After watching some World Cup matches, I’ve been left dumbfounded by the excessive patriotic fervor of some fans. Why are they cheering so loudly and dancing so exuberantly? Don’t they realize their homeland is screwed up? Get a grip!
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This disconnect prompted me to check some rankings, believing there should be some correlation between happiness and patriotism. Turns out that’s far from clear. For consistency purposes, I used rankings derived by World Population Review (WPR).
Finland (as we’re getting tired of hearing by now) is consistently ranked the happiest country (I think part of that is that the women know their place — they even have home economics classes in their schools). Wouldn’t such happy people top the patriotism charts? Not so — they rank 16th for “Average National Pride” in the WPR 2026 report. The discrepancy between happiness and patriotism is even wider for Norway and Sweden.
Whether it’s Ghana, DR Congo, Senegal, Haiti, South Africa…etc., their World Cup fans’ excessively prideful antics seem to reflect a deep-rooted complex that they suck at other things. In a convoluted way, I guess this may make sense: a chance to release some pent-up angst in a desperate search for relevance. Or simply emotional escapism.
Their extravagant support of their national soccer teams certainly doesn’t reflect conditions at home — none of the aforementioned countries are heading up the happiness parade.
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As an aside: Even though they aren’t a participant in the World Cup 2026, I must mention India. Their world happiness rank is 118th in 2025. Yet, they are the second-most patriotic nation; indeed, 75% of their residents are willing to fight for their country. That stark metric is concerning given their nuke arsenal, and makes President Trump’s efforts to smooth things over between them and Pakistan even more significant.
I’m glad they are smart because on the sporting front there’s not much for them to write home about — they suck at soccer and underwhelm in the Olympic Games. Despite having a gazillion people, several nations are ranked higher than them at cricket. Their pride must result from insinuating their sons into leadership roles in our tech titans like Microsoft and Alphabet (Google).
The United States has been knocked out of the World Cup, but much of the world now knows how great we are. More importantly, we have been reminded by our visitors. At least we have the best country to forge a meaningful life in. Those poor bastards from DR Congo, Haiti, et al. have to go home now. That’s nothing to cheer about.
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Image: Free image, Pixabay license.