This Week in Fandom: It’s 3am on the U-Bahn

Jalen Brunson, Knicks captain, courtesy of NBA.com

Every week, I write my nephew letters about sports that he mostly doesn’t read. They centre on my support for the Patriots Giants, Yankees, Knicks, and Tottenham Hotspur, and his love of Chelsea, LeBron James, and prop bets.

Caleb Williams is a very good quarterback. I forgot the first of Thursday’s Thanksgiving games would be on at a reasonable hour. I realised just as I got off the U-Bahn at Mehringdamm, snagged a box of chicken bulgogi at the Korean place up the street, and got home just in time to watch Coach Matt Eberflus get fired in slow motion. It was a weird one against the Detroit Lions. Detroit did what they do lately — start aggressively, accumulate the sorts of points the laws of physics normally don’t permit in the time it takes to journey down a football field, etcetera … and then they sort of switched off.

Williams kept plugging away. I forget what I started doing in the background. Maybe I leafed through a few more pages of that Tony Tulathimutte book, Rejection, whose toxic ass characters I wholeheartedly regret ever meeting. I’m positive I fucked around on Instagram, a personal wormhole of WNBA, New York subway, and British Shorthair content. I haven’t watched the Bears like that in several weeks but I was impressed by the rookie’s discipline. He hung around in the pocket, threw I think a bunch of mid-rangers, maybe even a few checkdowns. His work was so clean he made me doubt, just this week, that Rome Odunze is a future guy. But the Bears lit that scoreboard up and were a score away from winning a game that, ear test, sounded like a concert venue right after the main attraction does their thing, fucks off.

I watched the Bears not call the timeout, and was convinced it was me that had missed something. It’s like in Madden when you’re driving downfield on one of the homies and then, lost in the shit-talk, you forget you literally just tapped your way through the 2-minute warning. Matt Eberflus was gone in the morning, or (at least) by the time I got home and fired up First Take the following evening.

Tai, my Masshole friend in Reinickendorf, invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner Friday night. It’s a long commute between mine and his and the route I know off-dome wasn’t available, which made things slightly worse. But whatever, I guess; on the way over, now that I’ve got League Pass on my phone, I tested the subway’s connectivity and logged into the Knicks’ afternoon visit to Charlotte. I watched for maybe 20 solid minutes before I got where I was going, and kept distracting myself checking for my stop. There were silver linings. Minutes for Jericho Sims. A Jalen Brunson injury scare that turned out to be nothing. Maybe I saw a Mikhail Bridges’ make, and I promise I don’t mean for that to sound so apparitional. The Knicks won by 1 — I saw the score later, under the table playing Cards Against Humanity, which is a series of thin lines against new acquaintances — and honestly Knicks by 1 in Charlotte is about as depressing as a win can get.

I don’t think it’s a terrible season by any means. It’s just an odd thing to still be building up to something with so much talent already on the payroll.

I’d threatened to carry my entire PlayStation just so Tai and I could get it going on College Football 25. When I got to his apartment, taking my shoes and my puffer jacket off, I had to be careful pulling a bottle of French red out of my backpack. There were four other guests, so I leave it to you how much of a clown I’d have looked like if the controller had spilled out of my luggage just then.

I’d gotten pretty good at Madden before moving to Berlin, at which point I’d made the sophisticated resolution to be a man of classic film, contemporary literature, and endless brunch on museum Sundays. I can’t read a playbook for shit, can kind of suss out a formation here and there, so I played the game the way I once envisioned playing the guitar: with only an innate understanding of its notes and temperament. I’ve so far fashioned a few drives this way on CFB 25, whose camera is prone to skyward ascension, and whose football zips out the quarterback’s hands so quickly I’m convinced it’s time to upgrade my glasses. I think I’ve played LSU sixteen times on Dynasty Mode, abandoned losing situations on at least a dozen of those, for how little time their blitz will afford my offense. Serves me right for picking Southern Cal as my favourite team.

Anyways on the way home, around 2:30, the train the map told me I was supposed to be on went the opposite way. I heard the driver announce something I was sure wasn’t good for me — I still speak the German of an embryo — and then we travelled backwards, maybe even in time, past stops I’d never seen before in my life. It wasn’t freezing out but I was exhausted. I talked myself out of a Coke Zero at the späti when I got to Kreuzberg, “Much too late,” but still thought it made sense to fire up Boston v Chicago at the United Center. Passed out without seeing a single bucket. Woke up exhausted, again, and figured Boston had carried the day. Deep bench. Endless 3s. Porzingis, if healthy, fucking shit up in the paint. Is this why every other NBA thumbnail on YouTube is concern for the league’s ratings and commercial health? Because too many games feel a little rec’ league in capacity, aren’t nearly as fun ‘cause everybody’s got a shoe deal or a podcast, and jackasses like me can just Houdini whatever the hell they think happened?

Cards Against Humanity is an awkward but interesting social contract, especially amongst relative strangers. The line you’re allowed to cross moves constantly, and wine bends it a little bit towards your toes. Winning isn’t everything, I don’t think.

*

Especially not if you’re Tottenham Hotspur. Sometimes I think if I just stopped all this, actually followed a club with loftier expectations than “potentially challenge for the title,” I’d be a more confident person. Less vulnerable in situations where I ought to be more sexy. Less sexy in situations where I need to be more stern. You hit snooze on your alarm clock the week you said you’d get better at German. You say you’ll find a way to do cardio in the living room. You promise you’ll read on your lunchbreak, on remote days, and not fire up 2/3 CFB 25 games you’ll rage-quit after throwing 2/3 red-zone interceptions. These are the metaphysical equivalents of drawing at home to Fulham the week after you smash Manchester City in their house of sin.

What can I tell you anymore. Despite the numerous passing drills we no doubt practise midweek, half the team reckons it’s got the creativity for take-on dribbles, a fair number of which result in loss of the ball in critical areas. (Many areas of the pitch are critical when your defenders play that high up.) I’ve heard Liverpool fans and also neutrals talking up Ryan Gravernberch and the role he now plays in Liverpool’s midfield, as a first line of defense (a role we keep expecting one of Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Matar Sarr, or Yves Bissouma to magically play) … I can’t help wishing we had one of those, a Gravernberch or even a Jurrien Timber; a stubborn lad who gets off solely on a bit of calculated violence. (I said calculated, Cristian Romero.)

I hate to have to say it but we’re soft. Timo Werner, twice, had a man beaten if only he could lust after the ball more passionately than his appointed marker. Both times he looked to the ref because the other guys weren’t (sigh) playing fair.

Sometimes there are clues in well-coached opponents, as to the little things we can get better at. On the ever-dependable, always-scientific eye-test Marco Silva’s Fulham side — a very good football organisation, mind you — played a lengthier pass than we did per counter-attack, stretching our defenders and challenging us multiple times to foot races. Our own distribution never threatened to pull anybody out of place, and I couldn’t help but think the patterns looked the same. Werner playing the pass exactly where his marker expected him to. Maddison and Sonny playing on separate islands, which if you flew between the layover might last several hours for all that sideways passing.

I’m more settled than I sound, honestly. I’m just not so optimistic about the future, or the idea that anybody at Spurs has considered this basic philosophical nugget: maybe we can do both? Attack like our lives depend on it, and build a fort out of several pillows just outside our penalty box?

How hard could it be to find some energetic, sugar high, six-foot teenager that wants to be paid in Haribos and points for their Ultimate Team profile? Get it together, Tottenham, for fuck’s sake.