The art of losing

by Neil Thomas
June 30th, 2010

I know we probably said we would not try to link football and culture too often, but the World Cup has forced my hand (Thierry Henry knows how that feels).

You cannot escape noticing that France exited the 2010 World Cup before England and therefore, you would think, with more ‘shame’ attached. But, not a bit of it. The French defeat has, in fact, been turned, almost, into an act of revolution, with a player being sent home and others going on strike. Thus in defeat, France appear charismatic and anarchic, leaving the tournament with the impression that they could have won the silly contest if they could have been bothered. (Sorry, but shades of the Fall of France in 1940 are present, non?)

England’s exit from this year’s World Cup, at a later stage than France, is however seen as a disaster – poor players, badly led, who could only win if they could somehow persuade another team, perhaps say the Americans, to play alongside them and take on all-comers. (This was Churchill’s lesson drawn from Dunkirk.)

So, the French team has been said to have self-destructed, but the English team to have been incompetent.

One Francophile commentator has observed that “French fans knew their team would be defeated. In recent years, watching Les Bleus has been an experience on a par with the Rolling Stones tours – you stick with the players in the hope that age and wealth doesn’t affect their performance”. The same holds true of England players, but still there was a mistaken hope for glory.

Maybe England should emulate France – try to turn losing into an art form – and forget about winning, but that is probably an impossible cultural leap.

Jerry Coe

Comments (2)

Few events put nationality in the spotlight quite like the World Cup (was, for example, anyone glued to last week’s G8 summit with quite the same intensity), and the national stereotypes are easily reinforced: the arrogant French, the English with their delusions of grandeur, the cool efficiency of the Germans, South American flair, the insouciant grace of the Dutch etc etc.

Posted by Andrew • 30 June 2010, 18:05

Any team with the incandescently unpleasant and bad tempered John Terry are doomed. His huge payload of negative charisma makes him, like the equally moronic Gerrard an uninspired, angry and frustrated player. There were probably a few fans who thought,‘Oh well, we’ve got an Italian manager, maybe we can get rid of all that chavvy (Louis Vuitton) baggage; the Wags, the gold helicopters, the blacked-out windowed coaches and all the accoutrements of moneyed rubbish…’ I found myself looking at poor old Becks sitting in his grey suit and black tie, a wardrobe of a kind of desperate and belated restraint. looking at the crosses that went awry and not only looking down in the mouth but in down in spirit, his posture a kind of apology to the world. He knew we weren’t a team any more. You don’t need unions when your rich.

Posted by johnny bull • 9 July 2010, 10:27