Dear Gareth Southgate

Dear Gareth Southgate, 

RE: Is there anything worse than losing?

Just to say that I’m a fan and it seems you did a great job as England football manager. 

Sorry to hear about your resignation.

Relatively speaking, there may be few people in the world who care about the prospects of the English national football team and their loss at the European Championship last Sunday. Yet, that sinking-head-in-the-hands disappointment, you, your players and the fans have felt/feel, surely is a universally relatable experience. 

But may I offer us all some consolation by asking whether there is anything worse than the disappointment of losing? I think there is. It is the disappointment of winning. 

Hear me out. For you and your team that sounds ridiculous and inconceivable. What could be better than returning from Berlin with that trophy? And what could possibly be worse than not doing so, given you had the chance? If things had turned out differently, many English fans (me included) would be enjoying a real moment of collective joy. It would have been fantastic. But not having those moments may be better than an even more devastating alternative. Worse than losing is finding ourselves arriving at the highest possible peaks of glory our imaginations can conjure, and still finding we are not high enough. 

In the Bible, a wise preacher observes a terrible anomaly:

There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honour, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them…[1]

He observes that it is possible to reach the top of the mountain of human achievement and glory (if God so gets us there), and find that the view is not as engrossing as we’d hoped. Burdensome disappointment meets us at the top and we are powerless to change it. Worse still, God seems to have designed it to be so. God has refused to give absolute enjoyment there. The Preachers again tells us to…

Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?[2]

God is apparently hampering our routes to total satisfaction in this world. With that in mind, spare a thought for your Spanish counterpart, Luis de la Fuente. He may be pleased, but he is currently walking on crooked, rocky ground. When we actually ascend the heights of this glory, emptiness is built into it. God has shrouded the tops of our mountains in partial cloud. When the elation settles and life continues, this disorientating feeling will likely creep in for him. This summit will have to be replaced by another. Other champions have felt this. This seems cruel. But God has apparently designed this as a kindness

The crookedness of all crushing disappointments is a kindness because it is not kind to leave people with the belief that what they have is the best when it actually isn’t the best. It is kind, rather, to promote the feeling that more ought to be had and to give them a hunger for it. When we win at ultimate earthly glory and get disappointed by it, God says to us in the pit of our stomach, “you’re not aiming high enough”.

The Apostle Paul reflects on the greatest of his unrivalled achievement and concludes:

‘I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’[3]

The Message of the Christian Gospel is that the person of Jesus Christ is the very ultimate source of human satisfaction. He has entered into this world to provide access to the dizzying mountaintop of His all-surpassing glory. At His cross he has won over our sin and death, that we may then enjoy the best of Him. 

Is there anything worse than losing? It is winning at life and discovering that our ambitions are stunted by comparison to what Jesus is. But herein is the kindness of God… our disappointments, in both winning or losing at life, are the means by which he may usher us to Himself. If we are prepared to listen to disappointments properly, those who lose may ultimately find Him and win. 

yours sincerely,

Chris Roberts


[1] Ecclesiastes 6:1-2

[2] Ecclesiastes 7:13

[3] Philippians 3:8