Without your support, nothing in Argentina, Brazil, Germany or Portugal would stick.
Yet you will cry.
Get angry.
Fight.
Stay up all night watching matches.
Give status updates.
Sometimes ruin relationships.
Why?
Because for most fans, football is not just a game.
It is related to their hunger for identity.
People don't just want to survive.
They want to feel important.
They want to feel—"I am part of something."
"I am connected to something big."
"My existence has a meaning."
And this is where a strange psychological game begins.
In reality, you are not Brazilian.
Not Argentine.
Not Portuguese.
Your birth, upbringing, struggle, future—none of these teams have any real connection to anything.
Yet you rejoice in their victories, and are devastated by their defeats.
Because many times people start living on borrowed money because they are not able to create money in their own lives.
They are not proud of any of their own achievements.
So they make other people's achievements their own.
They have not won any wars themselves.
So they feel other people's trophies as their own victories.
They have not created any history themselves.
So they associate their name with other people's history in their imagination.
In psychology, this is called Basking in Reflected Glory.
That is, feeling yourself shining in the light of other people's success.
When a person bases his identity, dignity and self-worth on a football team instead of his character, knowledge, work or contribution, then he unknowingly belittles his own being.
Because then the source of his pride is no longer himself.
The source of his pride becomes something over which he has no control, no contribution, no ownership.
Imagine—
If the greatest joy in your life comes from a goal you had no role in—
And the greatest disappointment comes from a defeat you had no responsibility for—
Then who is the owner of your emotions?
You?
Or someone else?
A person's greatest honor is their independent being.
Their conscience.
Their thoughts.
Their own achievements.
But people suffering from identity crises often don't consider that being enough.
So they associate themselves with something big to make themselves look big.
Some with a team.
Some with a celebrity.
Some with a political party.
Some with ethnic pride.
Some with a football team.
Because when there is emptiness inside, people often look for an identity outside.
And that borrowed identity gives them warmth for a while.
But it never fulfills them.
Because the truth is very cruel—
Messi doesn't know you.
Neymar doesn't know you.
Ronaldo doesn't know you.
Winning the World Cup won't solve a single problem in your life.
Losing it won't cause any real harm to your life.
Everything happens inside your head.
In your feelings.
In your imaginary identity.
That's why the World Cup is actually more of a story about human psychology than football.
It shows where a person is looking for their identity.
In themselves?
Or in someone else's jersey?
Because in the end, the biggest tragedy of a person may not be the loss of a team.
But rather, the fact that they haven't been able to create something in their life that they can be proud of.
So they have to live by borrowing other people's goals, other people's trophies, other people's history.
And as long as a person doesn't live their own life, they will continue to be a supporter of some team or another-
But they will no longer be able to become the hero of their own story.