How Do You Solve A Problem Like Messi?
I stumbled upon this great article of Roger Federer winning the Australian Open. It’s a wonderful read on the phenomenon of Old Man Federer — an athlete whose decline has given us almost as much enjoyment and glory than when he was at his peak.
(While we are here: here is your semi regular reminder that David Foster Wallace’s “Roger Federer As A Religious Experience” is a a high water mark of sports writing. )
It got me asking the question…
There are good athletes, there are great ones and there are ones who stand in the cultural pantheon. Certain figures could be incredible at their sport, but don’t get the gushing hagiographies that others do.
Conversely, there are spectacular sports stars that will never get the write ups compared to their mediocre fellows.
Which brings us back to my headline…
Sincerely: there are better Emile Heskey features to be found then there are ones on Lionel Messi.
What makes it that Messi, is one of the greatest footballers to ever walk the planet, doesn’t get the same sort of gripping essays as Cristiano Ronaldo? Or even someone like Marcelo?
Reader, if you indulge me, allow me to peddle another sports theory I’ve been working on for a while now.
The Carl Anka Guide To Great Sports Hagiographies
You have to have the right sport
Boxing is a sport that rewards good writing like no other. To paraphrase Hayley Campbell, it’s a sport where people spend months honing their bodies, only to destroy them in a few minutes. Boxing is a stupid sport. The entire point of it is to concuss your opponent and shorten their lifespan. Civilised, sane people should not box. And so to write about people that know all that, but box anyway…. you have a constantly rewarding story.
Tennis is a fantastic sport because it takes all the 1 vs 1 psychology of boxing and puts it in a place where people aren’t killed. Cricket writing is a fascinating study in the effects of Empire and the Corinthian spirit. American football writing is prose on how America views masculinity and so forth.
(I have no idea what good football writing is about. How humanity is linked by a universal language?)
There has to be something about the person’s play
Very why the reads on the deeply flawed, combustible and perma-injured “what if” athletes are more thrilling than those of the forever perfect. In the modern era of gym assisted, mechanical precision and widespread television coverage, there is something magical in reading about Allen Iverson “Eff all the haters” march to the 2001 NBA Finals.
Some players you really “had to be there” to understand why the culture shifted with them.
Eric Cantona never really did it outside England or internationally but he had the popped collar, the dribbles, the celebrations, and then as a result, the reams of poetry written about him.
Serena Williams HATES training. Hates it. One of the greatest tennis players of all time, capable of pulling feats no seen outside a comic book, someone who is hated by a percentage of people in her sport for ~reasons~absolutely hates dragging herself out of bed at 5am to practice. And I love her for it.
Shearer’s goal celebration is one of the most simple expressions of joy you will ever see on a sporting field. One arm outstretched, a man just happy to do something nice for his hometown club over and over again. You had to be there.
There have to be adversaries
Bill Simmons brought up an amazing bit about John McEnroe at the start of the NBA season — he used it to make a point about how Lebron James has been both lucky and unlucky in his constant stream of adversaries.
Nearly 32 years after Bjorn Borg had abruptly retired from tennis, McEnroe STILL hadn’t gotten over it. Borg brought the absolute best out of him. He thought about Borg every time he didn’t want to wake up, every time he didn’t feel like training, every time he didn’t want to hit balls for another 15 minutes. He needed Borg. It wasn’t just about winning majors and getting that no. 1 ranking for McEnroe … it was about that next time he played the laconic, long-haired Swede. He measured himself as an athlete against Borg and Borg only. That’s what drove him.
While it’s reductive to pump out macho “iron sharpens iron” sentiment and struggle being a necessary ingredient for greatness, there is something to it. The greats, the really memorable sporting icons that stand out and have the hymns sung about them, have a foe. Sometimes its one person. Sometimes its many. Sometimes its the fandom. Sometimes, like with Serena, it’s with the entire culture as a whole.
This is probably another reason why boxing and tennis writing can be so rewarding. By the very nature of those sports, rematches and constant warring with an opposite is inevitable.
You have to have…. something
Between La La Land and Whiplash, Damien Chazelle is really good about making films about jazz where the music is the least interesting part. La La Land is a study in how long audiences will put up with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone playing kissy face. Whiplash is a far more engrossing study in what certain people view as necessary to become “great”.
In Whiplash the question constantly posed was whether Miles Teller was prepared to pay the price of greatness, alienating himself from everyone and swapping decency for perfectionism. It’s a very common and compelling narrative for our sports stars. Half of the “never meet your heroes” belief comes from so many of our heroes becoming assholes in order to become “great”.
(Lebron is a fun inversion of this trope as he is most comfortable when he is playing as part of a loving family-type unit, replicating the experience of playing on his high school team — his assholeism comes from not being a selfish singular asshole, but rather because he wants to be a team player.)
While I’m not here to say the athletes with the best write ups are singular driven people, they do tend to have…. something. I don’t know precisely what it is. It could be an obsession. It could be something else. A reason. A nagging grudge. A father. A lack of a father. A mindset stemming from how they first came into the sport. Something
You have to have a “moment”
Mike Tyson was not a great heavyweight. Oh he was good. He was down right ferocious, but he lacked stamina, and following the loss of his trainer/father figure Cus D’amato, he went into a personal and professional tail spin I’m still not sure he’s ever recovered from.
Mike Tyson is one of the most fondly remembered boxers of all time despite being a good heavyweight fighter who never fought great heavyweights.
That’s mostly because his career is a litany of “moments”.
In 1988, Tyson walked out to a nightmarish experimental sound before his fight against Mike Spinks. He didn’t come out to music. He came out to some sort of primordial, intimidating noise.
Tyson didn’t wear a fight jacket. He came out to noise like he was a natural disaster. And then he ran through Spinks, knocking him out in the first round.
At the time, Spinks was an ok fighter. Good, not great. Yet the write ups that followed the bout… Bill Simmons once said if aliens invaded and he had to pick one fighter from all of time and space to defend humanity, he’d pick Mike Tyson before that fight.
Moments matter. They provide the “I was there” stories for when you explain why someone was an elite level athlete to your grandkids.
So what about Messi?
I’ve been stewing for a while on why Messi essays leave me so cold. Is it that he’s been so consistently perfect in the age of widespread television that familiarity has bred contempt?
Does his story of joining La Masia as a child and becoming the best in the world for a decade mean you can roll credits on the movie of his life at any time?
Is it that writing about individual talents in team sports like football leave you looking silly?
Or is it that in not speaking English, and being relatively introverted, we still have no idea what the Messi narrative is?
Who knows?
While you deal with all that, message me your favourite sports reads and send me your answer to this question:
At what point would you roll the credits on the Jamie Vardy movie?
I’m going to keep doing these blogs on a weekly basis in an effort to kind my writing pen sharp while I look for a job. If you like my writing and would like to hire me, I can be found at carlanka.me
If you like my writing and want to pick my brains about something else, including what you’d like me to write next, hit me up on Twitter — @Ankaman616
