A football match lasts 90 minutes plus stoppage time. And that time is exactly the same for every player, whether you’re a striker, a defender or a goalkeeper, and however much your contract is worth. The result isn’t known until the end.
In fact, you can start out losing and end up winning, but in football, as in life, if we do things really well in the first half, we’ll have part of the match won and a somewhat calmer second half.
What lessons can a football match teach us about life?
1. The first half counts
Finishing the first half 5-0 up is not the same as going in 0-3 down.
The first half of the match is the first 30 years of our life, or maybe even the first 25. If we’ve already scored goals by that age (if we’ve already started saving, investing, building businesses…), the second half of life will be somewhat easier.
The problem is that most of us only realise how important it is to play once we’ve been thrashed in the first half, and then we start a race against the clock to turn the score around in the second.
(Read: The 12 worst mistakes people make in their twenties)
2. There is unfairness
It’s true. A match may not be very fair. The referee can get it wrong and fail to whistle decisive fouls; we may even get a card for something we didn’t do, or be flagged offside when we weren’t.
Life isn’t fair either. Sometimes things shouldn’t be so complicated, but unfortunately they are. And when unfairness comes along, we can’t lose heart dwelling on it. We have to keep playing and fighting.
3. Hit them where it hurts most
In football, many players may feel anger or a desire for revenge, which clouds their judgement and can lead them to do something stupid. But if you want revenge on your rivals, hit them where it hurts most: on the scoreboard.
In life and in business, don’t waste energy trying to tear the competition apart with talk. Crush them on the business scoreboard, which is the number of sales, customers and profits. If you do that well, the competition eliminates itself.
4. There are decisive moments
It isn’t true that nothing happens when you waste certain opportunities in life. Sometimes it does, and quite often. We have to be ready to seize those opportunities.
Life’s penalties are not to be missed. They are golden opportunities that can put us ahead on the scoreboard. Focusing on that opportunity and making sure we don’t miss, being prepared for when the moment comes, will move us forward enormously.
Of course, if we miss at that decisive moment, all is not lost: there will still be a match to play, and it will all come down to trying even harder.
5. Not every move comes off
A great move can be beautiful even if it fails at the last moment, either because our shot went wrong or because the opposing goalkeeper made a good save.
You’ll experience many moves like that throughout your life, where you had a perfect plan and got close to success, but at the last moment it went wrong. It’s a failure, and that failure hurts, but complaining won’t help. You have to create another chance.
6. Talent alone is worth nothing
It doesn’t matter if you’re the best player in the world if you’ve surrounded yourself with mediocre players. Even the best strikers and goalscorers need defenders and a good goalkeeper, as well as teammates who make great plays possible. You will always need someone.
The truth is that success in life isn’t achieved alone. Behind every successful businessperson there are always important people who helped them. Apple wasn’t only Steve Jobs’s doing: Jobs wouldn’t have made it without Wozniak, just as Bill Gates wouldn’t have taken off without Paul Allen.
Remember that individual talent can help win a match, but it’s teamwork that wins championships, as Michael Jordan put it.
(Read: 25 habits of successful people)
7. It’s always a competition
Life is a constant competition in which you can’t relax. Even a football team that’s 3-0 up can lose the match if it relaxes. You have to play very hard to win, and once you’re ahead, you can’t get distracted. You have to keep playing.
8. Defensive strategies won’t work
If a football team focuses only on defending for fear of conceding, the score will stay at zero, and sooner or later the other team will get past the defence and score. By then you’ll have wasted a lot of time, and you’ll probably already be beaten.
This is another of life’s big problems. Most people fall back on a defensive strategy in everything. If debt is eating them alive, they try to cut spending to cope with it instead of focusing on increasing their income.
And in business, many owners have adopted a defensive strategy against the new technologies that are wrecking their businesses. The result is that technology has ended up thrashing them. They should have switched to an attacking strategy and quickly changed their business model or used technology to their advantage.
9. The importance of being honest, loyal and clean
What happens to a player who doesn’t play fair? The referee can send him off. Then, for you, the match is over and there’s nothing more you can do.
In life there are decisions we need to think through again and again, especially when it comes to crossing legal lines. If life sends you off, your red card may be a hefty fine or years lost in prison. Sometimes it doesn’t go that far, but not having been honest can cost you your reputation and leave you marked for life.
10. Don’t sink to your rivals’ level
If your rivals throw elbows, trip you or spit at you and the referee does nothing, don’t do the same, because the referee will probably come down hard on you. Always strike on the scoreboard, and once you’ve won, settle the problem some other way, but never risk a red card in life.
11. Sometimes you lose, and it’s nobody’s fault
It doesn’t matter if the whole team has worked hard and given its best for the full 90 minutes. You may have done everything perfectly and lost simply because your opponent was better and played much better.
Still, it’s about giving the best of ourselves, being better prepared than the rest and seizing those opportunities. That way, by playing hard and sweating for the shirt intelligently, you usually win.
In short, and in line with earlier motivational speeches, winning in life and on the pitch takes:
Preparation and training (the best prepared usually win), working very hard, never throwing in the towel whatever happens, having a competitive attitude, and never lowering your guard until the final whistle of the match of life. That’s how you win.
Read: Life is like a game, and this is how you play it (recommended)
Featured image: Samson Ssemakadde, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
