May 21, 2025

Feats of Mediocrity

I’ve drafted like, four dispatches in the past week, only to dump them halfway through because they feel trite or boring or vague. So you’re going to get more sports stuff.

It’s an exciting time in women’s sports, the beautiful overlap in US women’s sports where the WNBA, NWSL, and PWHL hockey league are all playing at once. I’m not going to talk about it today, but just know that you can watch all of them right now.

I was planning to talk about another exciting time we’re in, which is promotion/relegation playoffs. But I’m not going to do that either, maybe another day.

Instead, let me tell you about what’s happening later today…

I love sports for a lot of reasons. The drama, the feats of incredible team work, the personalities and characters, the upsets, the invincibles, and so on. But I also love sports for the incredible moments of mediocrity. I think this is actually a defense mechanism I acquired while living in Cleveland, with all the mediocre men’s teams of my childhood years¹, but I’ve come to embrace and love the absurdity of mediocre sports.

So what’s happening today? It’s the almost-prestigious Europa League final in Bilbao, where we will see Tottenham Hotspurs take on Manchester United in what may be the most mediocre European final ever.

I don’t have all the stats on hand, about how historical this match-up is and so on, so I’m going to go on vibes and whatever I can pull together quickly. But to set it up, both teams are from England’s Premier League, which is made of 20 teams. The bottom three teams will be relegated at the end of the season, and Spurs and United are not in the bottom three; however, they are, respectively, fourth and fifth from the bottom.

That is to say, they are currently the two worst teams in the league who aren’t getting kicked out of the league in a week.

Speaking on United’s season, I know that they had their worst start since the 1989–90 campaign, after being a giant of the league for much of the intervening time. If you search for the word “worst” in the Wikipedia page for the team’s current season, it appears four times, including one time quoting their literal manager, when he said “We are the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United.” Ooof. He’s not correct exactly, there are five seasons since 1893 where United finished worse than they are now. But if they hold 16th place in the table, it will be their worst season since 1974.

I don’t know as much on the Spurs, because the editors maintaining their current season page have really just focused on stats instead of headlines, but similarly, if they stay in 17th place, with one match left to play, this will be their worst top-flight finish since 1977 and they have had a total of 7 worse seasons in their history, dating back to 1910. If they lose this match, or their last league match, they will break their team record for most losses in a season across all competitions.

Incredibly, while both of these teams are mathematically eliminated from any European contention in the league competition, nearly 30 points behind the line, whichever one wins this match will qualify for next year’s Champions League competition. This will be infuriating to some team somewhere who will just miss the cut because this mediocre team managed to only be successful in one crucial competition this year. I’m not even going to begin to describe the allotment of Champions League spots, because among other things, it involves the use of something called “UEFA coefficients.”

Moving along, sure, both of these teams have been poor in the league but they must be impressive to get this far in the competition, right?

I dunno, man. Looking at their path to the final, neither of them had particularly impressive results, or a challenging path, until their final few matches. Because of those baffling  “UEFA coefficients,” neither team had to play in any of the qualifying rounds, meaning less work to get to the “League phase” (don’t worry about it) and once they got to the league phase, they each won five out of eight matches, leaving them solidly in the middle of the pack that moved on to the next stage. 

Spurs path from there was comparatively easy, and they managed to win the first two stages of the knockout round by one goal each. They did have an emphatic win in the semi-final round, to knock out Bodø/Glimt, a tiny Norwegian club who was filling the role of the competition’s Cinderella story.

United’s path was arguably a little more difficult, as they had to face Lyon in the quarter-finals, who had also performed well in the league phase, and Athletic Bilbao in the semi-finals, who were favorites to win the competition, but weirdly crumbled against United. I still don’t know what happened there, but if I were a betting person, I would have lost money on that one.

By the time the knockout phase of the Europa League came around, it was clear that neither team were not going to finish well in the league, so it’s possible, and even likely, that their respective managers put more emphasis on the Europa League games, as a path to salvaging their seasons and maybe saving their jobs, and so far it’s worked. They have qualified for the final. Which is definitely happening. Between these…two…clubs.

I heard over and over during both of their league matches this weekend that momentum breeds momentum. Which is concerning to hear, since they both lost. In fact, let’s talk about their current form.

Manchester United:

Last five matches in all competitions? 2 wins, 3 losses

Last five matches against other English teams? 0 wins, 1 draw, 4 losses

Tottenham Hotspurs:

Last five matches in all competitions? 2 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses

Last five matches against other English teams? 0 wins, 1 draw, 4 losses

On recent form, I guess Spurs are doing better? Kind of?

The only thing to really differentiate these two teams and their terrible seasons is that, although Spurs are one place lower in the table, one point behind United, Spurs have beat United every time they’ve met this season, by an aggregate 8-3 score.

Truly, if you asked me to make a prediction here, I couldn’t. Anything could happen. It could be a goalfest. It could be a terribly boring stalemate decided by a single goal from a mistake. It could go either way in a truly lopsided finish to one team. Or it could go all the way to penalties. 

Basically, here’s what I’m getting at, here is my big point:

At 3pm ET today, Tottenham Hotspurs will take on Manchester United in Bilbao, in what may be the biggest display of mediocrity on such a stage. 

And I cannot wait.