I´m writing these lines shortly after having watched the 2026 World Cup Final; congratulations, Spain!
(Drawing of the Spanish flag, coloured in by Eva when she was seven years old.)
Those of you who know me also know that I´m not a big sports fan, especially regarding football/soccer, so it´s not habitual for me to sit down to watch a match. But today, being the final, with Spain playing and Irene and Alicia also at home, we made an exception and took the opportunity to suffer it, that is, to enjoy it together (we missed you, Eva).
Por supuesto, me alegro mucho de que haya ganado España, creo que ha sido el equipo que mejor ha jugado. Pero tengo que decir que me he quedado con mal sabor de boca; he visto mucho mal rollo, mucha bronca y poca camaradería entre los dos equipos, y eso me da mucha pena. Como no tengo mucho con lo que comparar (no he visto absolutamente nada más del mundial), no sé hasta qué punto es «normal» que se comporten así los jugadores (y ya de paso, los entrenadores); yo espero que esto sea la excepción más que la norma, pero la verdad es que no las tengo todas conmigo…
What a stark contrast with the mid-time show, with its children singing about universal love and acting as if we are all friends. I couldn´t help but feel that it sounded false.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why, in general, sports competitions don´t appeal to me: I struggle with this confrontation mentality, the "us versus them", which is a very human and very natural tendency, but also a very dangerous one, or at least not very productive.
As I mentioned in my post about labels, there´s an evolution related explication for all this: human beings are social and tribal by nature. Belonging to a clan or tribe allowed our ancestors to survive and reproduce, as they were able to protect one another and collaborate to solve problems (hunt together, share the workload, specialise tasks, etc.).
But in the same way human beings are designed to collaborate, they´re also designed to compete. Because part of belonging to a tribe involves defending it from its enemies, that is, from other tribes, or even attacking those other tribes for the benefit of your own group. And that´s when we start to categorise people as "one of us" or "one of the others", creating a separation based on arbitrary rules, and that´s when the trouble starts.
If you think about it, those divisions and rivalries are everywhere: you can see them very clearly in the relationships between countries, but also between regions, cities or villages, departments or teams in a company, educational institutions, sports teams, sides of a family, and so on and so forth. And the level of distrust and animosity between both sides can range from harmless rivalry to a sort of entrenched hostility that instigates wars generation after generation, as we unfortunately see quite often.
This is perhaps the explanation for one of the major contradictions we human beings have. How is it possible that sometimes we´re able to show so much empathy and compassion, and other times, be so cruel and aggressive to one another? Well, because we´re not using the same standard for everything; por desgracia, la norma no es simplemente «no matarás», sino «no matarás… a los tuyos». Los otros ya son otra cosa. Los otros son el enemigo.
Once, years ago, I received an excellent piece of advice at work: when you get to work with somebody, try to make them feel part of "us", because otherwise, they´re going to feel part of "them"; they´re going to perceive that distance, and there will be more resistance to collaborating. Today, I invite you to look around, paying attention, to discover those "us versus them" dynamics; how are you contributing to creating that atmosphere? And what can you do to "bring the others around" so that you all feel you´re on the same side?