When defeat teaches more than victory ever can
Sports exist to remind us that, despite everything, we still choose to hope
There is a photograph that football has never been able to forget.
The date: 17 July 1994. Location: Pasadena, California.
Roberto Baggio stands still after missing the decisive penalty against Brazil in the FIFA World Cup final. He does not fall. He does not protest. He simply looks up. In that frozen moment, Italy's greatest footballer becomes the man remembered for a single miss.
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Years later, he would describe the pain in words as brutal as the moment itself:
"If I had a knife then, I would have stabbed myself. If there had been a gun, I would have shot myself. At that moment, I just wanted to die," Baggio told The Athletic.
Football can be cruel like that. It builds heroes over the years and dismantles them in seconds. And Baggio's heartbreak did not stand alone. The pattern kept repeating.
On 9 July 2006, Zinedine Zidane walked off the World Cup final in Berlin after receiving a red card against Italy. His last professional match ended not with a trophy lift, but with confusion and silence.
A decade later came Lionel Messi's torment. Argentina lost the 2014 World Cup final to Germany, followed by back-to-back Copa América defeats to Chile in 2015 and 2016. Three finals. Three heartbreaks. Even the greatest could be denied joy.
Yet sport loves redemption as much as it loves tragedy.
Messi rewrote his story. He won the Copa América in 2021 against Brazil. He lifted the Finalissima in 2022 against Italy. And on 18 December 2022, he finally claimed the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, defeating France in one of the most dramatic finals ever played. France, meanwhile, had already won in 2018 by beating Croatia in Moscow. Pain and glory keep trading places.
Now the world is turning again. The 2026 World Cup is approaching, and with it comes familiar anticipation. Stadium songs return. Arguments revive. Hope sneaks back into conversations.
Even in Bangladesh, a country defined by cricket, the World Cup changes the air. Streets empty. Rooftops glow with flags. Tea stalls become debate halls. For a few weeks, loyalties stretch across continents and emotions feel shared.
But while football visits, cricket lives here.
Cricket shapes our afternoons and moods. I am no longer the fan I once was, not because the game failed me, but because heartbreak accumulated.
Of those, 21 March 2012 remains vivid.
Bangladesh lost the Asia Cup final to Pakistan by two runs in Mirpur. Four years later, on 23 March 2016, they lost to India by one run in the ICC World T20 in Bengaluru. I was just a kid back then, watching in disbelief, learning that cricket could be both beautiful and cruel.
As I grew older, the disappointments continued. In recent years, Bangladesh has struggled in major tournaments. The 2021 T20 World Cup ended in early exits. In the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup, the team failed to progress past the group stage. These moments remind fans that the highs and lows of Bangladesh cricket are never far apart.
Yet cricket refuses to be remembered only for sorrow. Hope has returned in flashes, from victories against England in the 2011 and 2015 World Cups to fearless performances in 2019, highlighted by Shakib Al Hasan's all-round brilliance.
Though his legacy today is complicated by political controversy.
Bangladesh still waits for a senior ICC trophy. But glory has arrived in fragments; in matches, in moments, in faith.
And on 9 February 2020, something larger happened when the Bangladesh Under-19 team defeated India to win the ICC Under-19 World Cup in South Africa. For once, the future looked unburdened.
If football showed heartbreak on the world's biggest stage, and cricket reflected a nation's resilience, basketball entered my life in a quieter and more personal way.
I grew up in St Gregory's High School, an institution that helped introduce basketball to Bangladesh. Ironically, I never played seriously back then. Football owned my heart. Basketball arrived later at the university when a classmate suggested forming a team for the university tournament. Another friend, an alumnus of St Joseph Higher Secondary School, joined us.
We tried.
In 2024, we reached the quarter-final of the DU Inter Department Basketball Championship. We lost by one point. That single point felt heavier than any collapse I had watched. I cried. The loss stayed with me.
But sport rarely ends in defeat. We returned months later and trained harder. We argued, corrected mistakes, and believed stubbornly that we could win. In 2025, we became undefeated champions of the tournament.
Looking back, the loss in 2024 changed how we approached the game. We trained better, communicated more, and understood our mistakes. Without that experience, the 2025 title might not have been possible.
It may not have been a national triumph. There were no fireworks, no commentators, no breaking news. But nations are made of people. And people carry their own victories.
So why talk about football heartbreaks, cricket collapses, and a student basketball tournament? Because every World Cup year reminds us that sport is never only about trophies.
It is about how deeply we allow ourselves to feel, how we learn to lose, and how we wait and stand up again when belief becomes heavy.
Sports do not exist to guarantee happiness. They exist to remind us that, despite everything, we still choose to hope.
