Culture
When brain cancer struck a baseball family, a ‘wonderful’ village sheltered them
Ten months ago when the nights were longest, Ned Rice emailed total strangers to share his family’s unthinkable dilemma. These were doctors across the country who had not met and did not treat his 3-year-old daughter. Wynnie had brain cancer. This was how Rice, a Phillies assistant general manager, coped.
He had to gather as much information as he could.
“I have still to this day never googled medulloblastoma,” said Cary Rice, his wife. “Because I can’t handle it. And I’m an analytical thinker, too. But if it’s too emotional, I can’t do it.”
Everything about this felt impossible. Wynnie had lost her balance a few times — and now her parents faced a sudden and critical decision. Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) told the Rices they could not treat Wynnie with radiation; she was too young. The neurocognitive damage from radiation would prevent her from having an independent adult life. But her chances of survival were better with radiation.
Ned Rice sought a second opinion from another leading children’s hospital. They told him it would be reckless not to use the treatment known to be the best — radiation — no matter the long-term effects. Rice had negotiated player contracts worth hundreds of millions — a high-stakes process that blends objective valuations with a subjective hand. But this was so different.
It was a parent’s worst nightmare.
Then Rice saw an email. A neuro-oncologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital named Richard Graham sent a lengthy reply to one of Rice’s cold calls. “I was really panicking,” Rice said. “He doesn’t even know who I am. He has his own patients and his own life.” Graham shared his advice. He became a frequent resource for Rice.
These small, thoughtful moments accumulated.
An unexpected gift at the doorstep. A video from Wynnie’s classmates. More responses from out-of-town doctors who would never meet Wynnie. Family members and friends who dropped everything to care for her two siblings. More gifts. Nurses who did not just look after Wynnie — but her parents, too.
“It hits you over and over again,” Rice said. “There’s so many people that want to help. Everybody does it in their own way.”
Rice called his former boss. These weren’t like the late-night talks Matt Klentak and he often had while they ran baseball operations for the Phillies. But it felt normal, even though Klentak worked for the Milwaukee Brewers and Rice was on leave from the Phillies.
The phone calls were cathartic. They could dive right into whatever was on Rice’s mind because Klentak knew the latest on Wynnie through an Instagram account the Rices created to chronicle her fight against cancer. It’s grown to more than 700 followers. Friends of friends of friends now reply to posts with, “Go Wynnie go!” The account is a raw look into life with pediatric cancer. It’s become a way for Ned and Cary to express complicated feelings.
More than anything, it’s opened a door. “Caregiver burnout is a common phenomenon,” said Jane Minturn, Wynnie’s neuro-oncologist at CHOP, “and (Ned and Cary) have worked together to limit this.” Wynnie knows she is sick, but she does not understand what brain cancer is. The burden is shared by everyone around her.
It is immense. Klentak could sense it, at times, during those late-night conversations. It is isolating. But Rice started to carry the goodness of those who had entered Wynnie’s universe.
“I couldn’t really relate to what he was going through,” Klentak said. “And I think very few people could. But that doesn’t stop people from wanting to help.”
The first sign of distress wasn’t alarming. Wynnie was a happy and healthy 3-year-old learning to move faster. That meant an occasional stumble. But Ned and Cary noticed their daughter’s balance wasn’t improving; it looked a fraction worse every week. They scheduled an appointment last December with their pediatrician.
He threw cotton balls across the room to Wynnie, who was content to play the game. She had to bend over and fetch them. She wobbled. The pediatrician agreed something seemed off. He wanted her to see a neurologist at CHOP. The next appointment wasn’t for five months. He suggested the Rices go to the CHOP emergency room — not because it was urgent, but to assuage any immediate concerns.
They took Wynnie on Dec. 21, 2023.
“Sure enough,” Rice said, “we had five neurologists in our room in a few minutes.”
Wynnie didn’t have any other symptoms. The doctors scheduled an MRI in three weeks. It could be a muscular disease. Maybe it was vertigo. The Rices visited family for Christmas and Wynnie vomited twice. CHOP rescheduled the MRI for Dec. 29 and, that morning, Wynnie threw up again. She stumbled a few more times.
A doctor summoned Ned and Cary during the MRI. He pointed to a screen. There was a large tumor in Wynnie’s brain. Wynnie was sedated for the MRI. The doctors wanted to do immediate surgery to remove the tumor. It was 4 p.m. on the Friday of a holiday weekend. The procedure lasted four hours; it would take a week to know whether the tumor was cancerous.
Everything had spiraled so fast.
“It’s a long process, but that was definitely a low point,” Rice said. “Those first few days — you took a mostly happy, healthy, sweet girl in for an outpatient MRI. She wakes up and you’re just like, ‘Will we ever see that girl again?’ That was really hard.”
Then Wynnie was diagnosed with medulloblastoma.
During that first trip to the E.R., before everything escalated, Rice was on the phone with Dave Dombrowski. Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s camp had instructed teams to make their last and best offers for the star free agent. Dombrowski communicated the number to Rice, who relayed it to Joel Wolfe, Yamamoto’s agent. Yamamoto signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers that night.
