There’s no hurt quite like World Cup hurt.
It probably has something to do with the periodicity of the world’s biggest football competition. You can’t shrug and say “Well, there’s always next year!” in the World Cup. A final defeat in the World Cup is four years of building expectations, qualifying process, thousands of small, incremental developments for an entire generation of players and fans being cut down in an instant. And the realization that you have another four years to go until you have a shot
at some semblance of redemption.
National pride is also at stake. Important defeats for national teams in the grandest stage of all are impossible to separate from your national context. When your country wins you are by association a winner as well. When they lose… well what does that make you?
That might sound silly. Logically, I understand that a sport and a nation’s entire identity is not intrinsically linked. Then again, when has football ever been even the slightest bit logical? If you don’t believe me, just look at the face of poor soul Francesco Pio Esposito as he readied himself to take the first penalty kick in the fateful series that would see the Italian national team lose out in World Cup qualification for the third edition in a row earlier this week.
Esposito wasn’t alive the last time Italy won the World Cup. He was 9 years old the last time Italy qualified outright for the tournament. He has never seen his storied country win a knockout round game. It’s impossible not to see the cumulative weight of 12 years of national embarrassment and tragedy on his body language as he goes to take the shot, not only with the responsibility to himself and to his teammates but with the responsibility to break the spell of the worst footballing period in an entire nation’s history. I’m honestly shocked that he managed to get a shot off at all.
Of course, this is just the most recent tragedy for Italian fans that they will have to recover from. It adds to being dumped out in the group round in their last two previous participations and the ignominious failures of 2018 and 2022 respectively. I recommend an afternoon of watching 2006 World Cup and Euro 2020(1) highlights to recover.
Then again, follow international football for long enough and it is impossible not to collect a shocking amount of harrowing defeats. As a Mexican fan, we have a checkered history with the most important tournament for national teams.
Believe it or not, Mexico actually holds two World Cup records: most games played without winning the tournament — 60 matches across 17 tournaments — and most losses overall with 28 defeats. We are always good enough to get there, but never quite good enough to actually make an impact. That has a lot to do with playing in CONCACAF, which means our qualifying process is a relative walk in the park most years, not that they haven’t tried their damnedest to miss out on a couple of occasions, of course.
When you are the — literal — biggest loser to ever play in the World Cup you are bound to have some scars. Starting with the 1994 edition and until 2018, Mexico managed to qualify for the Round of 16 every tournament and fail to progress further than that in each chance as well. That’s seven knockout round games and seven losses, it’s staggering.
(They finally broke the streak in 2022 when they just didn’t get to the R0und of 16 at all. It was legitimately less harmful than every other knockout round loss I have ever seen. I appreciated them for that.)
You have your run of the mill losses against better teams, against Argentina in 2010 and Brazil in 2018. Type of matches you never really had a shot and vowed out with not a ton to offer. Those are the easiest to move on from.
There’s the blown chances against teams you should have probably beat like against Bulgaria in 1994 in which a cursed round of PKs ended up being the death knell for a very talented team. Or the valiant, “feel-good” defeat in which you took a super power to the absolute brink and lost due to a one in a million moment of brilliance by a rival as was the case in 2006 against Argentina. Maxi Rodriguez, I will always hate you but goddamn what a shot.
This is where you start to get to borderline traumatic events. Defeats so bad, so harrowing that entire generations never quite get over. In 1998, a swashbuckling Mexico squad had Germany on the ropes. Leading 1-0, long haired striker Luis “El Matador” Hernández had a golden opportunity to bury the European giants and double his scoring tally on the game. Late in the second half, Cuauhtémoc Blanco fed him a clean pass right in front of the German goal. With no mark on him, Hernandez rushed the shot and feebly made contact straight into the waiting keeper’s hands. A golden opportunity in a game in which Germany had controlled possession but hadn’t managed to break through a sturdy Mexican defense.
Germany, being Germany, equalized shortly thereafter and scored the winning goal four minutes before the 90 minute mark.
