Yesterday the Russian soccer team beat Andorra (a tiny country on the border of Spain and France that I hadn't heard of until a few months ago) to advance in the European championship. My students were talking about it today, in a sort of nonplussed, ironic way. Wait, I said, Russia won, aren't you proud? No way, they said, the Russian team is crap, and they're just going to get humiliated when they play the good European teams. Everyone agreed. It was strikingly not American--back home, I think people would love the underdog status and see it as almost an advantage, because it would be such a good story if we won.