Rice did not mention where he was.
The day Wynnie underwent surgery, Rice called Phillies general manager Sam Fuld. He told him what was happening. Dombrowski was out of the country for a rare vacation; Rice talked to the Phillies’ president of baseball operations soon after New Year’s.
“We’ll see you when it’s over,” Dombrowski told him. “Take everything you need. We’ll completely cover it. Don’t worry about anything.”
John Middleton called a few hours later. The Phillies’ principal owner offered to connect the family with doctors. Cary is a lawyer and her firm, Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, told her to take as much time as she needed. The Rices were fortunate; they had the means to pay for treatment and ample time to direct attention toward Wynnie. Acquaintances offered to help with whatever the family needed, but what they needed was a cure for cancer.
All they wanted was normal. It was an uncomfortable situation that didn’t always have to be uncomfortable.
“We just have this wonderful sort of village that kept showing up,” Cary said. “Kept calling. Kept texting. Even when I couldn’t respond. We’re just really grateful for that because we are still the same people. We still want to talk about things and do things that have nothing to do with cancer. We want to feel normal. We want to have hope for a normal future. The worst thing you can do or say is nothing.”
Wynnie lived on the third floor at CHOP for almost eight months. The Rices opted against radiation. But her treatment — alternating cycles of chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplants — was so grueling that most of it was inpatient. Ned and Cary would take 24-hour shifts with Wynnie. They were ships passing in the night without much interaction.
They found a community inside the hospital.
“These nurses, I mean, they’re not just nurses,” Cary said. “They’re therapists. They’re friends. They’re cheerleaders.”
Heidi Turner, one of Wynnie’s nurses, worked only overnights. That meant a lot of late-night bonding. Wynnie was discharged Aug. 23. The last night at CHOP, Turner handed Cary a letter to Wynnie.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Cary said to Turner. “We’ll stop by and hopefully I’ll see you.”
She stared at Cary. The nurse replied she hoped to never see them again.
“And,” Cary said, “it just stuck with me because it’s such a weird feeling to have.”
Rice, who has been with the Phillies since 2016, stayed in contact with player agents and rival team executives last offseason but no longer served as the team’s main point of contact. The Phillies had started negotiating Zack Wheeler’s three-year, $126 million extension with B.B. Abbott, Wheeler’s agent at Wasserman. By January, Rice and Abbott had regular talks that started with 30 minutes about Wynnie and progressed to Wheeler’s contract.
“You’re never what you want to be for these families that are trying to talk about this,” Abbott said. “Because you just can’t be. It’s so all-consuming when you think, ‘My 3-year-old daughter has to go through this.’ It’s hard for parents and families to get their heads around exactly what’s getting ready to happen. The days and nights and hospitals. Watching their little girl lose her hair and be sick. All of this stuff that I knew was getting ready to come.”
For years, Abbott has raised awareness for pediatric cancer research through the Rally Foundation and the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation. “I just wanted to be more of a sounding board for him,” Abbott said. The Rices weren’t keeping Wynnie’s illness hidden; it was more of an open secret. Abbott decided to help subtly.
He asked Wheeler if he’d lend his name to a fundraiser for the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation near the end of spring training at the Phillies’ complex in Clearwater, Fla. Everyone knew it was for Wynnie, but no one had to say it. Word spread to the team’s front office and support staff. Dozens of Phillies employees had their heads shaved or orange streaks painted in their hair. Players made donations to the foundation.
Reliever Matt Strahm’s wife, Megan, organized a present from the Phillies’ wives and girlfriends. “An unbelievable, huge, outrageous gift wagon for Wynnie,” Rice said. He had not met Strahm’s wife until later that summer at the team’s family day.
“You’re amazing,” Rice said to her.
With Wynnie in the hospital, Rice watched from afar this year as the Phillies sprinted to first place. “The Banatic!” Wynnie said to her dad whenever the furry green mascot appeared on the screen. There are certain rhythms to the baseball season. It is monotonous but contains specific checkpoints. The Rices had none of that with Wynnie. There were no regular updates on her prognosis. They will not know how successful her treatments were until a scan sometime in December.
Their focus was singular. Get through today.
“Wynnie, she’s something,” Cary said. “She has this tiny little voice and she’s so sweet and gentle with everything she does. We always kind of considered her this little delicate flower. But she’s a beast.”
Two weeks ago, Wynnie had a birthday party. The Rices held it outdoors, at a playground by the Schuylkill River Park, because Wynnie’s immune system remains at risk. They had bagels and coffee and a face painter. Cary handed every kid a stuffed fox as a party favor. “Mr. Fox” was Wynnie’s constant companion in the hospital; Cary had so many at the house because people kept sending them when Wynnie would throw up on hers.
This was a celebration of Wynnie and the village that formed around her.
“We were surrounded,” Cary said, “by about 85 of the friends who have been there for us in so many different ways this year.”
Wynnie’s hair has started to grow back, although she wore a purple knit cap that covered her head at her party. Everyone could see the three purple flowers painted on her forehead.
