People - people can absolutely deserve loyalty, and those people can be managers, coworkers, spouses, family, etc.
But don't mix the two up in your mind.
A country is a thing and loyalty to it is called "patriotism". A sports-team or TV show or band is a thing, loyalty to it is called "fandom". Loyalty to an idea or philosophy is called "being principled" or "idealism". Do you believe that things don't deserve loyalty, such that all of these are errors? Or do these examples not capture the sense of your statement?
Of course this naive view quickly falls apart when interpretation comes into play, as it always must. In the extreme, one may assert that "philosophy" is encoded in the behavior of it's adherents, and these behaviors may have little or nothing to do with the "canonical" representation of the philosophy as immutable text. Or more precisely the behavior and words can be profoundly decoupled. Many examples of this decoupling occurs to your thought (and mine). So when you say that a philosophy can "turn away" from values, in this sense that is true.
I prefer to think of philosophies as a kind of Platonic ideal, which are then subject to all the foibles of the humans who associate themselves to them. There are some subtle problems with this view, which I'd rather not confront.
Skip the substitute and go for the real thing: loyalty to people. You can still join grand projects, but do it consciously rather than on instinct.
A less cynical take: there seems to be some research that following sports fosters greater social connectivity and well-being. It may just be that we're hardwired to be tribal. From that context, sports seems to be a relatively benign way to tap into that.
However, you should acquaint yourself with the principle of subsidiarity. Loyalty, duty, and love radiate outward from those who are owed the most diminishing to those who are owed the least (spouses, then children, then parents, etc., all the way through extended family and then community and nation and finally the human race). The loyalty is to the objective good. How that is expressed will be modified by contingent factors particular to a given person's situation.
--EM Forster, "What I Believe"
I am not betraying my country by refusing to follow laws or decrees that require that I engage in intrinsically evil deeds. I am not loyal to my friend if I do evil things he asks me to do.
Our loyalty is to the objective good of our country and our friend. Otherwise, there is no such thing as loyalty.
That sort of loyalty is not quite the same: protecting your own to indirectly protect yourself. People often see their “external tribes” as an extension of their self much likely they do family/friends, rather than them being part of it like a company. I am a Spillett. I am a Yorkshireman, I am English, I am UKian, I am European, I work for TL. Notice the difference in language in that last one.
This is part of why some get so offended when you poke fun at their town/county/country: if they see it as an extension of their identity more than just somewhere they live then your disrespect is a personal attack. They would not likely defend their employer nearly as passionately.
I would argue that this is a tit-for-tat, and as such, not really an example of loyalty per se. Loyalty would be protecting your country even when it doesn't actually benefit you and yours in any tangible way. And it has all the same problems as corporate loyalty, really.
Where I come from in Europe - they say we have proud history going back some 1500 years. Well before that, there were other tribes, we are same type of immigrants as current waves. We either mingled with them, killed them or drove them away. I am pretty sure genetic tracing would favor the mingling for the most part.
What makes more sense is really what all others say - pick up a specific set of people, philosophy, moral imperative etc. and be loyal to them. Higher concepts muddy the waters with slippery slopes and are unnecessary, just opening surfaces to manipulation.
I guess you could argue the same for a church.
