memory that is, if anything, too powerful.

“Aren’t you forgetting Hakim Ziyech’s transfer done deal for next season from Ajax to Chelsea,” he wrote, as regards last week’s column on the transfer market. “Unless you don’t feel it was noteworthy?” It was, indeed, noteworthy, and I had, as it happens, remembered it, but it was also very much a free transfer. What stands out about the signings of Timo Werner and Mauro Icardi is that Chelsea and P.S.G. have paid fees for them.

On the discussion of an apparent lack of self-confidence within M.L.S., Jack White in Atlanta wonders if it suffers because of the competition it faces.

“Large numbers of U.S. fans instantly know the difference between that and any [major] European league,” he wrote. Like most, he agrees M.L.S. has improved, but because it falls short of the world’s most high-profile leagues, perhaps fans find it less appealing. “At some point, the league became watchable: not the Bundesliga, Premier League or Serie A, but interesting enough to compel the attention of most soccer fans.”

That’s all for this week. As ever, all thoughts and ideas, comments and feedback are welcome at askrory@nytimes.com. I’m on Twitter but promise not to take a selfie of me wearing a mask at Goodison Park on Sunday. There will not be one on Instagram, either. We talked Premier League on Set Piece Menu this week: we can’t be original every week. And now that soccer’s back, your friends and neighbors will want to go here even more.

Have a great weekend, and keep safe.

Rory