For most fans of a certain age, though, 2002 was the nadir of horrible losses. After qualifying first in their group, Mexico was paired with recurrent punching bag the United States in the Round of 16. It wasn’t a matter of if we were going to win that game, it was only by how much. Should we rest a couple guys actually? Who would we face in the quarterfinals? Given the game was in Korea, is it even worth it to stay up late at night to watch the game live?
A 2-0 defeat was as unexpected as it was humiliating. The team never got out of second gear and little by little lost the game and their composure in the process with captain and rising superstar Rafa Marquez getting himself red carded in the latter stages of the game after headbutting an American player due to the sheer frustration. Given Mexico and the U.S. share a checkered history, this defeat wasn’t just about football — it touched so many more fibres for the country as a whole.
I was 9 years old when this game was played. And while it certainly was traumatizing, I was still too young to fully comprehend. The fact that I didn’t see the game live or followed the World Cup as closely as I would have wanted due to time differences made moving on far easier for me than I bet it was for my father or older folks. However, as I said before, watch enough international football and you’ll get your traumatic experience soon enough.
The year was 2014. After a horrific qualifying period in which Mexico was minutes away from being eliminated in qualifying and barely made it through via international playoffs, the expectations were very low, even more so after being sorted into a very difficult group with hosts Brazil, trendy black horse candidate Croatia and always tricky to play against Cameroon.
Mexico not only surpassed expectations, they shattered them in group play. After beating Cameroon in their first match, Guillermo Ochoa carved his name into the annals of World Cup cult heroes by single handedly denying Brazil for 90 minutes and eking out an unexpected draw. It was all to play for against Croatia, the temperature rose in the days before the game as Croatian manager Niko Kovac and Luka Modric made a number of incendiary comments during their press availability.
What transpired was not only the best game Mexico played in that tournament, but it remains the best game I have ever seen them play in the competition. They matched Croatia’s intensity from the very first minute and played a team filled with elite talent even during the first half, finally finding a breakthrough in the second half through Marquez in the 70th minute.
Traditionally, Mexico would have bunkered down and try to salvage the draw that would take them to the next round, but this team was different. The goal broke the dam for an inspired Mexican team as they found the back of the net two more times in quick succession to kill any sort of Croatian hopes. A 3-1 final scoreline put them in a collision course against the Netherlands in the Round of 16.
This was a different team, with a mix of youth and experience. Of European based players and local idols. They were not going to play like so many other teams had before. Similarly to Croatia, they took it right up to the Dutch team, showing little fear or respect for a team that was significantly more talented than them.
After a gritty first half, Giovanni dos Santos, a youth star that never quite lived up to expectations at club level but always elevated his game with the national team scored what is probably the most important goal of his career. After recovering a loose ball in midfield, dos Santos unleashed an off balance shot that snuck past the keeper and into the net.
What followed was 40 minutes of gritted teeth and courage by a Mexican team that felt history at their fingertips. With every passing minute I allowed myself to believe more and more. Perhaps this was the year, the year all the ghosts of failure past didn’t matter anymore. The year in which decades of futility stopped weighing us down in the most popular sport in the country, when a Mexican team finally rose to the occasion and knocked off one of the traditional superpowers.
In less than 10 minutes it all changed. Wesley Sneidjer found a crevice of daylight and released a laser beam that Ochoa could not stop, immediately all the weight came back on. The composed Mexican squad lost all semblance of who they were and the ghosts showed up in Fortaleza. The controversial call to give the Netherlands the winning PK dominated the headlines the following days. It didn’t really mater if it was the correct call or not, it was our lot in life, we should have known better.
Time cures all ills. Just as much as it hurts to get dumped out of the World Cup, time makes you forget and once those fours years roll around the hope starts anew again. Who’s to say this year isn’t the year? It only hurts if you care and goddamn, how can you possibly not care about the World Cup?
Chin up, my Italian friends, it hurts today, but rest assured it will probably hurt for us all in a couple of months’ time as well.
