How to Deal With a Treacherous Asshole Leaving Your Team in a Perfectly Rational Way, Fuck Him, He’s Not That Good Anyway, I’m Not Bitter, Anyway, He’s Overrated
The scenes outside Barcelona’s Camp Nou football stadium speak for themselves, with a grown man crying into Lionel Messi’s jersey as the once-in-a-generation superstar leaves the club this summer almost 20 years later due to a stalemate over his contract renewal.
Messi’s departure signifies sadness and discouragement for the fans of the team, some of whom have an Argentinean face tattooed on their bodies. But mourning the loss of a hero will not change the strange reality of FC Barcelona without Messi, and will not bring any consolation to anxious fans.
Likewise, albeit on a smaller scale in the NBA and NFL, two other high profile players – Ben Simmons of the Philadelphia 76ers and Julio Jones of the Tennessee Titans – are either on their way out of the summer blockbusters trade or have already been shipped. off to new pastures against the wishes of the fans. But no matter what fans post on social media or how many T-shirts they might burn, the inevitable truth remains that players – and those with the power to decide their future – tend to break hearts.
How to separate personality from sport
People identify with their favorite sports teams along tribal lines. One study from the University of Sussex in England noted that fans tend to fall into some sort of tribal loyalty based on the collective “feeling that the team’s identity carries with it a sense of belonging, meaning and continuity.” Fandom drives people crazy by inciting bullying behavior that can escalate into violence, forcing some to practice bizarre play-day rituals, or wearing overtly racist team clothes.
Either way, you may be driving your fandom to obscene levels of personalization, so much so that your personality becomes entangled in the team you support. This is ultimately bad, because a plethora of research has shown that fandom lows are usually much deeper than ephemeral highs.
On a practical level, there are many things you can do to get rid of the toxic carousel of bleeding fandoms; you can, for example, unsubscribe from the team on social media, stop checking the results, or maybe take up a new hobby (communications professor David S. Heineman wrote a lengthy essay on how and why he parted ways with sports fandom, which can be instructive) …
But in the end, knowing that athletes will always make their own decisions, many of which you dislike, will serve you in the best possible way. You are powerless to stop the trade in your respected escape from under your nose, and speaking out publicly about the situation will not make the blow any less severe. Of course, athletes can build connections with their fans, but the most successful athletes rarely stay in the same city throughout their careers; they are motivated by problems (and most often by money) and the hunt for fame. Lionel Messi, for his part, probably wasn’t thinking about the man clinging to his jersey when the decision to exit was announced.
The overwhelming grain of wisdom comes in the form of perspective, which is asking yourself a few questions: Does it matter to the material reality of your life when your favorite team is losing their best player or when they are losing a lot? Has your life become worse or even changed as a result of these events?
The answer is almost always an emphatic no.