How did a country with four million people beat a country with over sixty million people to get into the finals of the World Cup? That is the question posed by everyone, and let’s faced it, if you haven’t faced one person talking about it, or come across such conversation while on public transport, that it is conceivable that you have spent the last month in hibernation, missed the scenes of jubilant England celebrations in pubs all across England, and have instead been living in a basement. You can’t have really missed it, and avoided all the back pages of tabloids and broadsheets chronicling the highs and lows of the Lions.
Everyone has been struggling to deal with the loss of the Lions to Croatia. But coming back to the question, how did a country with few people beat a country with an established football team and league, which is arguably the best in the world?
In answering the question, the assumption is that ratio-wise, a country with more people should produce a country with more quality players. In this case you would be right to assume England should have won. But it is not really the players that decide victory. Victory is done to a variety of factors. More of these factors can be found in Croatia. The most important of these is desire.
Footballers in Croatia have to ply their trade overseas to succeed. Of the world cup team representing Croatia, the majority play outside of their country. For those who hope to make it overseas, by being the best in the country, competition is fierce. The most important quality to succeed is hunger. There are many young people training in poorly constructed areas. Prospective footballers have to raise money even sometimes to take part in tournaments. When you have invested a stake in your own success, then there is more drive to succeed.
So it is desire and heart that gives an individual the edge. Taking a reference from a different field, in the realm of classical music, when the strings of the piano, which were suspended on the wooden frame, were switched to a tougher, metal-backed frame, this expanded the potential of piano music by allowing more notes and chordal music to be played. (You can read more about this in the Piano Lessons N4 website.) And without the electric guitar, which toughened up the sound of the acoustic guitar, we would not have the various kinds of music that we have nowadays. It was metal that gave the music mettle!
What can we teach our children then? We can highlight to them that size does not entirely matter, but quality does. It is not the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog!