4 ideas
In the 1986 World Cup quarter-final at Mexico City's Azteca stadium, Diego Maradona scored against England first with his hand, the goal he later called 'the hand of God', and minutes later with a solo run past half the English team. It became the founding image of a flawed, human deity whom fans worship precisely because he transgresses.
A national team gives a country a scheduled, bounded occasion to feel hope and loss together, and Mexico in particular has made anticipated defeat into a ritual of shared identity. Losing becomes confirmation of a familiar national story, not simply a failure. The consolation that 'we played as never before and lost as always' shows a fatalism that is cultivated and even enjoyed.
Television does not simply transmit a match. It rebuilds the match through replays, camera angles and commentary, producing a second, edited event that most fans experience in place of the real one. Controversies, heroes and memory itself are formed from the replay, so the World Cup becomes a media spectacle whose meaning is set in the studio as much as on the pitch.
A supporter may change jobs, partners, politics or even religion, but switching clubs counts as unthinkable betrayal. This makes team loyalty one of the few fixed identities left in modern life. The attachment works like religious faith: it is inherited or chosen early, survives any amount of disappointment, and justifies itself by its own persistence.