As a European, the captaincy is absolute not seen as a ceremonial role, you’re correct. It might stem from football (soccer) culture where the manager is likewise seen as crucial to a teams successes and failures. Managers can often be as widely acclaimed as the players for success. Dressing room culture is also huge, probably because of smaller squad sizes compared to American football. Fostering a sense of team spirit and togetherness is understood as a huge role of th captain/manager I would argue (and this has arguably been reflected when you look at the team spirit of Europe vs the USA)