When the Title Arrives in a Text Message

The previous time Simon Mignolet celebrated a title, he was on a podium in Madrid, a medal hanging from a ribbon around his neck, embracing his Liverpool teammates as they celebrated winning the Champions League. Cannons fired glitter into the air behind him; to his left, a red wall of fans serenaded the players as heroes. The party lasted until the next day.

This time, though, things were different. Mignolet was sitting at home when his phone screen lit up. It was a WhatsApp message from the player liaison officer at Club Bruges, the team in his native Belgium that Mignolet had joined the previous summer. It had been sent to the whole squad.

“The season has been canceled,” it read. “We’ve been crowned champions.”

Soon, his screen filled with celebratory emojis as his teammates congratulated one another. Mignolet was proud of what he and his team had achieved: It was the first time he had won his national championship. He did not worry that it was not deserved. But he knew that something was missing.

“That feeling of winning something,” he said, as he searched for what was lacking. “It was like you had passed an exam. Or got your driver’s license.”

Over the last few weeks, dozens of players across Europe have found themselves in much the same position as Mignolet and his teammates: anointed as champions by formula, rather than confirmed as such on the field, after leagues chose to end their seasons early rather than try to play them out.

\"Simon — Simon Mignolet and his teammates were 15 points clear in the Belgian standings when the season ended early.Credit...Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

Club Bruges was the first team to get the news, but more have followed. Paris St.-Germain won its seventh French title in eight years after the men’s Ligue 1 season was declared over by the country’s government. Celtic won a ninth championship in a row after Scotland’s men’s clubs voted not to continue. Lyon, Chelsea and Barcelona all claimed national women’s titles without completing their seasons.

Many of the players on those teams have experienced the same blend of emotions that Mignolet experienced. Pride in their work, satisfaction at their achievement, joy at claiming a prize they feel they deserved — but all of it mixed with a vague sense of anticlimax and an air of unreality. It is the difference, perhaps, between a victory earned and a triumph won.

“I’ve won titles before when we weren’t playing,” said Lucy Bronze, part of the Lyon women’s team that claimed a 14th straight French title when the league was called in April.

“Our nearest challengers have lost, and that’s been that. You don’t feel it when that game is over, but you do feel it the next morning, when you see all of your teammates.” The difference this time, she said, is that the lockdown has prevented the squad from getting together.

“It won’t feel real until we can celebrate all together,” she said.

In part, Bronze said, that is because of how drawn-out the process to be confirmed as champion has been. The French season was postponed in March, but it was not until late April that the country’s prime minister, Édouard Philippe, confirmed it would not be starting again. (Bronze heard that news from her mother, by text message; the club then gathered its players together on Zoom to make it official.)

Even then, though, there was a wait. P.S.G. was awarded the men’s title almost immediately, but Lyon’s women had to wait almost another week for their confirmation and coronation. “When I was at Liverpool, we started the day of one season in third and ended up waiting for other scores to come in, confirming we had won the league,” Bronze said. “In comparison, I haven’t felt that moment yet.”

Most clubs have done what they can to try to allow their players to enjoy it. Mignolet and his Club Bruges teammates were presented with their championship trophy a few weeks later at the club’s training facility. They each got to take a picture with it, and were given a celebratory glass of Champagne. The club’s president and its coach made speeches. “It was a little chance to come together,” Mignolet said. “It was very happy.”

In Scotland, where the season’s being curtailed led to considerable acrimony, Celtic not only presented its captain, Scott Brown, with the trophy, but dispatched it to each player’s house, to allow everyone to share the moment with his family.

It was the 10th championship Brown had won at Celtic, and the ninth in a row as captain. They have, he said, all been different. His first, in 2008, was as euphoric as he had hoped. “Celtic were playing in Dundee that day, and we took over the city,” he said. He remembered throwing his boots out the changing room window to fans waiting outside.

But others have been a little more understated. “We have won leagues before on a Wednesday night, but not really been able to celebrate them because we have had a cup final on the Saturday,” Brown said.

And at least with this one, his own safety was guaranteed. “There’s a couple of trophy lifts where I’ve got blood gushing down my head in the pictures,” he said. “I’ve been on the podium, the players jumping around and pushing behind me, and I’ve smacked myself on the head with it as I lifted it.” On his own at Celtic Park, he said, he “just about” managed to hoist it without doing himself harm.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

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Updated June 5, 2020
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Still, Brown, like Mignolet and Bronze, gives short shrift to the idea that these victories are in some way hollow. The celebrations might have been more muted than any of them would have liked, and the circumstances not especially suited to outpourings of delight, but none worry that their achievements are not valid.

Mignolet’s Bruges was 15 points clear of its nearest rival with only one regular-season game left. “We had the feeling we were going to become champions,” he said. “We were deserving winners. Because of our lead, nobody disputed that. We can be proud of the season we had. Maybe it is not the same feeling, but it means the same thing.”

Brown’s only disappointment is that Celtic did not get a chance to extend its lead over its nearest and fiercest rival — Rangers — over the final few games of the abandoned season. “Our form since the turn of the year, our consistency, has been exceptional,” he said. “The idea that there is an asterisk next to the title is something only half of one city is saying.”

Image

“It won’t feel real until we can celebrate all together,” Lucy Bronze said of winning the French league during the coronavirus lockdown.Credit...Monika Majer/Getty Images

Lyon’s title was the most fraught. As Bronze pointed out, its next match before the shutdown was at P.S.G.; a defeat for Lyon would have left the teams even on points. But she, too, does not feel that being awarded this year’s title makes it somehow less of a championship than all of the others sealed on the field. “Deep down, the P.S.G. players would know we were favorites,” she said. “I still feel that sense of achievement.”

Not that, for any of them, this feels like the end of a road; it is the culmination of something, but not by any stretch the conclusion. Mignolet has thought about it a lot, in the days and weeks since that text message arrived making him a champion. It is something he has always wanted, but the way it arrived has made him want more.

“It’s made me feel like I want next season to start,” he said. “It gives you that hunger to go and do it again, to win it and be able to celebrate with your teammates and your fans, to celebrate it properly.” Like all of Europe’s paper champions, Mignolet has — or will get — his medal. What he really wants, now, is his moment.