But Wynnie felt sick near the end of the party. She went to the emergency room with croup. Another challenge. But she was 4 and she was here.
She wore her face paint to the E.R.
(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Ashley Blair Photography)
Culture
NFL QB stock report: Josh Allen reigns supreme; Aaron Rodgers plummets in final rankings
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen closed out the best season of his career with six consecutive weeks at No. 1 in The Athletic’s QB stock report, maintaining his lead over Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson after his own six-week run up top.
As we entered the season with a maiden voyage in this quarterback project, the most daunting question was obvious while the answer remained wildly unclear: How was anyone going to leapfrog Patrick Mahomes?
Every week, these rankings focused on a confluence of primary factors — current performance, career résumé, future potential and the situations around the QBs. So with Mahomes winning three of the last four Super Bowls, it was going to take something extraordinary for his demotion.
Of course, some extraordinary things happened. Mahomes and the Chiefs kept winning despite their uncharacteristic struggles, while Allen and Jackson duked it out in the MVP race for the final three months of the season. And while Joe Burrow played at a higher level than Mahomes, the Bengals missed the playoffs, thereby invoking the situational parameter within his ranking.
On the flip side, Aaron Rodgers is a Super Bowl champion and four-time MVP. Mahomes is the only active QB with a superior résumé, but Rodgers finished in the bottom-10 of the rankings and has been in the 20’s since Week 11. His individual performances, with a few exceptions, were to blame along with the Jets’ circumstances and a cap on the 41-year-old’s potential.
The Athletic’s Final 2024-25 QB rankings
Along the way, we dove deeper into certain quarterbacks, tapping into valued insight from a host of coaches and executives around the league. Their viewpoints also carried weight in the rankings. Among the topics hit this season: We examined Allen’s MVP surge, Rodgers’ downfall with the Jets, Bryce Young’s midseason revival, Jordan Love’s contract validation, Caleb Williams’ resurfacing flaws and C.J. Stroud’s regression.
We hope you enjoyed the first season of rankings as much as we enjoyed putting them together. Let’s close it out by recognizing some of the biggest trends of the year.
Biggest preseason riser
Sam Darnold, on his fourth team in five years, opened training camp as the likely backup to rookie J.J. McCarthy, so expectations ranged from nonexistent to minimal.
Sure, Darnold’s pedigree as the No. 3 pick out of USC couldn’t be ignored, nor could coach Kevin O’Connell’s QB-friendly system. But no one could’ve predicted this.
Darnold finished fifth in the league in both passing yards (4,319) and touchdowns (35) and finished sixth among qualified QBs with a 102.5 passer rating.
Darnold opened the season as the 28th-ranked quarterback, and he rose 19 spots. He’s been a mostly steadying presence for the team that was tied for the third-most wins in the NFL. Star receivers Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison never missed a beat.
Despite the meteoric rise, Darnold did dip for a bit, going No. 11 in Week 10 to No. 18 in Week 12. He still finished the season with his only three weeks in the top 10. Darnold will enter the offseason with the potential to become the crown jewel of the free agent market.
Biggest preseason faller
Aaron Rodgers was still viewed by many around the league as one of the NFL’s premier quarterbacks at the start of the season, even coming off the torn Achilles, so the New York Jets QB debuted at No. 5.
He remained in the top six for the first five weeks of the season before the evidence became too great to ignore, and he plummeted to No. 15 in Week 6. Rodgers fell to No. 20 in Week 11 and never improved his standing. He finished the season ranked ahead of only two quarterbacks who were expected to open the season as their team’s starter.
Rodgers’ 63.0 completion percentage was his lowest since 2019, but he actually finished with more yards (3,897) and touchdowns (28) and fewer interceptions (11) than in his final season with the Packers.
Rodgers’ future is very much up in the air. Whether he wants to continue playing and if the Jets would want him back remain open questions. He may still be an asset for a veteran team that believes it’s a QB shy of the playoffs, but Rodgers will have to play much better than he did amid the Jets’ chaos.
Biggest midseason riser
Carolina Panthers QB Bryce Young’s turnaround was one of the most spectacularly unexpected stories of the season.
The 2023 No. 1 pick was benched after coach Dave Canales’ second game. And although Young’s performance justified the demotion, it raised significant questions about Young’s future with an organization that has made more than its recent share of impulse decisions.
It’s not like the Panthers benched Young with a definitive timeline for his return to the field, either. Young only got his job back after Andy Dalton injured his hand in a car accident.
And yet, Young played well down the stretch with 15 touchdown passes, five touchdown runs and six interceptions over his final 10 starts. They were also 4-6 during that stretch, which is no small feat for a team that had lost 22 of its previous 25 games.
Canales has had a nice history with his quarterbacks, so it was surprising to see it start so poorly. But now that Young is entering the offseason playing his best football, the Panthers will be an intriguing team entering 2025.
GO DEEPER
‘We got our guy’: Bryce Young and the Panthers go into the offseason on high note
Biggest midseason faller
It was supposed to be C.J. Stroud’s year. It never played out that way.
