The Team was Flying
There are three or four football teams that I follow on Twitter that at one stage of the 2025/26 season were absolutely flying but then in a very short space of time entered something of a sticky period. The difference in performance and results was stark. The speed of the change from flying to struggling made it starker still. These teams were Swindon Town (league 2), and Ebbsfleet, Worthing and Horsham in the National League South.
In their post-match interviews all the managers cited a lack of confidence in the dressing room. But I can’t help thinking, if they were flying a few weeks ago how could they suffer from a lack of confidence so soon. The Worthing manager even suggested that previously, during the winning period, balls were just bouncing off the striker and going in. What I find fascinating by this is the lack of control over the confidence levels the teams seem to have. In which case can we even call it confidence. Essentially if things are going well they feel good, but when they start to go badly they very quickly feel bad.
When a striker is going through a barren period, football pundits will often say things like ‘he just needs one to go in off his backside and then he’ll go on a little run.’ And I often wonder if there is any truth in that. Wouldn’t the player just think he got a bit lucky and therefore not get the requisite boost in confidence. I guess it’s possible he might sense that the Universe is working with him at that point in time, but it feels very whimsical and that the Universe could equally turn against him in the following games.
I’m not suggesting that I have any answers to these confidence conundrums, I think I’m just expressing my fascination and quite frankly my lack of answers.
Ultimately I think that confidence is some magical combination of evidence of past success, minimal thought, and optimised physiological chemistry (low stress hormones, high feel-good hormones).
But we are thinking animals. If I control the ball effortlessly 9 times I won’t think about controlling it the 10th. If it goes under my foot the 10th time I will try harder to make sure that doesn’t happen again the 11th time. It’s very hard to revert to that state of non-thinking that existed before the mis-control. Should we laugh it off. Should we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. Common advice can be to ‘put it out of your mind’, but that’s easier said than done when you’ve just been ‘wayed’ by the opposition fans. I wouldn’t put it out of my mind. I’d resolve to ‘show them’.
Another thing I wonder about is if a good run of results might actually contribute to the lack of confidence. Do players and teams start over-thinking when it comes to maintaining the good run. Does the thought of losing feel worse. It must feel good to send the fans home happy. Thoughts of sending them home sad must feel bad.
I can imagine that too much praise might also feel somewhat unsettling. Sometimes as parents we give our kids praise in an effort to improve their confidence. But I know that I feel a bit awkward when I receive praise and I don’t think it’s just down to modesty or false modesty. I’ve recently been reading a book called ‘The Courage to be Disliked’, in which it says praise establishes a hierarchy with the praise giver setting themselves up as superior to the praise receiver and ultimately undermining the confidence of the praise receiver. In many cases it’s also true that once you receive praise you go in search of more praise, or you retreat from potential criticism. Criticism, or even silence (lack of praise) can become painful. If I am speaking Thai with Thai people and they complement my Thai, it puts me on edge because I don’t want to fall from the pedestal they have put me on. I don’t want them to think, oh we thought you were good but actually your shit. I even see this with my own internal praise. Sometimes I’ll be watching a Thai TV program or podcast and I’ll marvel at the fact that I’ve understood practically everything in the say the first ten or fifteen minutes. I’ll then get a bit edgy. Often I’ll stop the program just to gather myself or get a cup of coffee. I don’t want to falter having done so well. Sir Alex Ferguson famously used to simply say ‘well done’ to his players. Praise of sorts, but certainly not effusive.