Life Lessons From Sport: Ego Is The First Step Toward Failiure

In February 2009, Daniel Welbeck scored a goal for Manchester United. He celebrated in a coky way, revealing his arrogance and ego. Even though, he was only eighteen years old at the time.

His coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, refused this behavior and punished him by returning him to the reserve team. A source close to him said: "The Scottish coach considered ego to be the first step in destroying the human career."

Many who deviated from the text when they became arrogant; Either their training work declined or underestimated the opponents, or their behavior was a reason for those facing them to do much more work than the usual just to defeat their arrogant ego.

Jupp Derwall, West Germany's coach in the 1982 World Cup, said before facing Algeria: “If I lose, I will go back to Germany on the first train to Munich.”.

He also stated later on that he received tapes showing how the Algerian national team plays and that he hid those tapes from the players believing that they would laugh at him if he asked them to see the secrets of an easy opponent, in their view at least.

That arrogance ended with an Algerian victory that broke the German prestige in that tournament... It was an immortal example in sports of the danger of arrogance!

There are many historical stories starring people with an arrogance that brought them down by a knockout. And that was literally the story of Naseem Hamid. Naseem had a short career as a star. His actions throughout his career were interpreted by some as being arrogant in the arena.

Mario Balotelli disappointed all those who had faith in him as he started as an emerging star who could only go up but slowly started acting foolishly and arrogantly on and off the pitch. His career dwindled from playing with the champions of Europe, Italy, and England, to being a sub in the Turkish league. Balotelli assisted the winning goal for Manchester City and won the Premier League when he was only 22, and since then, the only thing he has in his trophy cabinet is a French league player of the month which he won in 2019.

In the history of sports, there are hundreds of those who fell into this trap. The smart one is the one who learns from others. We have to pay attention and control that time bomb planted in every human being: The arrogant ego.

We need to do that before we receive a knockout while we are oblivious.