As yet another great sporting spectacle unfolds on our television screens in the shape of European soccer competition Euro 2004 in Portugal in the all-too-familiar indecently early hours of the morning, yet another great lesson for human resources strikes me.
The world game
As yet another great sporting spectacle unfolds on our television screens in the shape of European soccer competition Euro 2004 in Portugal in the all-too-familiar indecently early hours of the morning, yet another great lesson for human resources strikes me.
Surely there could not be a game with a greater sense of theatre and drama than ‘the world game’, with championship contenders such as Italy and Spain crashing out in the first round, while host nation Portugal overcame its decades-long stumbling block in the form of the Spanish team to secure its berth in the quarter finals. And in what other game can a nil-nil draw be so absorbing and even down right nerve-racking?
In short, soccer, as we call it in Australia almost exclusively, is a game of inches, individual heroes and team performances on a global stage. Success, in this sporting endeavour is not that dissimilar to the corporate world that now finances so much of it.
While the big nations such as Italy, Germany, Spain and England can afford to buy the talent for their domestic club leagues, when it comes down to playing for your national team, it’s for a different reason – pride – that the players pull on their jersey. So too, they cannot import their talent so they must grow their own.
When it comes to home grown talent on a national basis, you would think that it’s simply a matter of mathematics. Bigger nations statistically have a better chance of producing a freakishly good player than smaller ones, as well as more standard but very good players. Yet how, then, do teams like Portugal, with a population of less than 10 million, or Croatia, with less than 5 million residents, even manage to make it to the tournament in the first place?
Surely this must be an answer of cultural drive. Nations obsessed with the sport, which have proven very good at identifying the talent they have available. Yes, bigger, richer nations will have the capacity to set up talent recruitment and development initiatives, but a small, poor nation where there are kids kicking a flat ball around with bare feet on every street corner have organic talent recruitment and development initiatives that are the match of any formalised system.
Surely, the corporate world can take heart from the lessons of the world game – everybody is a chance.