The Houston Texans QB debuted at No. 7 and soared to No. 3 just a week later. That’s where he remained for most of the first half, including as late as Week 9, but Stroud steadily fell the rest of the way. His ranking worsened in eight of the final 10 weeks, all the way down to No. 15.
Stroud’s numbers were down across the board. He completed 63.2 percent of his passes for 3,727 yards, 20 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and an 87.0 passer rating. His rookie numbers were superior in every category, which is even more noteworthy considering he played two fewer games in 2023.
The Texans need to build a better offensive line because the pressure was the main deterrent to Stroud’s success. The injuries didn’t help, either.
And yet, Stroud and the Texans are back in the playoffs. There are plenty of reasons to remain bullish on Stroud.
Best rookie
This wasn’t difficult.
Jayden Daniels opened the season at No. 22, jumped to No. 13 by Week 6 and into the top 10 in Week 9. The Washington Commanders QB closed the season with three consecutive weeks at No. 8.
Daniels completed 69 percent of his passes for 3,568 yards, 25 touchdowns, nine interceptions and a 100.1 passer rating; he added 891 rushing yards and six touchdowns.
He was so composed in tense moments, highlighted by four game-winning drives. Daniels’ Hail Mary against the Bears was an all-time moment, but the late drives against the Eagles and Falcons were more meaningful and should provide optimism the rookie is capable of repeating the feat in the playoffs.
Caleb Williams had a rocky season, but the Chicago Bears QB still put up some numbers for a team that went through a ton of adversity. Bo Nix wasn’t asked to carry the Denver Broncos, but he carried his weight to end their playoff drought. Drake Maye was often lost in the chaos in New England, but the young Patriots QB showed evidence of being a special player. Finally, Atlanta Falcons QB Michael Penix Jr. created momentum for next season with his solid play in three starts.
It’s shaping up to be a great draft class.
Incomplete …
And then there was one.
J.J. McCarthy missed his rookie season with a torn meniscus, leading to teams around the league wondering what the Vikings plan to do at quarterback. Conventional thinking suggests they’ll let Darnold hit free agency and turn toward their first-round pick in 2025. It’s just practical asset management.
But what if Darnold leads the Vikings to the Super Bowl or even the NFC Championship Game? The Vikings will have $75 million in cap space, according to Over The Cap, so they can pay Darnold to keep everything intact.
There’s an even bigger factor at play, though. McCarthy would rank as the No. 1 quarterback if he were in the 2025 draft class, according to several executives and coaches who have evaluated Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders. The Vikings would certainly have a market if they decided to move McCarthy.
Who’s next?
On a related note, there was a major shakeup in the draft order over the final two weeks, and that should have a significant impact on the quarterback class.
For so long, the QB draft discussion focused on the Giants and Raiders. After all, they were viewed as the two most quarterback-desperate teams in the league, and they built what seemed to be an indestructible residence atop the draft order.
So much for that. The Giants will pick third after a Week 17 victory against the Colts, while the Raiders’ late wins against the Jaguars and Saints dropped them to No. 6.
Even until Sunday, when the Patriots had a temporary hold of No. 1 until they beat the Bills, QB-needy teams knew the pick was likely up for auction. Anyone willing to pay could get their guy.
Then the Titans and Browns entered the chat.
The Titans, who hold the top pick, aren’t going to build around Will Levis if this season was any indication. And the Browns know they have to get younger to find Deshaun Watson’s successor, whether that’s in Week 1 of 2025 or sometime thereafter. Watson’s setback from his Achilles injury could accelerate his to-be-determined successor’s timeline.
The Titans are in a great spot if they love Ward or Sanders — or McCarthy, which could open up a new range of options. As for the Browns, they’ve made moves in the past to ensure Watson would have an unobstructed path to the starting job, so they’re slightly more of a wild card. Maybe the star attraction of Colorado’s Travis Hunter shifts their focus to a QB in a later round.
Any way you look at it, the draft just got a lot more interesting.
Dropped out: Mason Rudolph (No. 31 last week), Dorian Thompson-Robinson (No. 32 last week).
(Photo of Josh Allen: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
Culture
Ornstein meets Aubameyang: Arsenal, Arteta relationship, Chelsea ‘chaos’, Saudi move and a terrifying robbery
The evening of August 28, 2022 and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is at home in Barcelona, playing video games and waiting for news as talks continue about a potential transfer to Chelsea.
Aubameyang is relaxed — content to stay in Spain or help ease Barcelona’s financial worries by returning to England, where he flourished for Arsenal before leaving somewhat acrimoniously.
This is a footballer who started at Milan and also counts Borussia Dortmund among the sides he has represented in a 16-year career featuring more than 300 senior goals and transfer fees totalling around $100million (£81m). The possibility of another move for Aubameyang, wife Alysha and their young children, Curtys and Pierre, is nothing abnormal. Suddenly, however, the relative calm turns into chaos.
“My eldest son came running and said to me, ‘Dad, some guys are in the house’,” says Aubameyang. “I said, ‘Just hide’.
