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Defining team spirit at Euro 2000
Posted: Friday June 23, 2000 09:22 AM
What is team spirit? Well, having spent the last two weeks or so here at Euro 2000 in the company of footballers, who, regardless of results, always say team spirit is high, I guess I'm in as good a position as anyone to have a stab at defining it. In its basic form at international level, team spirit is the sense of commitment that motivates a group of individuals, who spend most of their working lives as opponents, to bond together under a flag and work towards a common goal --- literally and figuratively speaking in the case of the European Championship. The mere fact that the players all wear a certain color uniform and carry a certain passport is no automatic guarantee that team spirit will be present, of course. Just ask the Germans. But when it is, it's a joy to see and takes many forms.
For England, for example, team spirit is loyalty. The players' refusal to blame fullback Phil Neville for recklessly conceding the last-minute penalty that put them out of the championship against Romania; the all-for-one and one-for-all ethic that the squad adopted in the face of the vile fan abuse suffered by David Beckham earlier in the competition; and the Football Association's decision not to sack coach Kevin Keegan after his first tournament failure -- they're all examples of English team spirit in action. It struck the one positive note for England in an otherwise bitterly disappointing campaign.
On the pitch, undying belief characterized the qualities of team spirit for Spain. The Spaniards' collective determination to chase an apparently lost cause against Yugoslavia in their vital last group game was richly rewarded with two goals in the final minutes of injury-time that kept their championship hopes alive. Team spirit is now so high in the Spanish camp in the aftermath of that reprieve, that for the first time they're now saying openly that they can win the title. Team spirit for Norway involved sharing hope and confronting heartbreak as a group. The sight of the entire Norwegian squad standing on the pitch after a scoreless draw with Slovenia, looking pleadingly to the press box for news of the Spanish result that would make or break their championship, wrote its own caption. And when the Norwegians got the thumbs down, at least there was comfort in numbers. Pride was the main ingredient of team spirit for Holland and France. Holland, the pre-tournament favorite, and France, the world champion, had both already qualified for the quarterfinals when they met in their final group game, and each team could have entered the match with its own agenda -- Holland needing a win to stay at home for the quarterfinals, and France needing a loss in order to play their quarterfinal in the Belgian city of Bruges, just a few miles from the French border where support for them would be strongest. Yet, despite the fact that they could have produced a sterile game aimed at meeting each team's preferences, the Dutch and French instead put on a full-bloodied attacking contest that in terms of sheer entertainment has been among the best games of the tournament so far. I'm sure there've been other examples of team spirit at this championship, too. Some unique, some universal and, away from the eyes of the media, perhaps some a little unusual, though none quite as bizarre as the Romanian's decision to dye every player's hair blonde at the last World Cup, I'm sure. It's all a question of finding some common factor that makes the players believe they're in this fight together. United they stand, divided they fall. Terry Baddoo is a co-host of "World Sport," the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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