I never used to believe in momentum when it came to sports. I always thought of it as a construct created by the sports media in order to have a narrative that more cleanly fit into the ever-quickening news cycle – you know, something Chris Broussard would think up in between breaks citing his sources.
But after having suffered through what can only be described as the most painful football season I have witnessed in recent memory, I am starting to change my mind. Or more appropriately, I am forcing myself to change my mind so as to avoid the worrying truth that my beloved Borussia Dortmund just may not be that good.
It is here that I should note that my two sports passions are the New York Knicks (for whose fandom I blame my mum’s side of the family for living in New York) and Borussia Dortmund (for whose fandom I can only blame myself and the fact that I got a Dortmund teddy bear when I was two). One of these teams is 10-41 as I write this and the other one stands 16th in the league in a season wherein they were expected to be third at worst. Shockingly, none of my sporting analysis in this volume will feature excessive optimism.
Momentum is a lovely word. It rolls off the tongue, almost mimicking its meaning. It is also a word that we are incredibly quick to ascribe to any sporting event, provided that someone has won and someone has lost. Perhaps that’s why America hates it when games end in draws, because they are a literal stasis for the teams involved. If a team wins, they’re gaining momentum. If they lose five straight, then win in overtime, maybe their momentum’s starting to change. Lose 10 straight, and you have no momentum.
It’s all so trite; the preserve of commentators who do not want to go into specifics regarding the myriad of ways in which a team can be good (the Hawks or Bayern Munich, for example) or bad (the Knicks, Dortmund). Or at least, that is what I believed before I saw a team that the advanced statistics had placed at least sixth in the league fall to the bottom of the league, before a possibly season-saving win away to Freiburg.
The struggle of the fan is to maintain hope when a series of largely inexplicable results does not go your way. This struggle is mirrored by that of the players, who often are at a loss when they simply cannot live up to expectations. For Dortmund, this has been a season comprised of quizzical expression, a communal disbelief that their still sprightly play has been rewarded by a series of close losses and dropped points.
Just two weeks ago, the fury of fans in Signal Iduna Park forced an on-field confrontation with the team’s captains, a move almost unheard of in world soccer. Yet, watching the video, you are struck by the sense of confusion that reigns; it is not so much anger as it is sheer incredulity. Injuries have mounted, posts have been struck, defensive blunders have been punished with all the clinicalness of a seasoned surgeon, and yes, momentum has spiraled such that even the most reasonable fans are left wondering whether to chalk the season up to whatever the German equivalent of the Curse of the Bambino is – I don’t know what this would be but I’m sure it has way too many consonants in its name.
The prevailing sense of the season has been that nothing that could have gone right has done so. Such is momentum and such is the state of affairs that leaves many fans, including me, with sweaty palms and nervous grimaces whenever they are called upon to talk soccer with people who will inevitably mock them (hi Dad!).
Perhaps the lesson here is that momentum is less a media or spiritual construct than it is a crippling lack of self-belief in the team concerned. The worry is that as bad results start to pile up, players start to instinctively condition themselves to expect a misfortune to arrive and begin to play with a burden of fear that hinders their play. Momentum is not an abstract; that would be too simple. Rather, it is a vicious cycle that traps teams in a damaging loop of their own construction. They haven’t won, so they don’t win. They don’t win, so they won’t win next week. Just ask any Dortmund fan.
Dylan Fugel’s editors had a hard time allowing the word ‘mum’ to be printed in this newspaper, but he threatened us. Give Dylan some spelling tips at dfugel ‘at’ stanford.edu.