“They came in from outside, where my wife was smoking with my cousin and her boyfriend. They took him (the cousin’s boyfriend) and came into the house. My wife was screaming. They had a gun.”
Aubameyang says he “grabbed a big bottle” and went upstairs to try to confront the intruders.
“At the same time, my sister-in-law was there with our little one,” he continues. “I said to her, too, ‘Just go. Try to hide somewhere’. This is when I saw the guys. There were four or five, I think.
“One had the gun and said to me, ‘Just go down’. I said, ‘No, no, no. Tell me what you want’. We talked and he said, ‘Sit down’. I said, ‘No’. This is when he started to punch me.”
Aubameyang describes a man in gloves containing metal landing multiple blows that broke his jaw. “I wanted to fight but one guy went down and took my kids and sister-in-law,” he says. “At that point, I couldn’t do anything. If you do something wrong, something can happen to them. We went through the house and I gave them what they wanted, so we could be OK.”
Barcelona had only just organised for security staff to begin work that week, yet the delayed arrival of outdoor toilets impacted their start date. The consequences weighed heavily. Stolen jewellery, watches and other expensive items were one thing; the psychological damage was quite another.
“If I was alone, no problem,” Aubameyang insists. “I can handle it, as mentally I’ve been prepared for everything in life, thanks to my parents. But when you have a wife and kids, it’s different.
“After that, the kids told me, ‘Papa, I don’t want to go to school, I’m scared something is going to happen there’. For a year my little one said, ‘I cannot sleep alone’. It was a big struggle. You have it always in the mind.”
Aubameyang and his family soon left Barcelona as he moved to Stamford Bridge days later and the following July he joined French club Marseille, though the trauma remained.
“I was always thinking about this,” he says. “I did so many nights like this: not sleeping at all, just thinking about that s**t. You have some nightmares. I’m a guy who, if I’m not sleeping well, I’m not going to give (a football team) what you expect from me, I’m not going to be at my best… Every time the kids are alone, they are scared.
“I still have that house, but haven’t gone back since. I think I’ll start to rent it because my kids don’t want to go to Barcelona. Their school organised a trip there — they said, ‘No chance I go’.
“I made a mistake not talking to anyone. If I had someone to talk to, a therapist or psychologist, maybe it could have helped. But I didn’t want to do anything. To tell you the truth, I was lost.”
That is why Aubameyang cites “safety” as a crucial reason behind signing with Al Qadsiah in Saudi Arabia last July, a trade which could have been interpreted for the now 35-year-old as a lucrative stop en route to retirement. Aubameyang dismisses such a notion as “bulls**t” and urges people to sample the Saudi Pro League for themselves before formulating judgements.
The Athletic went to see Aubameyang in the Gulf state in late November, watching him train at Al Qadsiah’s multi-sport facility in the eastern coastal city of Khobar and then play the 90 minutes as they beat locals rivals Al Khaleej at their Prince Saud bin Jalawi Stadium 24 hours later.
The following day, we met at a hotel across the border in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, to conduct a wide-ranging interview in which the Gabon international discussed:
- Life in Saudi Arabia, competing in its Pro League, ambitions and criticisms
- His contract “mistake” at Arsenal and Mikel Arteta’s “knife in the back” accusation
- How Barcelona was the “best memory of my career”, despite his confusing exit
- “Disrespectful” treatment and failure to connect during Chelsea “chaos”
- “Crazy” Marseille stint and playing with “anger” after his time in West London
- Taking acting lessons to fulfil “dreams” of becoming a film star post-football.
Given a chance to leave Marseille after only one season, Aubameyang’s favoured destination last summer was always Saudi Arabia, and his family have experienced “no difficulty” settling in.
“People think it is a closed country with hard restrictions,” he says. “That’s the opinion over there (in the West), but when you come here, it’s totally different. The mentality is very open-minded.”
He identifies “room for improvement” in the levels of play and professionalism while admitting that small crowds at some fixtures are “part of the process” and that the Gulf state’s hot weather can harm match tempo.
Al Qadsiah were taken over in June 2023 by Saudi-owned oil giant Aramco and are scheduled to exchange an ageing 20,000-seat ground for a modern 47,000-capacity arena, which is due to open in time for the 2027 Asian Cup and be a 2034 men’s World Cup venue.
Hosting the sport’s leading event has raised many questions for Saudi Arabia to answer — most notably regarding human rights and specifically the treatment of migrant workers, women and the LGBTQ+ community.
Did Aubameyang contemplate these issues when pondering his decision? “Not at all,” he says. “I’m really into football and, while I’m a player, I will be thinking just about football — that’s it. When I retire, maybe I’ll think about different things. But when I chose to come, I didn’t think about it.”
How does he think LGBTQ+ supporters will react to that reply?
“I can understand how they see life. They can have their opinion, but I also have mine. My choice is only about football, not political situations and everything… I didn’t see anything that shocked me to say it was a mistake coming here.”
