In Chile, failure — in football as in combat — is a matter of national mythology. In February 1940, Chilean boxer Arturo Godoy fought Joe Louis for the world heavyweight crown at Madison Square Garden. Everyone expected the Brown Bomber, as Louis was known, to K.O. the challenger in a few rounds, but Godoy went the duration and the outcome was decided by points. One ringside judge gave it to Louis, the other gave it to the Chilean. The deciding vote was cast by the referee, who ruled that Louis got to keep his title.
Propelled by radio and print accounts, a myth was born in much of Latin America, especially in Chile: Godoy had been robbed. Wasn’t Arthur Donovan, the referee, on the payroll of the champion’s manager? Wasn’t it true that by the fight’s end the – mostly white – Garden crowd was jeering Louis and cheering the Chilean, impressed by Godoy’s daring antics and flashes of brilliance? The newsreels hitting Latin American cinemas weeks later confirmed the impression that had already formed. Godoy’s defeat was non-existent; it was a clear victoria moral, a moral victory.
The concept caught on because Chileans were primed to recognize moral victory as a central feature in their history and identity. Godoy happened to be from Iquique, a city nicknamed tierra de campeones for being a bastion of Chilean sporting glories. But Iquique’s main claim to fame is related to war, not sports: in 1879, a decrepit Chilean corvette, the Esmeralda, squared off against the ironclad Huáscar, the pride of the Peruvian navy. The outcome was predictable: the Esmeralda was sunk. What made the affair memorable was that the corvette’s young captain, Arturo Prat, with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, jumped aboard the Huáscar as it rammed its prow into the Esmeralda’s port side. Prat and the small party who followed him were quickly mowed down on the enemy deck, but other Chilean sailors followed his example the second time the Huáscar rammed their ship, this time at starboard. After a third pummeling, the Esmeralda went down, shooting a last salvo, banner still flying atop mizzenmast. Schoolchildren are taught that Captain Prat’s courage inspired Chileans to win the war against Peru and Bolivia. The naval combat of Iquique was the mother of all moral victories. Arturo Godoy, born in Iquique and named after the naval hero, inherited the quintessential Chilean knack of turning any defeat into a moral victory.
In 2026 that psychological trick no longer works, and it’s what makes Chile’s failure to qualify for the past three World Cups such a painful confrontation with reality. Without the recourse of moral victory, failure becomes undeniable. (This is the case in politics as well: the plebiscite that put an end to Pinochet’s dictatorship was a clear moral victory, leading Chileans to celebrate in the streets as Pinochet’s constitution, albeit reformed, remained the law of the land and he became senator for life.) In 1956, FIFA convened a meeting in Lisbon to decide who would host the 1962 World Cup: Argentina, the clear favorite, or dark horse Chile. The Argentine delegate declared with typical confidence: «Gentlemen, we could host the Cup tomorrow. We have everything.» The Chilean representative responded: «Because we have nothing, we want to do everything,» framing the effort as a national epic of modesty, sacrifice and righteousness in the face of a huge challenge. Perhaps because the phrase resonated among post-war Europeans, it worked.
The statement also turned out to be eerily prescient. In 1960, the most destructive earthquake ever recorded left Chile with less than nothing. Cities were destroyed, rivers reversed their courses, maps had to be redrawn, thousands died.
Still, the country kept its commitment, relocating matches to regions unaffected by the quake, rushing to raise private funds to compensate for lost public monies. On the pitch, the Chilean national team rose above its usual mediocrity and finished in third place, ahead of powerhouses like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Italy and West Germany. Moral righteousness was paired with a notion of divine justice: at a quarterfinal game between Chile and the mighty Soviets, a Chilean attacker was fouled well inside the 18-yard line but the Dutch referee called for a free-kick at the edge of the box. Leonel Sánchez slotted a missile of a shot above the wall, just inside the near post. «¡Justicia divina! ¡Justicia divina!» cried radio announcer Julio Martínez as Lev Yashin, «The Black Spider», the best goalie in the world, retrieved the ball from the back of his net while shaking his head. Chile won 2 to 1 and would face Brazil in the semifinals. After losing in a six-goal thriller, Chile played the third-place match against Yugoslavia, which it won with a deflected long-distance effort at the 90th minute. A lucky break? No: justicia divina.
