humans are no strangers…

…to nostalgia, it is a feeling which is both lovely and crippling, pervasive and welcomed. In spite of the anguish, we love to be sentimental about what has passed, convincing ourselves of the past’s superiority over the present. Sport reflects life, and nostalgia is entwined in our understanding of the games we love.
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So when Ademola Lookman was included in the shortlist for this year’s Balon D’or, the ‘nostalgia merchants’ massed to assert that their emotional ties to naughties football weren’t rooted in sentimentality, but objectivity positing that football is now bad where before it was good.

There began a cascade of Twitter threads and TikTok edits of a distant footballing epoch of which we’ll never let go. The media covered all aspects of a time we yearn for; the niche and the popular, the sublime and the quotidian aspects of 2000s football. TikTok edits of Matty Taylor and Cameron Jerome captioned with doves and overlaid with indie rock tunes were the latest footballing edition of humanity’s primal yearning for the past.
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Poor Ademola Lookman, whose greatest personal achievement has been used as evidence of football’s demise, and has kickstarted the latest procession of mourning for the past.