The ‘unlucky’ attribution in coaching

Here she is, bringing the ball down from the sky with perfect left-thigh control. Rachael cushions the ball and sets it nicely for a right-footed volley. The whole crowd stands up in anticipation, ready to go mental and celebrate, while the football follows a lightning-fast curved trajectory away from the goalie's hand towards the upper-right corner of the goal, spiders scrambling out of the way for dear life. Then, suddenly, a collective gasp. The ball bounces off the crossbar and gets dealt with very swiftly by the defenders for a corner kick. ‘Unlucky,’ we can hear from the dugout. But… was it?

Far from a matter of luck or divine intervention, it is a matter of physics. Our star player’s brain simply did not get the calculations entirely right. It was close, spectacular, but not good enough. Yet, most coaches revert to that usual form of feedback in a conscious or unconscious attempt at positive reinforcement. However… Luck had absolutely nothing to do with it. The goalposts will always be there. Nobody made them wider or moved them at the precise moment the ball was about to hit the bar. It is simply a miscalculation, a suboptimal execution. So, why are we coaches so happy to quickly jump into attributing the outcome to the gods and goddesses of luck and fortune – or misfortune – in this instance?

I know that for many, this may be a philosophical stance. But if luck is about success or failure apparently brought by something else other than our own actions... missing a shot, a pass, or letting an opponent go by, has everything to do with our own actions and absolutely nothing to do with Fortuna, the goddess.

OK, OK. Sometimes circumstances are weird enough to make you reconsider this concept. Pepe Reina and the infamous beach ball come to mind. Even so, one could think that Reina’s brain might have processed the extra information to deal with the situation successfully.

Let me put it this way. Imagine our star player hitting the volley this time perfectly, ball due to hit the roof of the net. A jumbo plane departed this morning with a seventeen-minute delay with destination Frankfurt. The reason for the delay, allegedly, is that the pilot had to make a last-minute emergency stop at the nearest toilet. Things happen, you know. It seems that his customary tuna-mayo sandwich had gone bad. Go figure. The unusually good weather this year also encouraged whooper swans to migrate later than usual, and Captain Lastminute has an encounter with a large flock of them on their way to sunnier shores. Sadly, they lose one of their numbers in the close encounter with our captain. The bird plummets ungracefully all the way down. Jenny, meanwhile, is surveying her farm with the use of a state-of-the-art fancy agricultural drone. She meant to do it yesterday, but Cowasaki decided it was too nice a morning to stay in the barn and made a run for it. So, today instead, Jenny is finally spotting areas susceptible to flooding this winter when our late Whoopie-the-swam hits the drone, damaging its navigational system. The heavy artefact gets out of Jenny’s control. She panics as she gets the feedback from the camera while the drone is approaching a populated area and what seems a crowded football park. Spinny-the-drone manages to make it over the stands, but now is approaching at full speed one of the penalty areas, where the main action is taking place. I am aware you guessed it a while ago and that you well know that Spinny is due to hit the top corner of that goal, cracking the crossbar and lowering it just enough to make Rachael’s shot bounce off the bar anyway… Well, in this case, let me tell you something: that was unlucky!

Of course, only movie heroes can factor in every single extraneous variable that may play a part in every outcome. The Fast and Furious guys, for instance, might be able to compute the reflection coefficient of the particular brand and shade of iridescent paint that the car they are racing against has, to accurately calculate the angle of impact to derail their opponent’s hopes of success in a single swing of the steering wheel. Sadly, it does not happen in reality. But it would be physics, not divine intervention.

The point is that, as coaches, we spend a lot of energy preaching the need to only focus on the things that our athletes can control. We tell them about their need to develop a growth mindset. We try to embed in their heads the idea that they shouldn’t blame the referees, the state of the pitch, or the weather, to justify any unsuccessful outcome. Yet, it seems OK to blame lady luck. Because offering that kind of feedback when, for instance, the ball hits the bar is placing the blame on fate.

Of course, this practice is still a form of positive reinforcement. Much better than those idiots still around kicking the water bottle, cursing, or even calling names when one of their players misses a chance. But there are better and more coherent options for positive reinforcement, where we place the locus of control inside our athletes, not in external elements such as the goddess of good fortune and how much we may have pissed her off, or not, lately.

The fact is that it is straightforward to improve our feedback in that sense. For example, we could appeal to their work ethics with a ‘good effort’ instead, or their self-esteem with a ‘nice try.’ At the same time, we would not encourage them to pray to Fortuna -any other godly beings may also apply – before a game. We would also be reinforcing that the key to a successful performance is to focus on and compute all those factors we can control to give our brain the best chance to deliver the optimal execution.

But let’s not forget that the opponents also play. They, too, can compute variables to produce optimal execution and decision-making. So let’s also praise their performance, rather than attribute any unwanted outcome for us to being ‘unlucky.’ Let your athletes know that lady luck never plays our game, barring Whoopie-the-swam mishaps.