unpacking the meaning of success through my football club

This is not really about football, but I’ll start with football anyway.

when winning just meant not losing / typical city

I grew up a Manchester City fan. In the footsteps of my father, we were two fans half the world away who had never been to the stadium. We didn’t have cable so we never even watched the games live, but I remember buying The New Paper just to read results and analysis. Watching some weekly Barclays Premier League highlights show on TV together is a fond memory…minus the fact that in the early 2000s, there wasn’t ever much to highlight about City.

We weren’t a very good club. My friends loved reminding me about this.

In those days, winning often just meant not losing. Not getting relegated was winning (and then we really did get relegated). Not losing to Man United was winning. Actually scoring a goal was winning.

There was a term used by fans then called Typical City – to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This article in 2022 illustrates Typical City beautifully:

The hopelessness, the haplessness and the tendency to shoot themselves in both feet have had City’s loyal supporters never knowing to laugh or cry – so they usually did both.

And yet, those “loyal supporters” – my Ayah and me included from far, far away – never stopped turning up. I never went into a weekend not believing we could come away with a result. Heartbreak was both real and expected. Getting laughed at on Mondays was inevitable.

It was fun. Life is simpler when your ambitions are modest, and even more so when you expect to lose.

But then success came.

winning is believing / agueroooooooo

If you’ve always been a loser, the biggest hurdle to overcome is in your mind. Or more accurately, the way your mind sees yourself.

Typical City was exactly that: a self-fulfilling prophecy, fulfilled by our own shortcomings and mistakes fuelled by the evidence-backed fear of making mistakes.

I'm a loser = I'm gonna lose + I make mistakes + I'm the reason for my own losses = I'm a loser

It’s a flywheel that digs you deeper into the ground. On the contrary, if you see yourself as a winner, then even losing reinforces that identity as you exclaim, this is not who I am! I’ll show them!

I'm a winner = I'm gonna win + I make mistakes + I will learn and win next time = I'm a winner

The 2011/12 season would have been an all-timer even if we didn’t win the title on the final day, in the final ten minutes, with 1 goal bringing us back on top of the table by goal difference against freaking Manchester United. Losing by 1 goal could have gave us the belief we could finally win it next season.

But it could also have crushed us. Typical City continues – 44 years worth of never-league-winning evidence staring us in the face. Forever the noisy, losing neighbours.

It was a glorious moment I’ll never forget.

My 2011/12 season was also an all-timer that changed my entire life trajectory. But that’s another story.

winning is being there, again and again / pep guardiola

4 League Titles in a row. Domestic treble. First-ever Champions League – and a treble in the same season. Doing it in three countries, and doing it again and again with different players and ever-improving opponents.

And he has spoke up on Gaza. Pep Guardiola is a winner and my football manager.

You can win once. You can win by yourself. But how do you get a group of individuals to win again, and again, and again?

I could write a whole post about this – but two answers for now. Firstly, hard work is non-negotiable.

And secondly, as Pep says in one of my favourite 2-minute videos of all time:

Do the simple things. The simple things.

The rest?

It’s because we are good.

You won’t win all the time. Nobody does. Everyone loses some.

But losing with pride and honour is far better than winning with none. If I can walk away from it all proudly knowing that “we were there” – no matter the result?

That’s success.