A comeback story from the field 

From being released by Celtic to riling up Lionel Messi at Liverpool’s greatest night at Anfield, Andrew Robertson’s rise has been meteoric, almost like a fairy tale, “You know why kids love athletes? Because they follow their dreams.” I’ve often thought about this and I came to realise, that there might be some truth in this. Why do we love sports and sportspersons? What makes us so highly invested in their success or failure? In their journeys? Everybody loves a good story, and sports delivers us good stories regularly. The story of Andy Robertson’s football career is one such story. From being released by Celtic to riling up Lionel Messi at Liverpool’s greatest night at Anfield, his rise has been meteoric, a fairy tale. As we grow older, so do our heroes, and by the time we are adults, the heroes we grew up idolising become part of the past. And quite often, we watch our heroes fail, which makes us wary of new heroes.

In the absence of an emotional attachment to the sport, the bond with our sporting heroes can become our sole focus. Some people root for the prodigy, the precocious talent realising their full potential, some root for the underdog, the guy who beat the odds. Andy Robertson is the talent that beat the odds. The news of Liverpool signing Robertson from the relegated Hull City was met with tempered expectations and even trepidation. One ingredient of a good story is luck. That opportune twist of fate that converts a “what if” into a “what is”. Robertson or Robbo as he is endearingly called by the Liverpool faithful, had his fair share of it. This story could have been different if LFC had signed Ben Chilwell as they were originally rumoured to be and maybe Robbo would have grown disheartened and frustrated in the Liverpool wilderness if Alberto Moreno had not been injured while in the form of his life.

But Ben Chilwell was not signed for whatever reason, and Moreno did get injured, and here we are. We are used to becoming cynics with age. In a game as cutthroat as football, players fall through the net much more than they actually make it, one injury can change the entire trajectory of your career. Sometimes players surprise us. They turn out to be much better than we hoped. Rarely does a player surprise you and make his way into the very top echelons of the game and even more rarely does he do it as fast as Andy Robertson. Sample this: 2017- Relegated with Hull City 2019- Champion of Europe. In the era of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, achievements are normalised. We expect them.

The game is also dominated by an expansive network of scouts, data and global exposure that has enabled us to see plenty of wonderkids snapped up for big money that have gone onto to fulfil their promise. Hazard, Neymar, Mbappe are all big talents that have lived up to their billing. Those sorts of fairytales are much more common now. Robertson is different. He is the talent that fell through the gap. Anybody who has seen him play knows his talent is undoubted. Yet until Liverpool gave him the platform, it remained unacknowledged, and so, he is the talent that fell through the gap but came back. The underdog that realised his potential. Andy Robertson gives us a good old comeback tale to remind us all, that these stories are still possible.