Implementing Your Will
Our focus this week is implementing your will. This fits into the character building category of our club.
In October of 2000, Barcelona played Real Madrid in one of the year’s most anticipated soccer matches, El Clasico. Pep Guardiola was still a player and Carles Puyol trained with the first team but rarely made any appearances.
Puyol started playing soccer late compared to his friends in the small village he grew up in. The boys interested in soccer were older, and he wasn’t skillful, so they made him play goalie in their pickup games.
He learned how to be fearless, diving for balls and laying out his body to block the goal, often coming home with many bruises and scrapes. Eventually, he was allowed to start playing in the field and a Barcelona scout recruited him to La Masia in his teens.
Fast forward to 2000. Barcelona had a problem. Their best player, Figo, signed a pre-contract to Real Madrid and now wore white instead of blue and red. An eventual Balon d’or winner (he won the same year), Figo was impossibly fast, technically brilliant, and his left foot was unstoppable.
Serra Ferrar, one of Barcelona’s coaches, came up with a different kind of idea to stop Figo. He would tell Puyol, his aggressive, young unknown to mark Figo out of the game. And this is exactly what he did.
Puyol put his body in front of everything and didn’t give Figo any space to operate. Barcelona went on to win 2-0.
In the book, “The Captain Class”, Puyol is regarded as one of the greatest captains in all of sports history. He is undersized for a center back and not very fast, but it’s not his physical qualities that signified his greatness.
Oddly enough, he was introverted, quiet outside of soccer, kind, and would rather stay in for the night then go out and party with his friends/teammates. But on the field he was a monster, the general who was capable of shutting down several players in the game. His stability marked the era of arguably the best team soccer has ever seen.
When his team won the champions league and he was to hold up the trophy, he gave his armband to his teammate, Eric Abidal, who just came back from battling cancer. In one of the greatest moments of his career, he gave up the spotlight to a friend who won a greater battle.
This type of story has always inspired me. A less talented person going up against a world beater and somehow succeeding. And it’s never luck. It’s discipline, determination, and a will to give whatever your doing your all.
In any sport, it comes down to winning small battles. Can you, like Puyol, stifle the other teams best player? Can you, like the 1980 US Olympic Men’s Hockey Team, play with determination and belief to become a team that’s better than the sum of its parts? Can you rise up, when it seems like everything has gone wrong around you? When your teammates are losing the small battles, can you be the leader who encourages them to play their best through your actions and words?
This week is about willpower, a change in attitude from accepting circumstances to inspiring change in yourself and those around you.
Expect 1v1’s, 2v2’s, relay competitions, and small sided games this week. The coaches and I are looking for players who are leaders. Will that be you?
See you tonight.