Master of praying for health

 
Column Switzerland, the country of "honorable defeats". We have an inimitable talent for ignoring things or glossing over obvious weaknesses until they can no longer be denied. 
Even the greatest admirers of Roger Federer, the best ambassador for the Swiss brand in recent history, were astonished to see that the brilliant world number one was content to have reached the final in Paris after his crushing defeat to the "Roi soleil de la terre battue", Raphael Nadal. Mats Wilander, a competent commentator who had not previously been a critic of Federer, was visibly irritated that the champion had conceded defeat and had hardly shown any will to fight. After the sobering 0:6 in the final set, he said that was a bad thing for a number one and perhaps the greatest player in history. They fought like the Swiss once did at the Battle of St. Jakob, but they too lost to the Czechs and Turkey and were eliminated in the preliminary round of the home tournament. "How unfair football can be", the media and experts lamented the lack of luck in the battle of our soccer matadors. Berti Vogts, on the other hand, was merciless, smugly remarking that "if you don't score a goal, you can't win a game". And Der Spiegel doubled down, saying that Ottmar Hitzfeld, Köbi Kuhn's successor who is used to winning, must now free Switzerland from its "inexplicable tendency to defeat".
Just two days before the final elimination, Blick had bravely and defiantly unpacked the headline "10 reasons why we will still be European champions". By the evening of June 11, even this evocative euphemism had become a waste of time.
As if we had to stand up to the constant prejudice that we are professional sourpusses, we are increasingly making a name for ourselves as European champions in praying our way back to health. UBS had to learn that this sometimes does us no good when it failed to recognize the unfortunate Meili affair surrounding dormant assets for what it was even then: an attempt by the US financial centre to push Switzerland, one of its strongest competitors, into a corner. Even back then, the helpless response was to appease and ignore, which ended with damage to Switzerland's image that can still be felt today and with horrendous costs for the bank concerned.
History is repeating itself. A UBS banker in the USA who may have been at fault is once again being used as a lever to attack bank client confidentiality. And how are the official spokespeople of the banking center reacting? They are keeping their cool and playing down the existing danger. As in the past, no general attack on the Swiss banking center is being recognized, which is particularly irritating because the EU has been exerting pressure on Switzerland for months now to crack the secretive Bank Switzerland and channel as much of the money managed in Switzerland as possible back into its own coffers. It is better to duck away and hope that the trouble will somehow sort itself out.
There is nothing wrong with a positive attitude and, of course, constant panic attacks are neither helpful nor do they serve to solve actual problems. But the increasingly obvious tendency not to acknowledge weaknesses and to call the real challenges by their names is thought-provoking. Our tendency towards frugality and keeping a low profile may be rooted in the historical experience that Switzerland has actually come through some crises unscathed by skillful maneuvering and patiently sitting it out. At the end of the day, however, no one can hide from globalization. New, self-confident nations have appeared on the scene that do not want to know about Switzerland's special role or have never heard of it. The insular stand-off is increasingly becoming an insular offside trap.
At international gatherings, it is a real pleasure to meet young, open-minded and adventurous people from those up-and-coming countries who are not prepared to accept "honorable defeats". A sentence like the one Köbi Kuhn used after Switzerland's early elimination - that they had played "close to the maximum" - would completely contradict their optimistic winner mentality.
We, on the other hand, have learned to celebrate even our losers. Thousands of supporters cheerfully celebrated our Swiss footballers as they returned to the training pitch after their two defeats. And exuberant cheers accompanied Köbi and his men when they finally left the pitch after the final game against Portugal. You would have thought they had just secured qualification for the quarter-finals. No one would deny that this is a balm for the fragile soul of a country that has been psychotherapized through and through. But even honorable defeats remain defeats, and no amount of praying will turn them into victories.
In the long term, however, we cannot afford to accept mediocrity as a benchmark. We live from our talents, our unconditional will to win and our conviction that the manageable size of Switzerland should not invite contemplation and self-sufficiency. Just like in a laboratory, we have to find the right medicine that produces winners and does not make losing pleasant. Praying ourselves healthy will never get us to the top step of a competition, but will at best secure us a place in the museum of missed opportunities.
Or as captain Alex Frei aptly put it in his interview with the SonntagsZeitung: "We Swiss absolutely have to learn not to lose."
 Kaspar Loeb is CEO of the Swiss advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi Simko