On Monday morning, I awoke to a startling interpretation of USWNT soccer legend Alex Morgan staring back at me from my phone. Retiring from professional soccer at the end of last season, Morgan’s club team, the San Diego Wave in the NWSL, had attempted to honor the talisman of their franchise with a mural. Alas, the mural does not do Morgan justice, taking an ambitious swing at a massive, hyper-realistic, tightly cropped portrait at Mike Hess Brewing in North Park.
Of course I’m in full support of honoring athletes (especially women!) with public art pieces— I’m an avid soccer fan and sign painter/muralist myself! But that’s why I have strong opinions about how a piece like this is executed, and though well-meaning, this Morgan mural misses the mark.
Outside of the style of the mural leaning too close for comfort toward the uncanny valley, the composition is also an odd choice for the portrayal of a professional athlete. Why not show Morgan in motion, shooting a ball with her signature left foot, her now-retired #13 jersey in view, her beloved pink headband gleaming in the San Diego sun? And what’s with the fuzzy yellow-to-pink-to-red outline radiating around her? Another puzzling visual choice. The pipe on the wall descending down her forehead above her eyebrow isn’t helping either, and probably should have been considered in the design phase and handled more thoughtfully.
Naturally, commenters on the post are not holding back.
This cringey Morgan mural got me ruminating on other well-intentioned artistic interpretations of professional athletes that unfortunately also fell short. One can’t think about ill-fated commemorations of pro athletes without immediately thinking about The Heat’s statue of Dwyane Wade, unveiled outside of their arena in 2024.
The particular moment captured in the statue is meant to be Wade’s “this is my house” celebration, which he made after a game-winning three-point shot. A nice idea in theory, but similar to the Alex Morgan mural, the bronze representation of Wade is distractingly unflattering. Even Wade himself had to chuckle at the unveiling of the statue last year, while The Atlantic dubbed it “The Worst Statue in the History of Sports.”
Another statue at the top of the “What were they thinking?” category is this bust of one of the greatest soccer players of all time, Cristiano Ronaldo. Much like Morgan and Wade, it’s undeniable that Ronaldo is an attractive person. The Portuguese footballer has been heralded for his good looks for his entire career, especially in his younger years when he just as easily could have been a model as a pro athlete. This makes the bust of him installed at Madeira Airport in Portugal in 2017 all the more ridiculous.
The bust is so cruel it feels like the artist must have been an enemy of Ronaldo’s, hellbent on seeking revenge for a prior betrayal (or perhaps he’s just a die-hard Messi fan). Ronaldo’s face appears inaccurately pinched, with his eyes too close together and his mouth forming a goofy grin he would never favor to his typical smolder. The public outcry to the bust was immediate, and a year later is was replaced, per the request of the CR7 Museum, by a much more appropriate representation of the soccer star.
Painting a mural or creating a statue of a beloved figure is a weighty challenge, and these artists should be applauded for their gumption. But perhaps these examples should serve as cautionary tales for how we approach honoring athletes and others. It’s high time we rethink the style of these sorts of monuments, and acknowledge just how hard it is to achieve realism in this form. Can we get a bit more creative in how we represent and honor athletes? There simply has got to be a better way.
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