Being Successful: Magic Or an Easy to Follow Formula

Have you ever thought about why some football teams are more successful than others? Football clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Ajax and others have all reaped success in the past and some of them continue to do so even nowadays.

They have left their mark on club football. But how have they become so successful in the first place?

Despite the belief that the most successful teams simply buy their success, there are certainly many other ways to improve one’s chances to succeed.

But before anyone can call himself successful, one needs to define what success means for him.

For some clubs, it is winning a match or a series of matches, or being promoted to an upper echelon, or even scoring a goal against a bigger team. But other football clubs can call themselves successful only if they have won every trophy there is to win.

These varieties of meanings of success come down to the fact that there are differences in the ambitions of the different football clubs.

Certainly, a team that has won all its matches up to the semi-final, for example, a team that has even trounced all its opponents up to the semi-final, is not necessarily called successful, especially if this team has set its goal to win the final.

It is different for every club, and it is a rule that applies to other aspects of life as well, not only football. You need to have a particular aim set in mind and when you achieve this aim, only then you can call yourself successful. Sometimes this goal greatly differs from the goals of others.

For example, Manchester United’s target this season (2008/2009) was to win five trophies for the first time in their history. It does not mean it is mandatory for them to win all these trophies, but probably the winning of two or three out of those set targets could still be a comfortably successful season. Few other football clubs even dare to dream about this kind of accomplishment.

My previous experience in observing the successful teams in football, has led me to notice they deal with every arising challenge step by step and what is probably the most important, they focus on the task at hand.

The most successful people in the world have succeeded by using this formula. Step by step, pass by pass, move by move, goal by goal, match by match they edge closer and closer to their ultimate goal.

You set small goals before yourself to do. The completion of one obstacle clears the path for you to proceed to the next, and then the next, until you have achieved what you had first set your mind onto.

It is like building a pyramid. To reach to the top you need to lay a single brick, then the next one, and continue to build up, until you have reached to the top. And when you have done all of it correctly, you have a “Wonder” in front of you.

The same principle is used on the football field. And many of the football managers know it.

This is why sometimes; the most successful teams are not necessary the ones that play the most beautiful football, or trash their opponents, one after the next, but the football clubs that complete the goals they have set for themselves with great efficiency. And that can be only achieved by tackling challenges one by one and focusing on every one of them in the present moment, in a strictly disciplined manner.

We have seen many examples of this kind of approach in the past.

One of them is Liverpool’s great comeback in the final of Champion’s League against Milan in 2005. Who would have thought that the Reds will come back after being 3-0 down at half-time? No one. Have they, themselves, thought they could come back? Surely, but I doubt they would have done it if they knew that they would be victorious in the end. They just wouldn’t have pushed themselves to the limit if they knew. They did it step by step, goal by goal.  

But theoretically a comeback of even bigger magnitude is possible. It is only up to us humans, to realize that and battle to cope with the challenges in order to achieve the ultimate goal.

Another example is Manchester United’s win against Bayern Munich in another final of the Champion’s League - the one in 1999.

There are many more similar cases in history which epitomize how an effort made in the present moment can get astounding results later on. Of course, not everyone has been able to do the same, but the most successful people or football clubs (and the reason I mention both is that the principle is the same for both) know that success comes after they have fought tooth and nail for every step of their grand plan (or for every small thing, if you want).

And that is when success tastes the sweetest.