Friendly rivals only serve to make me feel like a shitty friend.

Like look at Hop in SwSh. The guy clearly lives in the shadow of his brother, and all you do from beginning to end is beat him down. A character learning that they'll never beat the protagonist because we're just that awesome isn't a great arc for them.

More recently there's Kieren. We're not even given the option to let him have Ogerpon. Me personally, I can take or leave the legendaries because by that point I'm usually attached to the team I've built, but Kieren had been obsessed with Ogerpon for years. So we just come in with our blank stare and smile, learn about Ogerpon and take it as our own, then leave, probably leaving Ogerpon in our PC anyway.

In the old games we had bullies like Blue and Silver who needed to be knocked down a peg. Ironically, since they decided to remove bullies as rivals, we've become the bully. I really think they should rethink how to implement friendly rivals, and it wouldn't even be hard. Just have them fight alongside us instead of against us, at least most of the time.