So, congratulations to Spain.
Regardless of what you think about the World Cup, who won, who lost and who was robbed, something was on display over the last few weeks that was worth paying attention to. Teams.
We watched teams with real cohesion, where players seemed to know where their teammates were without needing to look. We watched teams hold together after conceding, and some coming apart afterwards. We watched teams where one player mattered more than everyone else, and teams where every player covered for every other. And we watched teams that had clearly not resolved something before they arrived, and ended up having to resolve it in front of a global audience instead.
That last one is what I want to talk about, and it is not really about football.
Because the tournament was not decided in the last few weeks. It was decided in the months and years before anybody boarded a plane. In the training sessions, the selection calls, the honest conversations, and the ones that got avoided. By the time a team walks out onto the pitch, the work of becoming a team is either done or it is not. Ninety minutes will not change the answer.
Think about the moment you saw this at some point in this tournament, because every tournament has it. A player in an open space, arms up, completely available, and the pass never comes. The ball goes somewhere harder instead, or somewhere worse, or somewhere that keeps it with the person who already had it.
That is not a skills problem. Every player at that level can make that pass in their sleep. It is a trust problem, and trust is not built in the eighty-ninth minute. Whatever was unsaid in the change room walked out onto the pitch with them, and the cost of it turned up on the scoreboard where everybody could see it.
Do you have a team like that? Where the issues are known, by you, by them, by anyone who has ever sat in one of the “team” meetings, and are simply not being addressed? Where people have quietly learned who not to pass to?
And then the organisation puts something big in front of them. A critical client, a board presentation, a restructure, a merger. And you, the company, and the team themselves all expect them to front up, put their differences aside, play well and win.
Do you really think that is what happens?
Pressure does not fix a team. Pressure reveals one. Whatever pattern is running quietly in the everyday, runs loudly when the stakes rise, and a team that never learned to pass under mild discomfort does not suddenly start under real load. If anything, they revert. Under pressure, people reach for what feels safe.
Here is what I see with teams I have led and now work with. A team like this is rarely lacking skill. They usually have it in spades. What is there is self-resistance. Each person is protecting their own lane rather than investing in the collective, while the leader quietly absorbs the gap between the two. Individuals do this. Leaders do this. Teams do it too, and from the outside it can look almost exactly like professionalism. Everyone is polite. Everyone is busy. Hardly anyone passes.
The good news is that this is one of the few things in leadership you can genuinely get ahead of, and it does not take as long as most people think. But it has to happen before the tournament, not during it.
So here is something practical for you, the leader. Fifteen minutes, on your own.
Find the pass that is not being made. Which two people on your team route everything through you rather than through each other? Write the pair down. Not the personalities, just the route. What is it they consistently pass back through you?
Count them. How many conversations did you have this week that should have happened between two other people without you? A number, not a feeling. Most leaders I ask are surprised by their own answer.
Look at what is coming. What is the biggest thing your team has to deliver in the next six months? Now ask honestly whether the pattern you just wrote down will hold under that weight or show up in the middle of it.
Spain did not win that match. They won over the years that made it possible.
What is your team doing this week that decides how they play when it actually counts?
As always, if you invest in yourself, the rewards will be unfathomable.
Until next time.
