I feel a bit sorry for Americans. They don’t go through enough national sporting despair. OK, they had an invigorating shot of misery last Sunday night losing the Ryder Cup, but that was a rare thing for them. It’s rare because they’re so dominant in all the team sports they really care about, not least because their biggest team sports – certainly NFL and baseball – aren’t played by anyone else. Or at least not to the extent that another nation is ever going to come close to beating them in any meaningful “world cup†competition. Basketball, to be fair, is widely played around the world but essentially the same applies – the US men have been Olympic champions 17 times out of 20; for the women it’s nine out of 12. Ice hockey is slightly different. Here, Americans haven’t had it all their own way, and in Canada have a genuine local rival. This may be one reason Trump makes noises about taking them over.
So, why feel sorry for them? For a start, how diminished must be the joy of winning if you’re winning all the time? As a bloke with whom I go to the football always says after a miserable defeat: without despair there is no joy.
Losing takes practice, which is why I can almost forgive the pretty despicable behaviour of some of the Americans over the weekend
Losing takes practice, which is why I can almost forgive the pretty despicable behaviour of some of those Americans on the course over the weekend. They don’t know how to do it. So they just resort to nastiness. And worse, even after their team had performed brilliantly and nearly pulled off an incredible comeback, they were leaving in droves, storming out in a massive collective sulk. There didn’t seem to be any sticking around to applaud the worthy winners and, more importantly, salute their countrymen who, in the end, did themselves great credit in running Europe so close. Marching off towards the Long Island Railroad, it was like they were all channelling Vince Lombardi: “Show me a good loser,†the NFL coach famously said, “and I’ll show you a loser.†OK, point taken. But he was talking about the athletes rather than their fans.
Americans don’t get the chance to come together in support of their national team in the way the rest of us do. It’s such a valuable thing for the people of a nation to go through together, opportunities to feel such unity and belonging being rather rare. And in the really big moments losing is just as valuable as winning, in the sense of all being in it together. The morning after one England final defeat I passed a mother and her young boy on their way to school. They happened to be of Indian heritage. The lad was wearing an England shirt. I made a sad face at the kid, and his mother’s look told me it had been a very difficult evening for the whole family. Me too. We’d all been through it together. The three of us and millions of others. OK, it wouldn’t have been the be-all and end-all for all 60-odd million of us, but it wasn’t nothing either. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all had their moments too, when everyone’s been pulling in the same direction and sharing the same feelings. In Croatia – the other country I care about – it’s been said to me that everyone disagrees with everyone else all the time about everything, until such time as the national football team walks on to the pitch for a big match.
I’ve now watched England lose two European Championship finals, and Croatia lose in a World Cup final. On all three occasions I went home bloody miserable, but I’ve never felt more at one with my fellow country folk. Honestly, the Americans don’t know what they’re missing.
Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
