Mentality, attitude, desire, concentration. They’re all slightly different things that are essential in the game we know and love. Singularly they’re important, together they are key to what makes a player or a team as good as they can possibly be. And over the last few weeks we have seen more than a few examples of how bad things can go when these things are missing.
To explain further what I mean let me call on the greatest tool that a sports writer could ever have in an effort to fill column inches, Mario Balotelli. So far it’s fair to say that Super Mario’s return to English football with Liverpool has been nothing short of a disappointment. What looked like a bargain at £16million is now looking like money squandered. But why is this? Is Balotelli not good enough? Yes, of course he is. We’ve seen enough of him over the years to know exactly how good he can be. So what’s missing?
Mentality, attitude, desire, concentration. Any or all of these are what’s missing from Balotelli’s arsenal. He doesn’t want it enough, or he can’t concentrate on his game, or something similar. Something in his head is stopping him showing his best form week in week out. Because outside of his head we all know that he has the attributes to be one of the best strikers in the world.
The importance of the mental side of the game can’t be overstated. How else can you explain the result between Southampton and Sunderland a couple of weeks ago? Southampton are enjoying an impressive start to the season while Sunderland have failed to find their best form.
But surely no one can believe that Southampton are 8 goals better than Sunderland? They wouldn’t put 8 past the Black Cats every week would they? Of course they wouldn’t. The problem was largely in the heads of the Sunderland players, their attitude. They gave up. Southampton kept on attacking and Sunderland’s heads dropped with each goal.
That’s how the mentality of a team can make them better. Southampton were better than Sunderland and would have always gone on to win. But a team who were stronger mentally would have lost the game by a smaller margin and saved a little face.
It’s that attitude, that desire, that would have kept a team defending when they were 3-0 down. Rather than throwing in the towel, turning around and taking whatever Southampton had to throw at them. And it’s quite conceivable that this can be the difference between winning and not. Which brings us to the Emirates stadium.
On Tuesday night Arsenal were coasting, 3-0 up at home to Anderlecht. There are no easy Champions League games, but this is one of the easier ones you will find, and Arsenal were winning this game like it was exactly that, easy. How, from this position, can you explain them drawing 3-3?
Paul Merson, exasperated with his former sides capitulation during Sky's coverage, blamed it on tactical naivety. At 3-1 and 3-2 Arsenal’s players were bombing forward in search of more goals. Merson claimed that they should have killed the game off from there. Two banks of four behind the ball, win the game. Of course Merson is right in that respect, Arsenal should have killed the game while ahead and are certainly good enough to have done so. The part of Merson’s argument that I don’t buy into is that they were too naïve to do it.
They were pushing forward, they could smell more goals, everyone fancied getting on the score sheet and they shouldn’t have been thinking that way. But it’s not that they didn’t know any better. How could they not? They’ve been playing football all of their lives, they train every day, they play in the Premier League, the Champions League and most play for their countries. They probably even spend their spare time on FIFA 15.
Arsenal were ill-disciplined. They knew they shouldn’t have been attacking but they did it anyway. They didn’t care enough, or they were careless. But not one of those players didn’t know what they were doing. And that’s where the mental side of the game cost Arsenal dearly.
It’s no coincidence that Arsenal’s downturn coincided with captain Mikael Arteta leaving the field injured. With his calming influence, experience and leadership they may have played the game out and nothing more would have been said about Arsenal’s 3-1 win.
Arsenal aren’t alone, these things happen far too often. The previous week in the Champions League FC Bate Borisov, Maribor, Malmo and even Roma lost by 5 goals or more. This is the height of competition, no one should be getting smashed like that in the Champions League, least of all Roma who got turned over 7-1 at home by Bayern Munich.
It’s about mentality, attitude, desire, concentration. That’s what Roma were missing last week against Bayern. It certainly wasn’t a lack of ability. What was essentially Liverpool reserves gave a spirited performance while being beaten 1-0 away at Real Madrid this week. They could have caved in and been on the wrong end of a thrashing but they were engaged, their heads were right.
If it wasn’t for this aspect of the game we would never get upsets. We would never use the phrase ‘they wanted it more’ and football would be boring as a result. So maybe we should happily accept these little mental indiscretions.
But I’ll say it again, the importance of the mental side of the game can’t be overstated. It’s the difference between winning 3-1 and drawing 3-3. As Arsenal and many others know all too well.