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“Is this what you expected?” Jurgen turns and asks his Vice-Captain.
Trent shakes his head, slowly, looking up at the silent stands before arrivers start to trickle in. Clouds hang frozen in the sky. He smiles, flashing it at Jurgen who smiles back, same as last time. He reaches out to pat Trent on the shoulder, once, hard, but lets his hand linger.
He looks at him, he looks at the stadium he’s entered thousands of times before and wonders how it changed. It looks more beautiful now, he always looked at it with awe but now it’s bordering on worship, he looks at the pitch with the bright lights and it looks like heaven.
Maybe, just maybe, in this chapter, it could become a place of worship. Shankly had called it his church but when he was preparing for a game, Trent thought the pitch looked like heaven.
“It’s better.”
–
This is how the next chapter begins.
But it wasn’t. Because it starts with phone calls in the middle of the night, long early morning walks and scribbling details on any pieces of paper he could find. It starts with failing to qualify last season, it starts with nearly conquering Europe the season before. It starts with the first league title for 30 years, 25 matches unbeaten. It starts with getting his childhood team into the first league, it starts with relegation, watching your parents cry in the stands. It starts with a man in a jersey laughing at him, telling him he’ll never make it. Starts with a boy, and a ball, because that’s how all of these stories start. Also how they end.
–
Chelsea ends nil nil. It’s a start. A red spark is being slowly stocked into a flame.
They can begin to learn about the season, but learn is the wrong verb because it’s more like checking off a list, finding quirks in a friend you’ve known for years. An audience watches on, they were well known. Liverpool carries a disproportionate weight throughout world football. They have songs that echo across the planet.
People begin to watch them, judging them against their past.
They won’t win anything this season, they won’t be able to do what they’ve done before. Boxers that got old and didn’t know when to give up, that fought one too many.
Trent thinks that’s a load of nonsense.
–
Bournemouth arrive but leave with nothing.
A glimpse of red reborn in the sunlight on the pitch. The past happened, the future is coming, the now is happening, but it’s all red.
–
Trent Alexander Arnold. Back to the boy with a ball, this story in its entirety. Back to the boy with a brain big enough for the Premier League, frustrated by his growth, or rather, lack thereof. He looks around at the men on the pitch with him, men he would go to war for, and wonders if, after everything, it’s going to be the same story, again.
He runs, waiting for them to believe it too.
–
Going away to Newcastle can always hurt and it seems like it might be the same story as always: knowing what to do, knowing what must be done, and not knowing how to do it.
0-1.
Banners droop in the stands, knowing that they have to watch their team lose but praying for a miracle anyway.
2-1.
You simply have to believe sometimes, what other choice do you have?
–
Maybe this season is about expectations, Trent understands expectations. He says the right things in interviews, smiles his trademark smiles, laces his boots a little tighter. A small boy arrives, placing them down in front of him, before running away again; he looks up to see him hiding behind the leg of the kitman.
Maybe they do believe him.
–
They leave it late, they always leave it late, but they take Wolverhampton for dead, the orange team in tatters. Clap your hands if you believe, this is hope, and it’s red.
–
Whispers of the ‘title’ and ‘winning’ echo off every wall, words that don’t factor into logic. Only fuel for a desperate voice, a desperate away fan watching his team be robbed of three points, a half remembered shred of hope.
Look, the story is still about a boy and a ball. A boy who could fight and want to do everything he can to not lose, a boy learning to fight with his heart, not just his right foot (though he could do both, and when they align, then– a different story), the story is the boy who finds out the hard way that fortune does not favour the good. Fortune likes to fuck him over, because fortune, like football, can never be estimated.
–
It’s about loyalty. Trent understands loyalty. As a child, he’d never understood loyalty, but as a man it’s different. Loyalty comes from watching fans cry in the stands, swearing to never make them feel like this again.
They draw in Brighton. He makes them go and thank their fans in the far corner of the stadium.
Do you know what it’s like to hitch your heart to a football team?
–
He vocalises it once, to Jurgen, because of course. Jurgen understands this feeling.
“What if I can’t,” He says, very quietly.
What if he can’t? What if he doesn’t know the answers? What if they find him out, finding a fraud in the end, finding that belief cannot become real, no matter how much you want it to.
Because they will, in the end.
“You can,” Jurgen says, simply. It isn’t belief so much as it’s a declaration of trust, faith, perhaps.
“Okay,” He smiles, believing it.
–
They win the local derby.
Sometimes, you just have to believe. It’s the only choice you have.
–
Hardship is the harshest test for belief.
They come out the other side of it, because of course they do, you can still see the shadows of red reborn in the pitch.
–
1-1. Hard place to go.
Fans clap, because they believe. How could you not?
This is it, it is everything and nothing at the same time. It’s football.
–
Nobody actually believes it will happen, but they’re showing signs of champions.
Maybe, right now, he needs them to trust him more than he needs them to believe him.
4-3. Unbelievable.
Clap if you believe.
–
Back in London, they get lucky.
Luck only comes to those who try, to those who believe.
–
They draw at home, it hurts but they need to believe.
He looks out at them all, willing them to trust him.
This team won’t let them down.
–
It’s the time of season where he has no energy for anything that is not football. They’re playing every 3 days, but people are starting to believe.
