Spirit, commitment and pride

It was, despite the fact that we lost, a memory to cherish. Some have compared the sense of national pride in England’s performance at this year’s Euros to the opening of the 2012 London Olympics — another night to remember. Let’s not forget, then, that the UK wasn’t the best team in that event either. The result is not the only thing that matters. We shall never forget those magnificent young men who flew an elated and, briefly, united nation to heights of which we had not dreamed for half a century.

That the British are inclined to dwell on past glories has become such a cliché that it’s a pleasant surprise to realise that, at least on the football field, the future looks brighter than ever before. Yet we must live, neither in a nostalgic reverie nor on fantasies of greater things to come, but in the grey dawn of the present. Today’s return to reality will be salutary not only for the England team but for all four nations of the kingdom. Back to work, back to normal, back to meeting the inescapable challenges of everyday life. We need this reality check no less than we need to believe in ourselves again.

What matters is that we now have hope: hope that we can rebuild our economy, our society, our democracy, our country. The qualities on display these past few weeks have restored our faith in the can-do capabilities that have always been our greatest strength. The Queen, as always, got it right in her pre-match message to Gareth Southgate. She did not merely wish him and his team success, but commended “the spirit, commitment and pride with which you have conducted yourselves”. Victory may have eluded England on the field, but that spirit will, God willing, abide with us in all our endeavours. The example that these young people have set, not only for their contemporaries, but for all their compatriots, will live on in our hearts. Virtues that few have associated with football — modesty, self-sacrifice, decency, politeness, sportsmanship — have been glimpsed, reminders of our better selves.

Games are never to be confused with life, if only because life seldom replicates their binary outcome: we are, most of us, neither winners nor losers, but sometimes one or the other and often something in between. Yet games can offer us a simulacrum of life. Children learn through play and so, in a different way, do adults. We go to the theatre to see a play. We incorporate elements of play into many of our most serious activities: one only has to watch politics — not only in Parliament, but in the office, in the media, or on campus — to see that. The language we use is saturated with phraseology and metaphors derived from sports and other games. Life is not a game, but games are life in miniature.

The ability to concede gracefully but to recover from setbacks is, of course, very much part of life. Homo ludens, human beings as players, must learn to rise above defeat or else drop out of the game. The British pride themselves on being good losers, though perhaps only those who have been winners for most of their history can afford themselves that luxury. It does not always feel like that at present. And so it felt good to be winners for a change, at least while it lasted. But winners must always lose eventually. In the long run, this country has been in the right more often than it has been in the wrong. We can afford to admit our faults because we have confidence in our abilities. We can castigate our occasional crimes because our consciences are clear. When we lose we know that we played by the rules — rules that we, more than any other nation, created. Indeed, the very concept of fair play is almost universally associated with the British.

England did not bring football home, but we brought something far more valuable back from the Euros. We may have lost the final at Wembley, but we have not lost anything that really matters. A trophy is only a bauble. What we have instead is pride in our accomplishments and a commitment to do better next time. These are qualities that we can all apply to our own situations. Pride is double-edged, of course: first among the seven deadly sins, because it caused Lucifer to fall, it can indeed become satanic. We know that for us, too, pride may come before a fall, and so we must keep it in check. But quiet satisfaction in a job well done, giving and receiving credit where credit is due, resilience in defeat and magnanimity in victory: these are nothing to be ashamed of.

We can and we should take pride in what Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Luke Shaw, Jordan Pickford and the rest of England’s valiant team have achieved in a few unforgettable weeks. There is no danger that their achievement will go to their heads: the three unfortunate young players who missed their mark in the penalty shoot-out saw to that. Typically, and admirable, Gareth Southgate took full responsibility for his decision to put them in the firing line. In the second half, a superb Italian team gave us a master class in how to come back from behind. But we know we will do even better next time. And we know that we can overcome adversity, not only amid the din of the ecstatic multitudes at Wembley, but also in the solitude of a laboratory developing vaccines or a hospital treating those in danger of their lives. If we can demonstrate that spirit, commitment and pride in everything we do as a nation, we cannot go far wrong.

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