“I was sure it wasn’t going to happen. You have until midnight and then the market shuts. It was already 8pm and you have to do a medical and everything. Around 8.30pm, my father said, ‘Let’s go to the hospital’. I was like, ‘Oh my god! Crazy!’. They found a way to get me out of the jail.’”
The prison reference is delivered in jest, but Aubameyang will never forget the drama that accompanied transfer deadline day in February 2022, nor losing the Arsenal captaincy and the weeks spent training by himself before finally joining Barcelona on a free at the end of that winter window.
Amazon’s All Or Nothing series about Arsenal charts the saga and while Aubameyang challenges elements in its portrayal of him — he denies flying to Spain without permission, for example — he does not dispute travelling there before the two clubs had agreed a deal. “I wanted to push it, I just wanted to go,” he says.
He had been banished for his “latest disciplinary breach” in December 2021, according to Arsenal: Aubameyang had returned late after a sanctioned trip to collect his unwell mother from France. For manager Mikel Arteta, it was the final straw.
Aubameyang argues that he fell foul of complex and ever-changing Covid-19 pandemic protocols at the time, which meant he was prohibited from entering the club’s training ground when he did.
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The inside story of how it fell apart for Aubameyang at Arsenal
“My mistake,” he concedes. “I should have come back the night before, but I arrived in the morning. I didn’t tell them that I would miss the flight because I was preoccupied with my mum’s stuff (medical examinations).
“I went directly to a team meeting. Everything was normal. After that, he (Arteta) said, ‘Come with me’. This is where he started shouting. He said I could not do this because I was the captain and it was not acceptable.
“He said I gave him a knife in his back; I don’t know why he said that. I was really p**sed off because it was not true and he knew why I flew. He knew the reason and what was happening, he knew I was struggling that year. I was expecting help from him, not killing me like this.”
Might the conflict have been solved by Aubameyang apologising?
“When I’m late, (and) it’s my fault — no problem. I always said sorry,” he says. “But in this case, I’ll never say sorry. For taking my mum from Laval (his hometown in France) to London? No. Even if I came a day late, I would never say sorry. You understand or you don’t. If not, don’t give a day off or tell people they cannot fly.”
Arteta claims to have kept a dossier of Aubameyang’s alleged indiscretions, which centred on punctuality. The player does not contest this but queries why some Arsenal team-mates were treated more leniently for similar offences. He is adamant Arteta could have dealt with it all differently.
Infamously, Aubameyang was late to assemble for the March 2021 north London derby at home against Tottenham and got excluded from the matchday squad — a move that diminished trust between him and Arteta.
“You leave the car at the stadium, then take the bus to the hotel,” says Aubameyang. “I didn’t miss the bus, they were waiting for me. There was a (traffic) accident near my home; maybe I should have set off earlier, but you don’t know what will happen. He was p***ed off as it’s a big game.
“When we got to the hotel, he called me to his room and said I wasn’t going to play. He was strict. The rules are the rules. I felt hurt. I had tears because I wanted to play that game, badly. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. The next day we had a meeting and I stood up in front of everyone to say sorry. He also came to my house to speak, because he didn’t want this to be chaos.
“I said, ‘It’s going to be OK’. But from then it was not the same.”
Aubameyang then contracted malaria on international duty. By the time it was diagnosed and treated, he had faced Liverpool and Europa League opponents Slavia Prague with the debilitating tropical virus in his body. At the same time, Aubameyang continued to navigate the repercussions of his mother suffering a stroke in late 2020.
He was “lost” and “depressed”, he says — a far cry from the euphoria which had greeted the attacker ending doubts over his future by signing a new contract a couple of months previously.
Arsenal were on the road to their FA Cup semi-final with Manchester City in July 2020.
“I was talking on the bus with (fellow striker) Alexandre Lacazette,” says Aubameyang. “Every fan was saying, ‘Sign da ting!’. Laca asked me, ‘What are you going to do?’ I was like, ‘To tell you the truth, I really don’t know’.”
He inspired wins over City and then Chelsea to lift the FA Cup at an empty Wembley during the pandemic. It remains Arteta’s only major trophy for Arsenal.
“If I’m being honest, at that time I wanted to go,” says Aubameyang. “For me, it was time to find a new challenge. I did my time. It was very nice, but I needed to change. It had been four years, I did great and maybe it was time to leave it like this, proper and clean, so people remember me as a good Arsenal player. I felt I needed to go because if I stayed, something would go wrong.”
What altered that notion was a “very refreshing” meeting with Arteta. They discussed the team, players, the need to recruit, staff, methods of working and more. “He convinced me,” Aubameyang adds. “He said, ‘I think you can leave a legacy’. I think it was the first time I heard this word in English.
“He said, ‘If you stay, you can be an icon, like the big names at Arsenal’. I started to change my vision. He and the fans convinced me to stay. But at first, I wanted to leave. This is where it got chaotic, because when you go against your heart, maybe this is where I made my mistake.”
At the point of putting pen to paper, Aubameyang had recently turned 31 and anticipated belonging to Arsenal until hanging up his boots. Scoring 15 goals in all competitions in 2020-2021 signalled he had plenty left in the tank. Yet his personal strife allowed the underlying sentiments to resurface.
