Four minutes didn't feel like long enough. Not after four decades of waiting.
For four minutes in the first half of Sunday's UEFA Women's Euro final against the Netherlands, Denmark led a major championship for the second time in its history, men's or women's. When Nadia Nadim, an Afghan refugee turned Danish citizen and aspiring doctor, drilled a penalty kick into the side netting for the opening goal, the day begged you to believe that Denmark could win.
Four minutes to feel what it must be like to root for the United States women, the Brazilian men or basically any German team that steps foot on a soccer field.
Then it was gone, Vivianne Miedema drawing Netherlands even in less time than it took to assemble the pickled herring on the halftime smørrebrød, the open-faced Danish sandwiches.
It was a sad day to be a Danish fan. It was a great day to be a Danish fan. I speak from experience.
The right team won Sunday. The right team on the day, the Netherlands keeping its legs and pulling away from a weary opponent for a 4-2 win. The right team won for the tournament, the host Dutch completing an unbeaten run that saw them beat perennial contenders Norway and Sweden, as well as England, the tournament's highest scoring team, en route to the final.
The right team won for the sport of women's soccer, too.
Playing a tournament as host is an opportunity, but it isn't easy. Just ask Canada, out in the quarterfinals as host of the 2015 World Cup, or Brazil, out of the medals as host of the Rio Olympics. But from the opening game in front of more than 21,000 in Utrecht to Sunday's final in front of more than 28,000 in Enschede, the Dutch team and its fans brought out the best in each other. A country with a soccer history simultaneously rich and nearly bereft of women as major characters, the Netherlands found itself with a generation of players it couldn't ignore. That produced images Sunday that Dutch girls won't let their fathers and brothers forget.
Lieke Martens, the player of the tournament, Miedema, Danielle van de Donk and Shanice van de Sanden put on a show of aggressive, technical soccer in front of an athletic and adaptive defense. By both how they played and the flag for which they played, they demonstrated the growth of the women's game beyond its traditional safe harbors.
Though not as illustrious as the likes of Germany, Norway or Sweden, Denmark is one of those safe harbors. It won a European women's tournament way back in 1979, an unofficial event in the days before UEFA and FIFA sanction of the women's game. Another of the generally gender progressive Nordic countries, it took part in the first official Women's World Cup. It could have done more, could do more now, but the country has been hospitable to women's soccer.
But I didn't watch the final with a dispassionate eye, didn't even try. As great a scene as it was, I couldn't help but feel melancholy as Dutch captain Sherida Spitse and Mandy van den Berg, the veteran she displaced in that role, lifted the trophy and their teammates danced behind them.
When Nadim gently shook her head, a deep breath that billowed out her cheeks finally expelled, or Danish captain Pernille Harder walked to collect her second-place medal with a wan smile and pained eyes, those were the emotions that registered. Those feelings I could understand.
My ties to Denmark are happenstance. Though born in Copenhagen to American parents, we moved away before I was old enough to do much talking in either language. There are extended family ties to Danish relatives but they are coincidental. Yet perhaps because I've written the words on so many forms, I feel a connection to the place, felt it when I returned to visit. It is also my first sports love, the "Danish Dynamite" men's team that beat eventual champion West Germany in the 1986 World Cup. Long before I ever knew what a baseball card was, I coveted Michael Laudrup and Morten Olsen stickers for the eponymous Panini sticker book.
I don't have a favorite college team. A lingering and often painful attachment to Fulham aside, my pro sports loyalties long ago faded into passing interest. But there will always be Denmark.
It is enjoyable to be a Danish fan perhaps precisely because of the certainty of not winning. Even in an age of fan violence much worse than the current one, Danish fans earned the nickname "Roligans," mixing the Danish word for calm with the English word hooligans. You go, you watch a team play without the weight of expectations -- as the Danish men did in a World Cup quarterfinal thriller against Brazil in 1998 and the women did in a surprise semifinal run in the Euros four years ago -- and you enjoy a ride you know will end before someone else sorts out the title in a game that is almost never as entertaining as the circumstances demand.
But it kept not ending this time. It didn't end when six-time reigning champion Germany took a 1-0 lead in the third minute of a quarterfinal delayed a day by inclement weather. Instead, Nadim leveled the game after halftime and Theresa Nielsen got on the end of Frederikke Thogersen's cross in the 83rd minute for the 2-1 win. It didn't end in a penalty shootout against Austria in the semifinal, that flip-of-the-coin mechanism to decide games that, no matter your rooting interest, always seems to go the other team's way. So there was Denmark leading the final Sunday morning.
Denmark, with roughly the same population as Wisconsin (and less than a third that of Holland).
If only for four minutes.
A model in the team's first five games of how indispensable a player can remain without scoring a goal, Harder then scored one of the tournament's best goals to tie the final at 2-2 shortly before halftime. But beset by injuries and, again, playing a team that earned the result over the full three weeks of the tournament, Denmark had no final burst to answer the Dutch.
During the long delay in Rotterdam before the initial attempt at the quarterfinal against Germany was postponed, someone in the German media contingent approvingly tweeted words to the effect that Danish fans were living up to their reputation. That somehow, amidst the miserable weather, those clad in red and white were finding ways to enjoy themselves in the stands. It is expected of the Germans to win tournaments. It is expected of the Danes to enjoy themselves.
Perhaps as an outsider with only the connections of birth and fandom (and a taste for pickled herring), I'm not qualified to make the assessment, but it rarely seems that soccer is a matter of life and death to Danes.
It is only a matter of life. Only a reason to celebrate and enjoy.
That was more difficult after those four minutes Sunday. But it wouldn't be very Danish to let what might have been take away from what Harder, Nadim and the rest were for three weeks worth celebrating.