The Price Of Loyalty In Football And Relationships

The Dilemma Between Short-Term Glory or Long-Term Appreciation

After watching the Champions League Final with my friend, I could not help but unravel the story of two former teammates with different trajectories: a rising young star who was traded from Dortmund to Real Madrid last year, the two finalists of tonight's game, and a club legend whose last match was today.

In the end, Real Madrid made it 9 out of its last 9 Champions League finals, and Dortmund crushed at the gates of European glory for a second time in the past 13 years.

It was another reminder of where the two teams are in the grand scheme of things. A team of winners (Real Madrid) won against a team of plucky underdogs (Dortmund), who came short again.

Despite their courageous display and playing Madrid out of the park for a good part of the 1st hour, Ancelotti did the Italian job on them, scoring 2 goals in the last 20 minutes (Real Madrid xG 0.08) and keeping a clean sheet (Dortmund xG 1.82). xG is a statistical measure of the number of goals expected in a game based on the opportunities created by each team.

One team was ruthless and efficient, whilst the other one was wasteful.

When Marco Reus came on the pitch, the aforementioned Dortmund legend, my friend joked: "This is when Dortmund is going to concede", and it did not miss before conceding a second one soon after.

Despite his assistance with the first goal, Jude Bellingham, the English rising star, was mainly transparent despite a glowing season.

During the heyday of Marco Reus, when he was not the leading player captaining Dortmund, he was part of the deadly trio with Lewandosky and Goetze. Indeed, it was his boyhood club, and he decided to stay faithful to it. Achieving the individual award of Bundesliga Player of the Season for 3 years.

What trophies did he win:

5 tinpot German cups and no Bundesliga title or major national trophies.

Last year, he missed the German title thanks to a massive choke from his team on the previous day of the season.

This is the insult after the injury he suffered before the 2014 World Cup Germany Won, which he did not take part in after he suffered an ankle injury in a warm-up game before the competition.

He was the young aspiring German star Bayern Munich (the Big Dog of the German league) had its eye on ever since his younger days, but he decided to go and stay where his loyalties were.

Regardless of the trophies he would have won with Bayern Munich over the years, as one of the many future stars Dortmund fed to them. Goetze went there and petered out for nobody to remember him afterwards. On the other hand, Reus will always be remembered by the Dortmund fans at the expense of a pitiful trophy cabinet relative to the height of his talent and the output he delivers. Lewandoski became a Bayern Munich Legend.

This reminds me of Steven Gerrard at Liverpool FC, who never won the Premier League (at least he won one Champions League). His famous 2014 slip caused Liverpool to choke on their lead, the year they were the closest to winning the competition during his tenure.

It could also be argued that he was not as loyal to Liverpool FC due to the transfer request he submitted to join Chelsea in the summer of 2005. Nevertheless, he became a club legend at the expense of the most revered trophy he never won at Liverpool, the Premier League.

On the other hand, we have Jude Bellingham, who decided to take the gamble of joining Dortmund in 2020 to leave them last year for Real Madrid. He won the double in the space of a year: La Liga and the Champions League at 20 years old. He did in one year what Reus could not do in a whole career.

It has to be said, though, that misfortune has a place in professional sports when you look at the trajectory of some players. Harry Kane never won anything despite being the captain and staying loyal to Tottenham for 14 years. He eventually decided to join Bayern Munich, which has won the German Bundesliga for the past 10 years. He, however, missed out on it in the 2023-2024 season despite scoring 44 goals out of 45 games.

Like Marco Reus coincidentally jinxing the Champions League finale this evening when he entered the pitch, Kane jinxed through his arrival what would have been a customary win for Bayern Munich.

But how does this relate to relationships in the modern era?

The advent of social media, dating apps, technology, and modernity in recent years eventually liberalised the relationship market.

The football market liberalised after the Bosman ruling in 1995. Before, professional clubs within certain parts of Europe could stop players from joining one in another country even if their contracts had expired. Since then, football (soccer) players have been able to move when their contracts expire, meaning they have leverage to demand huge signing fees. This is when all hell broke loose.

Add in the Oil and Oligarch money coming in, and you saw the rise of mercenaries' ever-increasing wages and transfer fees. Loyalty became a rare commodity with very few partisans.

Few clubs and even fewer leagues became heavens for the top stars, with feeder clubs specialising in raising the next generation of football talents, selling them at a profit, and keeping their business models afloat at the expense of glory. Portuguese clubs are well known for ripping off richer leagues with ridiculous asking prices, for example.

When it comes to relationships, IG has become the marketplace of aspiring star whores waiting to be bid up by the wealthy oil money owners and other trust fund babies when it is not rich entrepreneurs or business owners. If your girl has an IG, she is still on the market. I'm sorry to break it for you.

Many men have become the placeholder until a better bidder comes in and makes a move for her.

The Bosman ruling is the technology which enabled Hypergamy on steroids that we are seeing in 2024. Many of them are free agents, and like footballers, they follow a similar path.

You can bag an early 8+ in High School. This is the equivalent of a Football Academy, where poorer clubs can foster young talents cheaply before scouts of bigger clubs come and poach them.

Once they are in the limelight of a major league, they can move up quickly in the space of a good season or two. The other average ones will be stuck in the lower leagues with much depressed wages and career prospects.

You can have women that can keep themselves competitive for many years but will have to accept being benched (James Milner) or some blossom even more in their later years (Arjen Robben)

This is the difference between the girls who go to major cities and those stuck in mid-tier cities. The big money is at specific places, and it is traded and exchanged.

Few have the shoulders or what it takes to keep one of these guys used to swiping products, investments, and people for business or pleasure. And they end up using their best years at the hand of the "Oligarchs and Sheiks" (Overlord Pimps) to eventually get a last cash grab around the end of their career in their 30s in a lower league (e.g. Turkey, MLS, Saudi League) when they don't go back to their original Club (Clean-up Man).

The relationship market has been liberalised and monetised. The choice for younger women with a good potential for higher prospects is to get the bag thinking their local market value (Kansas 10) can withstand the star market (to eventually realise that most of the time, she is a Miami 6).

Like in the football market, it is hard for women to give up on the opportunity at the highest of their peak value to live a lifestyle they most likely will never have if they decide to settle for the guy they would have in previous decades. Had they, they would most likely be revered like the Football legend Reus, and Gerrard have become for their Club.

But is it enough?

That is why I say if she is an 8+, she is for the community. Should you choose to get with one, unless she was a high school sweetheart (Football Academy + Whole Career at the Club), remember that she will have been exchanged between many parties (Logan Paul's now wife) before getting with you.

Does that mean it is over? For most mere monetary mortals, the best they can hope for is a loyal 6. 7s are the Ben Arfa of the world, where they had the talent to make it but never had the right attitude nor discipline to make it to the top and stay there.

If you still want to benefit from the 8+ in the short term, you can still agree on a loan with the club holder with no buying clause.

In the end, Loyalty has an expensive opportunity cost for 8+ and the women who believe they are as such despite not being there. At best, they are highlights players who got high off the likes and views of their best plays on Youtube (=IG likes).

We are in a market of mercenaries like that of the football/soccer market almost 30 years after the Bosman ruling. Loyal girls and footballers staying with their boyhood club are a thing of the past, at best you can hold onto them for a few years until the beginning of their 20s, but like Kylian Mbappe, they are likely to leave their boyhood club to go to Real Madrid.