“I felt it progressively,” he says. “Slowly, slowly, I was kind of giving up. Sometimes there are things more important than football. Maybe people don’t realise, because they think football is the most important thing. (But) that is not true.”
Time and distance have enabled healing and perspective.
Aubameyang received a “great message” from Arteta after they parted ways and would now gladly engage in a conversation — “You cannot stay with that negativity”. He says he will “always love Arsenal, always love the supporters… even if I went to Chelsea” and hopes to have answered some of their questions with this interview.
He reckons Arteta’s side are “missing something” as they chase the silverware they “deserve” — namely a “goalscoring machine”. So, who are they missing?
“Me,” he says, tongue in cheek.
In the summer of 2022, Chelsea signed Aubameyang from Barcelona and he agreed a two-year contract, “100 per cent” to be reunited with his former Dortmund manager, Thomas Tuchel.
Aubameyang had cherished his four-month spell at Camp Nou — where his terms should have kept him through to 2025 — and says it provokes “only good memories, the best of my career”. But he “needed” to “feel love again” after Arsenal and prove he was still a “good player and person”.
If Tuchel had not been at Chelsea, there is “no chance” Aubameyang would have left Barcelona, he says. But, within a week of his transfer, the German lost his job. It followed a Champions League defeat at Dinamo Zagreb, a match where Aubameyang — donning a mask to protect his injured face following the robbery at his house — made a miserable debut.
He “went against doctor’s advice” and explains, “When you arrive somewhere (new), you want to show straight away you’re involved. It was the worst game of my life, but I did it because I had to play.
“I remember that day because I didn’t recognise him (Tuchel). It was not the guy I knew a few years ago. We had a close relationship. He was the only guy who really understood me in Dortmund. At Chelsea, it was like something was wrong. I felt he was not enjoying his time.
“We lost (1-0) and he was p**sed off. Usually, he would go crazy but he came to the dressing room and then left. I was like, ‘This is not the guy I know. Very strange’. The next day, he was sacked.”
Graham Potter was hired away from Brighton and the October brought three goals for Aubameyang in as many outings. But after a home humbling by Arsenal, he barely featured. As Chelsea toiled, he implored Potter to “put me in” but “respected” the Englishman’s honesty about preferring to use Kai Havertz.
Matters got worse the following February, with Aubameyang omitted from the Champions League squad and deemed surplus to requirements. “That is when I started to say, ‘OK, this is very disrespectful’,” he states. “They tried to send me on loan to America. I said: ‘No chance’.
“I felt p***ed off. From that point, I said, ‘The season is done for me already’. I just went to training to maintain fitness; I knew I was not going to play.”
Potter was dismissed in the April and Frank Lampard stepped in temporarily.
“He (Lampard) told me, ‘OK, I need you. I want to know how you feel, if you are ready to play again’,” Aubameyang recalls. “I was like, ‘Yes. I’m waiting for this’.”
“Close to the end of the season, he spoke to me again and said, ‘What are your feelings? I’m sorry, Auba. I can’t really help you’. I understood it’s not coming from him but upstairs.”
Aubameyang found himself in the ‘bomb squad’ as the group at Chelsea kept expanding, pushing various renowned figures to the fringes.
“They did a mess,” he says. “It didn’t even look like a football dressing room, it was more like rugby. Hakim Ziyech, Denis Zakaria, Kalidou Koulibaly, Romelu Lukaku… It was good I wasn’t alone. We were laughing every day, so it was OK.”
There is no lingering bitterness, though, and Aubameyang praises Chelsea for how they appear to have regained stability and competitiveness. He feels a “big striker” should be sought to shoulder the goals burden “like Didier Drogba did in the past” and acknowledges he was unable to fit that particular bill.
“I never had that connection,” Aubameyang says. “No connections at all. The fans wanted the Auba they saw with Arsenal. At the time, I was not ready for that and didn’t get the opportunity. I was not ready, as well, because of what happened in Barcelona. It was a chaotic year but it was good for me because I needed a break and, at the same time, they didn’t want to play me.”
He signed a three-year deal with Marseille in July 2023 and arrived in France, where he was born and grew up, with a point to prove.
“I took a picture at a Chelsea game when I was not in the squad,” he says. “I said, ‘We’ll see next season if I’m a fan or player’. I arrived in Marseille with the mentality, ‘You’ll see the real Aubameyang.’”
After just five goals in his first 17 games, Aubameyang’s substitution towards the end of a 0-0 draw against Lille in the November drew anger from the terraces. It flicked a switch. “I was like, ‘I cannot accept that’,” he reflects. “‘Now I’ll change the way I play. I’m going to be more crazy’. I played with anger.”
In the next home match, versus Ajax in the Europa League, Aubameyang registered a hat-trick, and he ended his sole season back in French football with 30 goals in 51 appearances.
“This was the year I showed everybody who I am,” he says.
Marseille’s search for a new permanent coach produced Roberto de Zerbi and despite not gaining an opportunity to perform for the Italian as Saudi loomed, Aubameyang did value the window in which their paths crossed.
