The lasting and most powerful image from the Ryder Cup two years ago at Whistling Straits was Rory McIlroy conducting a TV interview moments after the U.S. team had defeated Europe, 19-9, trying to formulate words through an endless stream of tears.

McIlroy, who had everything in life and had done virtually everything in golf, was a mess. Once a young hot-shot major championship winner who could take or leave the Ryder Cup, McIlroy was gutted because he cared so much about it now.

“I was so disappointed after Whistling Straits,” McIlroy said Sunday. “I just knew that I needed to put in a better performance for my teammates this week, and thankfully I was able to do that.”

McIlroy delivered big time for his teammates at Marco Simone, where Europe dusted the Americans 16 ½ to 11 ½ to win the cup back.

When it was all over on Sunday, listening to McIlroy and his teammates speak was a reminder of the reverence the Europeans have for that 17-inch gold chalice and what it means to possess it.

It’s not fair to say the Americans don’t want the Ryder Cup as badly as the Europeans do. That’s become a low-hanging-fruit argument. But there is something inherent in the European golfers that makes them crave it just a little bit more. It’s ingrained in them.

The Americans want the cup because they’re competitors and they want to win. For the Europeans, it’s part of them. It’s steeped in their history. It borders on religion.

“We are united by a culture and we are united by a generation of players that have come before us,” Englishman Justin Rose said Sunday night. “This is our time … our time to shine. Not because this is our stage; we are just taking care of it because of the amazing role models that we’ve had before us that have shown us how to do it. There’s a really strong culture on the European team.”

Rose, as the elder statesman on this team, has bridged the gap from the stalwarts from the previous generation — Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood among them — to the new guard — McIlroy (4-1), Jon Rahm (2-0-2), Viktor Hovland (3-1-1) and Tommy Fleetwood (3-1) to name a few.

“I think culture is huge,” McIlroy said. “Seve [Ballesteros], Ollie [Jose Maria Olazabal], the legends of the Ryder Cup that have come before us, we’re caretakers of this European jersey right now and we’re hopefully going to pass it on in the future in a better spot than where we found it. I think that’s really what we are right now.’’

Rahm’s golfing life as a 28-year-old from Spain has been shaped by watching and idolizing Ballesteros, Olazabal and Sergio Garcia — all Spanish golfers who were Ryder Cup heroes. That’s what Rahm wanted to be all his life. And that’s what he is now, having gone 2-0-2 in this Ryder Cup as one of Europe’s warhorses.

No one put it more beautifully than Rahm when asked to put into words what it means to be a Ryder Cupper: “It’s the ability to walk through those gates and those doors and forget about who you are outside of this week. What you have done or what you may do afterwards really, truly doesn’t matter.”

So perfectly stated.

Now for some juxtaposition: Can you imagine this Netflix kerfuffle involving Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay that was reported on Monday taking place on the European team?

Never.

That said: The notion that the American players aren’t close is nonsense. They’re close in a different way than the Europeans, who are more united as one. The U.S. players are close in clusters, cliques.

Everyone knows how close Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas are and how tight Schauffele and Cantlay are. There was heavy speculation that a big reason Sam Burns was a captain’s pick was his close relationship with Scheffler, the No. 1 ranked player, so they could pair together.

Those buddy pairings ended up being one of the U.S. downfalls in this Ryder Cup. Spieth and Thomas, neither of whom arrived to Rome in form, struggled. Schauffele and Cantlay, who were studs at Whistling Straits, failed to win a point while playing together this time around. And the Scheffler-Burns pairing never panned out.

For that, U.S. captain Zach Johnson has been rightfully criticized for acquiescing to soft-landing, good-friend pairings. Johnson, too, has to be taken to task for his dismissal of LIV Golf players like Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, both of whom could have helped the Americans.

How many times did you hear Johnson talk about how “good a friend’’ he is with Thomas and Burns? This was damning evidence that the captain went with his heart more heavily than with his head when it came to deciding on his six picks, which delivered a combined 4-12-4 record.

“A good pairing on the European Team doesn’t mean playing with your best mate,” Rose said. “It means about representing something bigger than yourself, and I feel like that’s what being a European Ryder Cup player is all about.”

As usual, Europe has the secret sauce.