Sports include both national teams and the teams for the rest of us. The national teams are mainly concerned with winning and with money. The other teams are mainly concerned with winning and with money. The other teams provide different satisfactions.
Being on a team helps people learn teamwork - to rely on others and to do their own part as well. Players learn both to win and to lose. When the team loses, the members learn that they can come back from a loss. They look for the reasons they were beaten, work on their weaknesses, and try again. When the team wins, the members can learn to be gracious winners and good sports.
Sports are also for play. Most of us have work to do most of the time. Now and then we need to have fun. Sports can provide the time to relax.
If a team helps people learn to work together, lose win, and have fun, it‘s a winner regardless of the score. But if players on a winning team have not worked together, if they feel that winning makes them better than others, if there was no joy in the sport, those winners are losers.
Having the winning score is important. Being a winner as a person is worth even more. As a convincing maxim of friendship first and competition second suggests, we should adhere to equivalence of wining and losing.