Last Wednesday, Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey probably did as much for the idea of team-building in England as all the business books on the bestseller list put together. He was not alone in this: the collective endeavour of the Scotland side which inflicted amazing defeat on France in Paris on the same

night, the extraordinary effort of the Zimbabwean cricket team defeating the mighty Australians, white-shirted women footballers holding the invincible Germans (even,

whisper it, the irresistible Springboks humiliating England’s ragtag rugby players). All of them proved something that is easily forgotten: groups of individuals are never a match for teams who give everything to the collective cause.

English football has long held a mirror up to the inequality and excess of our times; last week, it offered a different and unexpected insight. A week ago, it was first suggested that,through the injury and suspension of the world famous trio of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard, two deeply unfashionable players would be drafted into the team.

The two were Emile Heskey and Gareth Barry, the former apparently a has-been, the latter seemingly a never-quite-was. Neither played for one of the ‘big four’ English clubs (one was at Wigan, the other at Aston Villa). England, it was suggested, particularly with the inclusion of Heskey, had rarely looked so desperate. The recall of a player of famously fragile confidence, who had last been capped three years previously, and had gained a reputation for falling over the ball more often than putting it in the net, was greeted with more derision on the back pages and the phone-ins than any selection in recent memory.

We are used to knowing more about our football stars than which foot they favour, but neither Heskey nor Barry has ever made any headlines out of the sports pages. What followed was a revelation. The two new players revealed a quality that has all but disappeared from English teams: humility. It was a quality that had been much in evidence earlier last week. You saw it in Roger Federer’s typically supreme grace in victory in New York, his easy deference to his gutsy opponent, Novak Djokovic: living proof that the greatest do not require an overwhelming ego or a ‘nasty streak’.

Neither of the England players would claim a fraction of Federer’s extraordinary talent, but they shared an attitude with the Swiss that is easily overlooked: a simple belief that the game itself is greater than they are. Not a single action that either man made in the course of the match was done to draw attention to himself. Everything was for the greater benefit of the group.

Lots of clichés surround the idea of teams, but most are true and, often, keenly expressed by the most gifted individuals. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships,” Michael Jordan argued. “You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime,” baseball legend Babe Ruth suggested. — The Guardian