Happy Sunday, Penelope, you who unpick by night what you wove by day!

Dieser Brief auf Deutsch · Questa lettera in italiano

Written on Sunday, sent on Monday: the World Cup final got in the way. Thank you for your understanding.

This morning I was running a little late. If I got a move on, I would still catch the train. But just as I was about to leave the house, I was stopped dead: the house key was not hanging on its hook by the door. Desperate search, a headless dash through the flat. Then suddenly the flash of inspiration: look in the bathroom! And there it was, next to the toothpaste. A smug, triumphant smile, off to the station!

Every so often I find myself hunting for some vital object: phone, wallet, charger for the camera. These things do have their appointed places, but it happens that on my way out I reach for one of them and grasp thin air, and a quick, more or less frantic search begins.

It is not as if I only started yesterday trying to bring some order into my life. The golden rule has been clear to me for half a century: just always put things in the same place. Is that so hard? Just. In. The same. Place.

So why do I keep finding (not always!) the bunch of keys next to the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, in the bathroom beside the tubes of toothpaste, or on top of Saul Bellow's Herzog on the chest of drawers beside the bed? In what kind of mental blackout did I ever put it under the cushion on the sofa?

For a long time, while hunting for the right cable or the bike key, I flogged myself with that brutality towards ourselves that is peculiar to us humans: You are boycotting yourself and your life! and Why do you keep provoking your own failure!?

On Wednesday I had the luck to watch the semi-final, England against Argentina. It was one of the few matches of this men's World Cup, a tournament going under in a sea of greed for money and corruption, whose outcome robbed me of my sleep, my goodness! England dominate the first 54 minutes, Anthony Gordon scores a thoroughly deserved 1-0, the team is well on its way to the final of this World Cup and with it the chance of a first world title in 60 years. But with that goal they lose the ground under their feet completely. The team falls apart entirely: between the 1-0 and the 1-2 they manage, over 37 minutes, no more than an insane 12% of possession. Suddenly the players let the greatest footballer of all time go about his business completely undisturbed, and Lionel Messi has no trouble at all setting up, with two magic passes, first the equaliser and then the deadly second. England collapse, the dream of the world title bursts like a soap bubble. Nothing left but a third-place play-off against France. Exactly sixty years have now passed (1966) since England won the only world title in the history of men's football. And by the way, England repeated their self-boycott on Saturday in the third-place play-off against France: in the first half the team built an improbable four-goal lead (!) (4-0), only to concede four (!!) in the second half. Luckily they still managed to score two more for a final score of 6-4. During a drinks break in the second half, the French striker Kylian Mbappé called over to the England manager Thomas Tuchel, with some relish, the question whether England were still mentally in the dressing room.³

I have always wondered where the superstition comes from (or rather: the certainty) that a botched dress rehearsal will be followed by a successful opening night. Or what lies behind the phenomenon that the performances following a successful première usually catch fire less than the first one.

Until now I had explained it to myself with the special atmosphere of a première, or with the extra rush of adrenaline. But the answer is apparently both simpler and more complex. Thomas Tuchel, the German manager of the England side, said after the Argentina match that once his team had gone in front they had suddenly played on the pitch with the feeling of having something to lose.¹ That sounds banal at first, but it is probably an important key to this phenomenon.

This mechanism, which concerns the individual as much as the group, the team, the side, works in three steps.

• First, people can only judge a result against a reference point (which is constantly being updated). The moment the goal that puts you in front goes in, or the moment the audience rises for a standing ovation after the première, that point becomes the new reference point, the new zero.
• Second, whatever follows that new reference point is counted as a possible loss. And losses weigh, if you follow the Prospect Theory of the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky², roughly twice as heavily for people as gains of the same size.
• Third: the new reference point is therefore a state that has to be defended, and a person or a team that is defending plays cautiously, defensively, facing backwards. The good fortune of a successful première wants defending, just like the goal that gave you the lead in the 55th minute of a World Cup semi-final. But defending produces no great acting moments and scores no further goals. Whereas if yesterday's dress rehearsal went wrong, nobody owes anybody anything. On the evening of the première you are then like Argentina, behind: you can only win.

And my lost key next to the toothpaste?

You tell me what you make of it!

Warmly,
have a wonderful week!
Markus

Translated from the German original by Markus Zohner.

Sources

1. Thomas Tuchel, quoted in: Sven Haist, »Englands WM-Aus: Ein Kollaps von fußballhistorischer Dimension«, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 July 2026.
2. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, in: Econometrica, vol. 47, no. 2 (1979), pp. 263-291, here p. 279 ("losses loom larger than gains"). The factor of roughly two: Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Advances in Prospect Theory, in: Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, vol. 5 (1992), pp. 297-323, here p. 311 (median 2.25).
3. »Englands dritter Platz bei der WM: Die Bronzemedaille kommt nach Hause«, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19 July 2026.

Thank you for your letters!

Thank you so much for your letters, which we are glad to pass on here!

The complete dog-days guide

We are glad to complete it with these points.

Wind-Blown Time

My latest letters

Happy Sunday, Theia, Titaness of the Gleaming Sky, Mother of Helios! Wind-Blown Time Change of Sign: Cast for Mars