Shaw, Ossoff, And The Second Time Around

Sometimes It Takes Two Chances

If you would have told me that Luke Shaw was starting for England in a Euro quarterfinal at the beginning of this year, I'd have told you you were mad. Shaw was out of the England system for years, and only made his return in March, but now he's starting for the Three Lions, and not only that, he's excelling for them. And it's all slightly surreal.

My first impression of Shaw was indifference - he was an overhyped, not particularly impressive left back for my club who consistently underwhelmed my not very high expectations of him. Shaw had been a promising youngster for England, and he was a highly sought after teenager, before coming to United. A combination of injury and what could probably be best described as abuse from Jose Mourinho nearly ended the idea that Shaw would ever be the player that so many wanted him to be. And this year, somehow, he became it. He became the star that United hoped he'd be, and he and Harry Maguire fortified a United defense that was rarely truly stellar, but was never bad. Now he's our starting Left Back as England makes their first ever Euro semifinal, and even more than that, he's excelling, assisting on the 2nd and 3rd goals on Saturday en route to what has to be a contender for the best England game of my life. His free kick to Maguire for that second goal in particular was a brilliant delivery, putting the ball right where his teammate would want it, and Maguire put it when it needed to end up. Watching that, it moved me to tears of joy.

Watching Shaw almost reminded me of the political resurrection of the last 12 months, that of the Senior Senator from Georgia, Jon Ossoff. Everyone dismissed Ossoff after 2017, and despite that early promise, he was a write off. Nobody wanted him to run - he was genuinely 5th on the Georgia Democratic Party's priority list for the Senate, after Stacey Abrams, Michelle Nunn, Jason Carter, and Raphael Warnock. Warnock ran for the special seat because they didn't think they could beat Perdue, and they thought they could beat whoever replaced Isakson. Ossoff was a sacrificial lamb, and now he's the 50th Senator.

I've written at length about Ossoff's rise in the past, but what needs to be made clear is that nobody saw it coming - even people who made (or in my case, saved) their reputations on him in December and January thought his candidacy was a joke in June and July, and if you think I'm excluding myself from this narrative, I'm not. I thought Ossoff was in with a shot all cycle, but because I thought Biden was gonna win nationally by 10% and drag him over the line. That Ossoff is a Senator when Biden only won nationally by 4.5% is absurd, and a sign of how good his runoff campaign was, but what it also is is a reminder that we don't know nearly as much as we pretend to.

Both Shaw and Ossoff were written off for failing to meet the initial hype - Ossoff for failing to win Georgia 6th in 2017, and Shaw for failing to live up to the lofty title of United having paid the then-record transfer fee for a teenage player. Even though some of Shaw's troubles were a function of his double leg fracture suffered in 2015 (which, God bless, I have never seen), even when he was fully recovered, I never watched a United game and felt Shaw's presence or importance under Mourinho. Now, his presence is undeniable, and most of United's (and, now, England's) best actions come from the left side, with Shaw playing a deadly two man game to great effect. Three assists in four games at a major tournament doesn't just happen, and Shaw has gone from a guy who was there for lack of a better option to being an indispensable part of his team, both club and country.

Both Ossoff and Shaw serve as a cautionary note for those who make prediction of the future their habit, or even more so their livelihoods, because they show that things can change, and even in some ways rapidly. The criticisms of Ossoff and Shaw were both accurate at the time, but things changed. More bluntly, they changed, and got better. 2017 Ossoff would have lost in Georgia, and 2020 Ossoff didn't. Shaw is a markedly improved player since Jose Mourinho left Manchester United (what a shock), and I don't think anyone predicted where they'd both end up. Even if you were a Shaw optimist in the lean years, you're lying if you thought Shaw would play himself into the starting lineup over Ben Chilwell for this tournament.

You can make assessments of the here and now, but too often we ascribe a finality and a certainty beyond that, into a time horizon we cannot dream to actually know. In both politics and sport, we would do better to acknowledge that things can change, and that quality is less objective, and less set in stone, than we want to believe. This doesn't mean that everything should become mush, nothingness in the middle to avoid ever being wrong, but it does mean that everyone should remember that these things are fickle and that time can change things a lot. If you're reading this prepared to throw the legions of shitty headlines I wrote at my past stop, don't bother - this isn't meant to exclude me from the criticism, this is meant as self reflection. Plainly, I got a lot of shit wrong in 2020, and while I am trying to get less wrong now, that is easier said than done. But in thinking about that game on Saturday, I just kept thinking about how far the Luke Shaw I watched fill space and do nothing more has come since the days of my first full season as a United fan, and it took my breath away. Ossoff's a testament to it too - his runoff campaign was flawless, and for months I thought he was just getting lucky to be running in a blue wave. Turns out, it wasn't luck, for either of them. Next time you want to dismiss someone because of a mediocre past, let Ossoff and Shaw serve as the reminders that sometimes things are just better the second time around.