Dear Team USA: What is your WHY?
Every night during the World Cup I have been tuning into FoxSports1 to watch World Cup Tonight. Give FOX a lot of credit. They have gone all out on this coverage of the Women's World Cup and it is great to see.
Last night the show featured a guest appearance from Canadian goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc. She was talking about Canadian National Team Head Coach John Herdman and what an inspirational coach he is for the team. She stated that he is always asking them a question:
What is your WHY?
If you want to understand what he is talking about I highly recommend watching this 18 minute video by Simon Sinek.
In the video Sinek talks about a few different companies and historical events. One thing he mentions is that the WHY of a company can't be to just make a profit. That's a result.
In the same way the why of a company can't be to make a profit I believe the why of a sports team can't just be to win the championship. It doesn't work that way very often. If it did the Yankees or even worse Real Madrid would win the championship every year.
So that brings me to my question. What is your why USWNT?
If you read my last post you know that I believe it is winning. Tom Sermanni was fired after losing 2 games in his entire career as USWNT coach. Hope Solo has been kept on the team despite a number of serious off the field issues. The team plays a terrible direct style of soccer because the coaching staff believes that gives them the best chance to win. When asked about her team's performance after the match head coach Jill Ellis was quoted as saying she would take a 2-0 win over Columbia any day.
WHY? To win the world cup and make as many commercials and as much money as possible.
This was a tweet by the starting left back for the USWNT just this morning.
That's a picture of the post World-Cup victory tour US Soccer has already scheduled.
I'm in no way saying the players and coaches of the USWNT are bad people. I'm sure they are all wonderful people. They are simply misguided.
In my world of college athletics I see coaches and teams fail all the time because they focus on the WHAT and the HOW but they don't know the WHY. Or even worse the WHY is WRONG! Look how often teams in college athletics try to do whatever it takes to win. They buy facilities, they buy players, and they have big money boosters. Sure sometimes they win the championship. But what success they have doesn't last very long because they attract the wrong people. Often times many years later those championship banners come down. Even worse, they are a source of embarassment.
Our women's World Cup team has fallen into the same trap.
Let me break it down.
WHAT - the USWNT certainly knows WHAT they do. They play soccer.
HOW - they know HOW they do it. Tryout, train, compete, repeat...
WHY - to win the World Cup.
We haven't won a World Cup since 1999. I don't think that is a coincidence. That team inspired a nation and the world. It was a signature moment for women in sports. The WHY was so much more important than winning the World Cup. I believe that even if we had lost the final it would have been viewed as a great success. I was one of the 99,000 people in the Rose Bowl and while it was more fun to win I don't remember much about that match. I remember the moment. Even more important look at what it has inspired since then.
In 2011, when Japan won the World Cup, their WHY was clear. It was to inspire a nation that was recovering from a devastating earthquake and tsunami. They played amazing soccer and ended up lifting a nation.
We are two days away from the World Cup Quarterfinals against China. We haven't lost a game in the World Cup. And I've never seen a fan base so turned off by success in my entire life. We all want our team to win. But we also want to be inspired.
It doesn't take a historical moment or a natural disaster to inspire our soccer nation. It just takes the right WHY. Imagine the girls watching the USA right now. What is their vision of soccer. What is their vision of the right way to play. Now imagine a team that played with creativity, flair, style and most importantly a smile on their face. Inspiration!
WHY - to play attractive attacking soccer that is exciting to watch and inspires the next generation of female soccer players in our country.
If we don't find the right WHY soon it won't matter if we win the World Cup. Nobody will care...