It was a flash in the pan. Chile accomplished nothing in World Cups after 1962: it was eliminated in the group phase in 1966, 1974, and 1982, and failed to qualify for Mexico ‘70, Argentina ‘78, and Mexico ‘86. Its appearance in the West Germany ‘74 tournament was facilitated by the Soviet Union’s refusal to show up for the playoff at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, which had been turned into a detention and torture camp by the Pinochet dictatorship. FIFA sent its own inspectors, who, after spending ten minutes on the pitch and taking a cursory walk through the locker rooms, pronounced the facilities fit to play in. But as the head of Chilean Football later admitted, «They saw no political prisoners because we’d hidden them.» Detainees had been moved to dungeons in the stadium’s underbelly and a nearby velodrome. On November 21, 1973, in possibly the most bizarre scene in football history, Austrian referee Erich Linemayr presided over this «match,» which lasted just twenty-eight seconds. Chile scored against a non-existent side, earning the remaining berth into the 1974 World Cup. It was knocked out in the group stage, after two draws and a loss to the hosts.
During a qualifying game for Italy ‘90 against Brazil at the Maracaná Stadium, with Chile down 1-0 and facing elimination, goalie Roberto «Cóndor» Rojas collapsed near his goal, bleeding profusely, after he was hit by a flare launched by a Brazilian fan. The Chileans stormed off the field, forcing the game’s suspension. Months later, Rojas confessed that it had all been staged: the team’s doctor had hidden a razor blade in his glove to simulate an injury if the score turned unfavorable. By then, abundant photo and medical evidence had uncovered the plot. Chile was disqualified from Italy ’90 and was barred from the following World Cup in 1994. The banishment was so severe that the local federation was free to try out new rules in the Chilean championships, like a hockey-style long penalty from 25 yards.
This path of ignominy – from the partido fantasma (phantom game) in 1973 to the 1989 scandal at the Maracaná and the subsequent international ban – maps perfectly onto the Pinochet dictatorship’s own timeline. Like the military regime, Chilean soccer had gone from claiming moral victories to making immoral and criminal subterfuge its operating principle.
After failing to qualify for the Japan-Korea 2002 and Germany 2006 tournaments despite boasting international stars Marcelo Salas and Iván Zamorano, redemption finally came to Chilean football from an unexpected source: legendary (and much-maligned) Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa. «El Loco», as he’s called, upended everything: he renovated the roster, redesigned training facilities and imposed his quirky methods and philosophy. His main achievement, though, was reenchanting a nation that had soured on soccer. Chileans loved Bielsa, and it was mutual.
Bielsa got to work with an exceptional pool of young talent – Chile’s so-called Golden Generation included Alexis Sánchez, Arturo Vidal, Matías Fernández, Claudio Bravo, Jorge Valdivia and Jean Beausejour – and under his guidance, the country finished second in the qualifiers for South Africa 2010, one point behind Brazil. The national team defeated Argentina for the first time in an official match and secured qualification to the World Cup without any of the customary agony. It was a dramatic turnaround for a country that had finished dead last in the 2002 qualification cycle and seventh in 2006.
Bielsa had forever changed how Chileans experienced football. Even after his departure in 2011, after he had ruffled too many feathers and was forced to resign by a corrupt nemesis who was elected head of Chilean Football, the national team still ran like a well-oiled machine under Jorge Sampaoli, a core bielsista, and inspired fear for the first time in its history. In Brazil 2014, Chile sent Spain, the reigning champion, home in the group stage, and lost to Brazil on penalties in the Round of 16. That momentum continued in 2015, when Chile won the Copa América, its first-ever title in ninety-nine years, beating Lionel Messi’s Argentina in Santiago. In 2016, in a repeat of the previous final, they won the Copa América Centenario, leaving Messi so distraught that he briefly resigned from the albiceleste. A century of constant losing had been reversed by beating our most feared rival twice in a row.
But the years of happiness ended abruptly. Chile has failed to qualify for the past three successive World Cups. The national team’s old heroes aged out and no one was able to take on the mantle left by Bielsa, leaving Chile to flounder back to its prior mediocrity almost as quickly as the Esmeralda sank in Iquique back in 1879, this time with no heroic sacrifice. There is nothing about the shipwreck of Chilean football that can be remotely construed as epic; there is no raw material to revive the old trick of hiding defeat behind a mask of glory.
The phrase victoria moral has no meaning to Chilean sports anymore, and this, perhaps, is the best outcome of the current catastrophe. Thanks to Bielsa and the Golden Generation, Chileans learned what real triumph tastes like. They’re beginning to understand that claiming moral victory after every failure is no more than a predictable, sterile ruse.