“Nobody will ever work as hard as I work,” Michael Jordan was quoted as claiming in The Last Dance. Netflix’s Chicago Bulls docu-series spoiled us in the spring with this and other Stakhanovite wisdom. “The pain. I want to feel that.” “Starts with hard work, ends with champagne.” “It” being effort, Jordan, we hear, “never freakin’ turned it off”.
A uniquely American sedulousness, I had assumed. And then I watched the Amazon Prime series on José Mourinho’s less-storied Tottenham Hotspur. Here is a game where the slack but skilful do not just get by but sometimes coin historic reputations. Talk panache to me, then, José, talk talent or at least tactics. But no. Most of his amazingly unenlightening speeches are variations on “try harder”.
Sport is more given than most fields to this worship of work. All athletes can name childhood friends, now lost to obscurity, who had twice the skill but no dedication. (The ones who toiled monstrously but just weren’t as good seem to slip their memories.)