They whisper about titles and winning but now there is a path, through the whispers. He wants them to whisper about titles, whisper about trophies, he wants them to trust him, to believe him.
–
January means Cup competitions and it gets harder again but Trent knows that he was built for this career. They go again, they go again, they go again.
Jurgen brings the kids on, and they win 2-0. Players go off for internationals, he wishes them well, believing in them because if you don’t believe in your teammates then you won’t win anything.
He feels a ligament in his knee tear, but he continues and plays on, because they need him. These players and these fans need him.
Hitching your heart to a football team, it’s thrilling wearing the same badge as the crowd. It’s everything.
–
For 90 minutes, he doesn’t have to think about anything else. It’s pure drama, every tackle a triumph to be celebrated and every goal a feat to be shouted about.
There are bad days, days where he makes mistakes and they lose. But it’s everything, he can celebrate and feel sorrow on a magnitude that few other things in his life can create.
It’s a beautiful game, sometimes he thinks it might kill him but there are other days where he thinks it might be why he exists.
For 90 minutes, nothing else in his life matters.
–
He heard one pundit wonder if this was the same team as last season, Liverpool player who? They try twice but they bring Fulham to their knees.
Not bad for a boxer who took on one too many fights.
–
It comes out on a Friday. Every supporter knows where they were when they heard, every football fan knows where they were when it happened.
He hates to admit it, but his belief falters for a moment. Trent sits and wonders what he did wrong - wonders why Jurgen is leaving, after everything.
Somehow, it brings the city closer together. It brings the team closer, brothers in arms who were willing to run through brick walls for each other anyway.
They swear that this season will be special. They will do all that they need to, it might help them kick on and win even bigger.
He declares his faith in this team, willing them all to believe, like he does.
–
He gets injured because football can never be accurately estimated, for 90 minutes nobody knows what can happen.
Trent watches from the stands - believing them blindly because this is his team and those are his brothers.
For three months, he misses it more than anything.
—
They lose at home and he makes eye contact with a crying fan.
He’s lying on the pitch, having given everything he has, but he knows he could have run an extra yard to stop himself from seeing those tears, to stop the dreams of a perfect farewell crashing down around him.
–
They go back to London and it’s raining.
It’s a team torn apart by injuries but he still runs and waits for his team to believe, they only have a little bit, they’re scraping the bottom of the jar now.
Sometimes it’s enough, not today though. Losing in London hurts just the same as earlier in the season. He places his hand over the logo on his chest, willing them to never stop believing.
It’s raining, but their heads are held high.
–
This season is about winning, he understands winning, he knows how to win. It is the fact buried until the superstitious rituals, groans of pessimism, the fears and disbelief. It’s about winning, the fact half forgotten under the reality of loss.
But losing bonds a team in a way that winning never will.
–
What is your deepest fear? He asks one of the kids that arrives in training, seeing his team torn apart by injuries.
It can’t be relegation, there’s no better place to start than the bottom.
He knows his answer.
Fifth. Again.
–
Maybe they’re still a child with long limbs and thin torsos, trying to hold their head up, keep their head up under the heavy crown of history. It’s too big to sit well right now, it slips over his forehead but he will bite his lip and walk on with hope in his heart.
–
Maybe this story is better told in reverse, here is the happiness. Here is the blonde man grinning his signature grin, stepping in and ruffling his Vice-Captain’s gelled hair. Here he is leading his boyhood club, here he is scoring his first goal for them. Look at them all smiling, listen to this feeling, don’t you want to feel like this again?
Look at the confetti, the tears, the elation, the drooping banners. He can’t do last season again. He just can’t, and they won’t have to, if they believe him.
–
There was a boy who wanted too much, the boy who would never settle for anything below the impossible.
There was the boy who proved the impossible can be achieved, if you believe it enough.
He stands in the middle of the pitch, not knowing the answers, again.
He watches them equalise, the comeback kings done in by their own best trick. Trent stands on the centre circle, furious. Jurgen’s mouth presses into a thin line, but he keeps his hands to himself, because Trent is furious.
–
It’s Wolves on the final day, the last push, the last act of a disappointing season. The sorrow of those leaving rolls back as the sun reflects off the pitch, reminding them what this is, it’s everything.
Of course the sorrows will return like an old wound that aches and never quite heals; there will be games where everything makes sense but the flame refuses to light.
But for 90 minutes? Nobody is leaving him.
Soon the clouds will blow back in, and he will run, footsteps haunted by the past, fingertips stretched desperate toward the future. Soon, but for now there’s a wide open sunlit sky for miles and miles. Trent spins around just to take it all in again.
The understanding is brief and eternal, like a last minute winner in a league game on a Saturday evening. There will be other seasons, players will leave, but none of them will hurt quite like this does right now.
Seasons will arrive like the seasons that came before them, days and years stacked in meaningless numbers but he leaves it, letting them settle, not reaching or trying to take it apart.
At the moment, he just needs to keep the present together.
The men- his men- the players sling arms around shoulders. The refrain is the same, home or way.
It’s just that simple, all of sudden. Thin as a wire threaded deeply into his heart.
–
This is what it means, everything and nothing.
New seasons arrive, but it won’t ever really be the same.
Do you know what it’s like to hitch your heart to a football team?