Brazil versus Germany. July 8, 2014. Belo Horizonte. The semifinal of the World Cup. Brazil is the host nation. They are playing in the stadium named after their greatest football tragedy — the Mineirão, where they lost the 1950 World Cup final to Uruguay. This is their redemption. They have Neymar's jersey held up during the national anthem. They are playing not just for themselves, but for 200 million Brazilians, for 64 years of waiting, for the ghosts of 1950.
They lose 7-1. Seven goals to one. The most devastating defeat in World Cup history.
Laozi had already diagnosed the cause of this collapse 2,500 years earlier, in Chapter 64 of the Tao Te Ching:
为者败之，执者失之。
Those who act ruin it. Those who grasp lose it.
— Chapter 64
Brazil didn't lose because they were bad at football. They lost because they wanted it too much. The weight of what winning would mean — redemption for 1950, validation as a football nation, the fairy tale of the boy from the favela lifting the trophy on home soil — was so heavy that no human being could carry it and still play football.
The Tao Te Ching Chapter 64 describes this precisely. The chapter begins with the famous line about a thousand-mile journey beginning with a single step. But the less-quoted verses that follow contain the real teaching:
千里之行，始于足下。为者败之，执者失之。是以圣人无为故无败，无执故无失。
A journey of a thousand miles begins under your feet. Those who act ruin it. Those who grasp lose it. Therefore the sage does not act, and so does not fail. He does not grasp, and so does not lose.
— Chapter 64
The sage does not fail — not because he is perfect, but because he has released attachment to outcome. He acts, but does not demand a result. He plays, but does not need to win. And paradoxically, this is exactly what makes winning possible.
The inverse of Brazil 2014 is Leicester City 2015-16. Not a World Cup — a Premier League title, but the same dynamic at a different scale. Leicester entered the season as 5000-to-1 outsiders. Bookmakers gave them better odds of Elvis being found alive. Nobody expected anything. The players were not carrying a nation's redemption on their shoulders. They were not playing for history. They were playing because it was Saturday.
And so they won. Not despite having nothing to lose — because they had nothing to lose. Claudio Ranieri, their manager, famously said nothing about winning the league until April. His team talks were about clean sheets, about the next match, about the work. Never about the trophy. He was practicing wu wei without knowing the Chinese name for it.
民之从事，常于几成而败之。慎终如始，则无败事。
People often fail when they are on the verge of success. If you are as careful at the end as at the beginning, you will not fail.
— Chapter 64
This is the principle Leicester embodied and Brazil violated. "Be as careful at the end as at the beginning." Brazil began their semifinal not as a football match but as a national exorcism. The end was already written in their minds — they had to win. And so they could only lose.
No moment in sport concentrates the truth of Chapter 64 more densely than the penalty kick in a World Cup shootout. Twelve yards. One kicker. One goalkeeper. The difference between immortality and a lifetime of what-ifs.
The research on penalty shootouts confirms what Laozi knew without empirical data: the kicker who most desperately wants to score is the most likely to miss. A 2022 study of World Cup penalty kicks found that when a team's survival depends on the kick — the "must-score" situation — the conversion rate drops by 15 percentage points compared to kicks taken when the team is already ahead.
Matt Le Tissier, one of the best penalty takers in football history (48 out of 49 converted), described his method: "I never decided where to put it until the goalkeeper moved. If he moved early, I went the other way. If he stood still, I picked a corner. There was no pressure because I wasn't committed to any outcome."
No commitment to outcome. Exactly what Chapter 64 prescribes.
The practical application of Chapter 64 for any coach, from Sunday league to the World Cup, is this:
1. Don't talk about the trophy. Not until the final whistle. Every mention of winning creates attachment. Every attachment tightens the muscles. Talk about the next training session. The first ten minutes of the next match. The corner routine you're working on. Keep the mind where the feet are.
2. If you're the favorite, pretend you're not. Argentina 2022 lost their opening match to Saudi Arabia — one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history. The loss was devastating, but it also liberated them. The weight of being favorites was gone. They played the rest of the tournament like a team with nothing to prove. And won.
3. Practice "not wanting." Before the penalty shootout, the coach who says "just enjoy this" is right for reasons they might not fully understand. Joy is the opposite of grasping. You cannot enjoy and grasp simultaneously. The player who smiles before taking a penalty kicks it better than the player who looks like they're facing a firing squad.
4. Lose the story. Brazil 2014 lost because of a story — the 1950 redemption narrative, Neymar's injury, the home soil destiny. Stories create weight. Weight loses matches. The best football is played by teams that have forgotten who they're supposed to be.
Chapter 64 of the Tao Te Ching is 85 characters in the original Chinese. It takes about 40 seconds to read aloud. And it explains more about why teams win and lose football matches than a thousand hours of tactical analysis.
The World Cup's deepest lesson is not about football. It's about attachment. The teams that win are the ones that somehow, against all odds and all incentives, manage to not care too much. They play as if the outcome is already decided — and in the Taoist view, it is. The outcome is latent in the conditions. The team's job is simply to not get in the way.
是以圣人欲不欲，不贵难得之货；学不学，复众人之所过。以辅万物之自然而不敢为。
Therefore the sage desires not-desiring, and does not value rare treasures. He learns not-learning, and returns to what the masses have passed by. He helps all things follow their natural course, but does not dare to act.
— Chapter 64, closing lines
The sage "does not dare to act." Not because he is passive — but because he understands that most action is counterproductive. Most "doing" gets in the way. Most "wanting" prevents having. The World Cup winner is the team that, for 90 minutes, manages to stop wanting and just plays.