That the city’s most famous sporting son, Denis Law, should have announced his dementia diagnosis on the very day Aberdeen’s contemporary footballers were venturing thousands of miles east chasing modern-day history was a touching sadness.
For football, though contested in the briefest chunks so fleeting in the eyes of eternity, is fundamentally a game for forever. Its playing represents, at its heart, the pursuit of memories: memories which last not only a lifetime, but live long beyond the mortality of all who ever saw the events first-hand.
It is cruel indeed when the legends who create those memories live out their days unable to remember them themselves. Worse still when their endeavours on the field end up the very cause of their cognitive decline. That, within the week, three further notable players of the 1960s and 70s followed Denis in confirming their affliction with the disease is shocking, but unfortunately unsurprising.
Save for the very top, very recent footballers, it is not the norm for them to end their careers in credit when it comes to personal comfort. Long-term health sacrifices were poorly compensated by whatever material gains they made: it is us, the supporters, by gaining ownership of deeds done in our clubs’ colours but not expending ourselves in the process, who come out in the black.
And though hard in the heat of a losing battle, that is something which fans should try to keep in mind. Aberdeen clearly did not succeed in making those new European memories, but it was not by design or malice.
These were the honest endeavours of human beings, putting their bodies on the line on a quest for a shared experience. There are many ways for humans to fail, but failing by losing to obviously superior opponents does not deserve the stiffest recrimination among them.