He noticed “in the first two training sessions” that De Zerbi was “different”. Aubameyang has operated under Klopp, Wenger and Xavi but views De Zerbi “like Thomas Tuchel and Mikel Arteta” in terms of calibre.
“Very high,” is where Aubameyang forecasts the 45-year-old managing. “He has dedicated his whole life to football. He always wants the best for the team and has proper ideas. Sometimes people aren’t patient but this time Marseille have to be because he can really put them back to the top.”
Now Aubameyang is focused on shining in Saudi Arabia. He spurned interest from higher-profile suitors to choose newly-promoted Al Qadsiah and, under the guidance of sporting director Carlos Anton, coach Michel — who replaced Liverpool legend Robbie Fowler — and ex-Rangers chief executive James Bisgrove, they are flying.
A six-game winning streak secured third spot in the SPL heading into its winter break — below only Benzema’s Al Ittihad and Neymar’s Al Hilal, with Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr fourth. Aubameyang’s record so far stands at seven goals across 14 appearances in all competitions. “They want to be the best and I can help them grow,” he says.
Aubameyang also has ambitions with Gabon, who have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations at the end of this year and are in contention to reach their maiden World Cup finals appearance the following summer.
Further down the line, he prefers the thought of club ownership or, perhaps, a sporting director-type position rather than coaching. His motivations, though, transcend football: becoming an actor is one of his “dreams” and he is taking private lessons to master the art.
“Comedy, for sure!” Aubameyang laughs while referring to his choice of genre. “If you see me in a film that’s too serious… nah, you will not believe it. If it’s comedy, yes, you’re going to believe it.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
Culture
Book Review: ‘How to Sleep at Night,’ by Elizabeth Harris
HOW TO SLEEP AT NIGHT, by Elizabeth Harris
The witty opening of Elizabeth Harris’s “How to Sleep at Night” finds Ethan Keller confessing “something terrible” to his husband, Gabe: He wants to run for Congress. Ethan is a Republican, but Gabe is a Democrat, and Ethan says he won’t run if Gabe says no. Wanting to support his husband’s dreams and fearing the resentment a refusal could bring, Gabe agrees.
While Gabe and Ethan’s political rift is the crux of the book, Harris cools the stakes to a conflict between center-left and center-right. Gabe may be a Democrat, but he’s scornful of people he considers too far to the left, calling them “nuts”; in fact, he has tried to bond with Ethan by “poking fun at a clownish devotion to 16-letter acronyms and an eagerness to be offended by everything.”
Ethan explains his beliefs to their 5-year-old daughter privately by saying that Republicans believe change should happen carefully and people should make the decisions about their own lives.
He uses more provocative “woke mob” rhetoric in public, but Harris, a New York Times staff writer who covers book publishing, presents that as a performance that may or may not represent his convictions. Neither husband identifies with what he considers the extremes of his party, although both know their very existence as a gay married couple with a child has political significance.
More important than their divergent beliefs is Gabe and Ethan’s shared attitude about those beliefs, which is that they can be set aside when they don’t affect you directly. Gabe, a high school history teacher, can grit his teeth about Ethan’s growing notoriety until a couple of his students, both gay and one undocumented, start to trust him less in favor of a teacher he can’t stand. And what provokes Gabe’s discomfort most of all is the way people talk on the internet about him and his marriage.
Ethan treats his politics primarily as a vehicle for ambition; Gabe treats his as self-definition. The story seems headed for a confrontation between the two about how people should be treated and how the abstract idea of “politics” intersects with that question — but the confrontation never arrives. Over and over, when they approach the disagreements that seem too serious to ignore, they walk away, go to bed or change the subject.
This forestalling of what feel like inevitable and even necessary fractures can be frustrating and repetitive. But perhaps that’s the point: To make a relationship like this work, you will, over and over, have the same fight that goes nowhere.
The other strand of the novel follows Ethan’s sister, Kate, a print reporter, who reconnects with an old love: Nicole, a stay-at-home mom who’s grown bored with her wealthy, conservative husband. Kate is discombobulated by Nicole’s return and challenged by the thorny ethics of having her newspaper cover her brother’s campaign.
Kate and Nicole’s relationship is much more focused on the personal and less on the public, and it’s a thoughtful tale of people reconnecting in middle age with both the benefit and the baggage of long experience. And again, Kate’s story suggests that these are people for whom personal loyalty is primary. Everything else is negotiable.
Harris’s lively writing and the fast-moving narrative accompany what’s ultimately a bleak view of comfort in difficult times: The way to sleep at night, these characters find, is to secure your own future and make peace in your relationships, and then to think about what’s happening to the rest of the world as little as possible. As Kate muses at one point: “What’s Gabe supposed to do? Does he blow up a pretty excellent daily life for something that feels abstract? I don’t think most people would.”
You can sleep at night, in other words, through just about anything — if you don’t have to sleep alone.
HOW TO SLEEP AT NIGHT | By Elizabeth Harris | Morrow | 304 pp. | $28.99
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