If you are Italian, Spanish, German, English, Argentinian, Brazilian… football is a big thing for you.
If you are Croatian, it is even bigger.
Don’t really know how and when it started to be so, but football always represented something special for me. As it is usually the case, it all started when I was a kid.
When I was in primary school, Sunday afternoons were reserved for a visit to the football field. Dad or grandpa would go to watch the game, I would go with them to meet up with my school friends. Having an older brother did not help to move me away from football either. I was the one who was ‘filling in’ the quota when his clique was missing a player to have the equal count in both teams. Little sister was a sort of ‘joker call’ and would jump in to play. Later on, I would be disappointed if they would have sufficient numbers of players and leave me out of count.
Every big tournament, important qualifying or some sounding name match would serve as a sort of glue that would gather three generations of my family in front of the tv.
Grandpa, dad, brother and I. Commenting, discussing the tactics, swearing at the referee’s decisions, yelling at missed chances and celebrating the goals. Even now, when we are in different parts of the world and it’s been a long time since grandpa is not here with us, we find the way to let football unite us. And not just us. Our whole little nation.
Football is part of our folklore. No one is more proud when our team is winning.
No one sh**s harder on them if the things don’t go as planned.
That’s just the way we are. And that’s why it is fun and great to be a Croat.
Especially today.
No, I will not comment on yesterday's match with Brazil.
All the world’s media houses are busy commenting on the tactics, dissecting the actions, counting the number of shots, and the quality of players. Instead, I will try to consolidate it all into lessons that the Croatian team reminded me of last night. Lessons that each individual and team is probably well aware of but all too often forgets their impact and importance.
#1 Never stop believing
Never stop believing. In your vision. In yourself. In your reasons.
Objectively, there will always be someone that is better than you. Even if you are recognized as the best, make sure not to forget that you are not the best in everything. It is all about the criteria and the scale you are measured against. And this one tends to be very subjective.
They may doubt you and laugh at you. But don’t forget that they do it based on their scale. Yours is perhaps completely different.
The Croatian team was aware of the mountain they had to climb to get to the other side. Even when it seemed they were falling down, they decided that they’re just changing the route. They didn’t stop believing.
Sometimes your success will be undermined and assigned to pure luck. And that’s ok.
‘Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.’
Albert Einstein
#2 Stay humble and respectful
It is easy to fly high when you have favorable winds. It is so easy to get blinded by the beauty and the size of your success. But we all know it too well that nothing lasts forever (kudos to you if your brain continued this sentence with ‘even cold November rain’). It is better to lock that freshly inflated ego back to the cage called humbleness before it overgrows it. Respect you opponents when they are winning, respect them even more when they are losing.
Be like Luka Modrić and choose comfort and encouragement of your opponent instead of dancing (samba for example).
‘The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Marcus Aurelius
#3 One plus one equals three
Every team has its stars. Some teams consist of pure stars.
In the Croatian team, the true star is the team itself. Coach acknowledges individual contributors but insists each time that the ‘player of the match’ was the whole team.
It may sound like a cliche or an old saying, but the truth is that the strength of the team is measured by its weakest part. The role of everyone is to make the weakest part stronger, otherwise the stars will not get a chance to truly shine.
Even the universe needs the matter that holds its stars together. It is invisible but somehow tangible. It is not easy to understand it but it’s impossible to deny it. In football, in business, in life… It is called spirit. Team spirit.
‘Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.’
Helen Keller
As the morning after continues and thoughts consolidate, the feeling of pride remains intact.
We are just a small sized country at the outskirts of many global agendas.
But, when it comes to being led by the heart, we definitely know how to conquer the peaks.
‘If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.’
Lao-Tsze
10.12.2022
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