World Cup Watch Party: Semifinal
You will always be a loser
I committed to this, and I’m sticking to it. Only one big essay this time as we head into the semis. To catch up on previous rounds of the World Cup Watch Party, click the links below:
You Will Always Be A Loser
I know the odds are astronomical. But you’ve got to play if you want to win.
I was tidying up the house this morning and had more paper trash to throw away than usual, because over the last couple of months I’ve become the kind of person who gets a few lottery plays when the Powerball is especially high. It’s funny to say something like, “I’m not going to play right now. Someone just won and the jackpot is only $20 million.” As if my odds are greater when it’s over $300 million and as if even after taxes the payout I’d receive for the base $20 million jackpot wouldn’t support a life of doing basically whatever I wanted until I die.
I never win, though, and so I throw away the tickets and the receipts unless I forget to and they sit on my kitchen table for a few days, and when they manage to break through the backdrop and become something that I’m aware I need to throw away, I’m reminded that I am a loser.
At the very least, I am not a winner.
One veers dangerously close to “wannabe motivational speaker” if they start talking about lifetime win/loss averages too much. It’s cliche to point out that an All-Star slugger only hits about one third of the time. Shaq only hit about half of his free throws. Is this the second time I’ve mentioned Shaq in this series? Huh.
England just can’t win, man. The upside, I’d say to them if I were trying and failing to console them after the heartbreaking loss to the greatest player of all time, is that France lost, too. No one thought France could lose. They also have a guy who is the best player in the world, and like Messi, the players in place around him are good enough to support the ambitions of a World Cup. So, you know, you lost, but so did they. Because losing happens more often than winning.
I’d say this knowing it has absolutely no consolation, because their brains are still going over what they should’ve done, like keeping up the pressure that had given them the opportunity for their first goal, maintained a similar shape that mostly stifled Argentina’s attack, and maybe made subs that were more conducive to maintaining possession and midfield dominance rather than sitting back and absorbing pressure and crosses. Dan Burn is not this tournament’s designated Big Lovable Guy, please stop trying to make it happen.
Messi has lost like this, too. He’s also won, of course. But he’s lost, too.
I don’t bet on sports. I don’t bet on really anything. It’s all a losing battle and the house always wins. We all know that, even the gamblers. And yet the gamblers still gamble because despite the house always winning, there’s that small chance that they win instead. Sports fandom is just gambling emotion. The more you put in, too, the more it pays out, and vice versa.
And it seems like no matter who you support, no matter how good they are on paper and how much every projection and intangible vibe-based model says they are “supposed to win,” the house always ends up winning.
There are plenty of ways to lose, too. No one is more noble or less noble than anther necessarily. You can be simply stifled in every attempt to do what you do best. You can never even get a real chance at winning because every attempt is shut down. You don’t lose so much as you were prevented from winning.
This was the case for France.
Or, on the other hand, you could lose by seeing the opportunity to win, coming agonizingly close to it, and falter. You can sort of give up and stop doing the things that allowed you to win in the first place, and everyone will be left looking for who to blame exactly. Because certainly someone is to blame for all of this. It’s demoralizing and you can see it on faces. It’s enough to shatter any unity and collective positivity that existed.
And now your reward is a “Bronze Final,” where the only goal is to avoid humiliation by being a loser twice in a row.
I’m not a betting man, but I like France’s odds in this one.
Anyway, here’s Wonderwall.