Argentina were eliminated from the World Cup in the Round of 16 by eventual winners, France. PDP Lead Researcher, James Vaughan examines some of the cultural questions we’re left with on the back of a disappointing campaign from a traditional football heavyweight.
While Phil Neville’s mansplaining was trending on Twitter and Neymar’s spaghetti haircut was splattered all over Facebook, there were some World Cup stories unearthing deeper questions. Deep questions with hidden connections.
Wading through the catchphrase cliché’s provided by many pundits, moments of insightful questioning caught the eye and some particularly reflective occasions, questions were posed and answers avoided.
In one particularly reflective article Jorge Valdano* asked:
*Jorge Valdano scored for Argentina in the 3-2 win over West Germany in the 1986 World Cup final and managed Real Madrid 1994-96)
“What’s wrong with Argentina? We now value ‘balls’ more than talent”.
Valdano wrote:
“There is no identifiable moment when it all started, nor one place where it began, and there is no dominant theory. What is true is that bit by bit we got further away from the ball, the one thing we loved more than the game itself. We got further from a style that used to draw us to the stadium, where we longed to shout “olé!” every time we saw someone dribble, trick an opponent, tease them; every time we saw a lightning one-two or some expression of cunning, that astuteness – that was our life. There was talent of the highest quality and in the greatest quantity and we allowed ourselves an act of genius once in a while.”
Valdano gives insight into the values that once shaped this Argentinian style of play:
…We longed to shout “olé!” every time we saw someone dribble, trick an opponent, tease them; every time we saw a lightning one-two or some expression of cunning, that astuteness – that was our life. There was talent of the highest quality and in the greatest quantity and we allowed ourselves an act of genius once in a while.”
Highlighting Argentina’s style of play, Valdano astutely talks about something potentially lost in the past; he says ‘that was our life’. He recognises the dynamic nature of culture and forms of life, he’s seen that they change over time.
Valdano then identifies a movement away from pure enjoyment and toward an obsession with winning.
“… an imperious, almost delirious need to win overcame the enjoyment of playing. The desire to win at all costs sweeps away your values. Dividing the world into winners and losers is an illness that infected football at a formative stage.”
Has a shift in values swept away integral elements of Argentina’s form of life and changed the football culture to the point whereby it no longer promotes moments of “olé!”?
Will Argentina ever nurture another generation of Messi’s or Maradona’s?
Valdano continued:
“At the same time a passion for football was overcome by a passion for a team, as if a society that has become ever more individualistic needed something to reconnect it with tribal feeling. Turning clubs into mini-nations constructs an identity, a community that must be defended as a matter of life and death. In the stands violence took over; on the pitch, we said goodbye to the olés and welcomed in a world where huevos – balls – are more important than talent.”
In his rich sociocultural account Valdano is discussing what is valued and the dynamic tension between what is valued.
Barry Schwartz (1990) provides a great description of values and their dynamics, saying:
“I take values to be principles, or criteria, for selecting what is good (or better, or best) among objects, actions, ways of life, and social and political institutions and structures. Values operate at the level of individuals, of institutions, and of entire societies. A social institution embodies individual values when, in the normal course of its operation, the institution offers people roles that encourage behaviour expressing those values and fosters conditions for their further expression…An entire social order embodies a value to the extent that it provides conditions that nurture social institutions that embody the value. The values that an individual can express are very much constrained by the character of the social institutions and the social order in which that individual lives” (Schwartz, 1990 p.8).
Valdano points to societal conditions that promote expressions of balls at the expense of expressions of olè. Theories of ecological psychology and basic human values may provide a framework to help us appreciate how values shape these societal conditions.
Values transcend contexts and shape intentions at multiple levels of our ecology (player development environment – see below). Using Gibson’s approach to ecological psychology as a point of departure Hodges and Baron (1992) argued that:
‘Ontologically, values are global constraints on an ecosystem’ (p.270)
In other words, values provide the formative conditions for the ecology while also shaping its dynamics (interactions between people and systems) and constraining the emergence of new features (education systems, schools, classroom environments etc. etc.).
Therefore ‘values are the intentions of the world as a self-organising system in the sense that they are the ends towards which the ecosystem as a whole is directed’ (p.270).
Combining the observations of Valdano and the work of Hodges and Baron (1992) we could say that the values shaping many sporting environments have resulted in (or reinforced) the intention to divide the world into winners and losers.
A small section of a long conversation with Stuart Armstrong (on the Talent Equation Podcast) was highlighted by the team at myfastestmile and described the intention of a system (or ecology) like this.
The intention of ‘Dividing the world into winners and losers’ is perhaps the best example of an intention around which the whole (football) ecosystem (see model above) is directed and self-organises.
The intention to rank, evaluate, compare and individualise achievement is evident in school, emergent in social media posts, observable in peer group banter and systemic in sport and education systems.
To fully grasp the role of values in player development we’ll consider a theoretical framework that illuminates values dynamics.
The role of values is illuminated by the theory of Basic Human Values (Schwartz, 1992) which defines ten broad values according to the motive underpinning them (see the figure below) and proposes dynamics between them.
Values Circumplex, adapted from Schwartz 1994
In Valdano’s example, the delirious desire to win at all costs (achievement) and show ‘balls’ (power) reinforce and strengthen each other. The more winning at all costs is promoted the more it encourages expressions of ‘balls’.
Or as the research describes it:
“Values that serve the same motives as a promoted value should increase in importance (bleed over effect), whereas values that serve conflicting motives should decrease in importance (seesaw effect)”. (Maio et al. 2009 p.701 italics added)
In other words, promoting winning at all costs reinforces the importance of balls and visa versa. This vicious cycle of ‘balls’ and ‘winning’ creates a snowball effect that sweeps away the value in enjoyment and trickery because they serve conflicting motives. Or, in other words, they directly oppose each other (displayed on the circumplex).
Valdano’s astute assessment that ‘we now value ‘balls’ more than ‘talent’ can be translated into we value achievement, power and security at the expense of self-direction and creativity. In effect the seesaw is stuck in one position, buried under the weight of ‘win at all costs’ and ‘balls’ it struggles to swing towards self-direction and creativity… even for a fleeting moment.
This may explain why there are fewer moments of “olé!” or ‘acts of genius’ – because the values that lead to expressions of creative behaviours are suppressed by the obsession with achievement, power and security.
The ‘stuck see-saw problem’ represents a values dynamic evident in many educational environments. It’s the values dynamic (or balance of values) around which many educational environments self-organise at multiple levels: Individuals (players), institutions (clubs, schools, education systems), societies and cultures.
This is not just Argentinian football’s problem; this is football’s problem. An evident trend for a long time, creativity is regularly and consistently sacrificed at the altar of hyper-masculine ‘balls’ & ‘win at all costs’ cultures.
No one is suggesting we shouldn’t value winning or achievement, but when one set of values extinguishes another when the seesaw has rusted motionless under the weight of all these bollocks, sorry ‘balls’, we need to re-assess the situation, consciously change what unconsciously slipped away.
Do we want societies, sports and styles of play self-organising round the set of values Valdano identified? Do we want an ugly obsession with balls and the illness of win at all costs to characterise our player development environments? Because this is the path football is walking, even (it seems) in Argentina.
Argentinian sports psychologist Marcelo Roffé worked with Messi’s generation of players at youth level and suggested that it wasn’t Maradona who is ill – Argentinian society is ill.”
“How can a person be psychologically prepared to tolerate the ‘poison’ of success?” he said. “It’s not easy.”
Describing the expectations placed on Messi and the damage done to Maradona Roffé asked:
‘As Argentines, we have done a lot of damage to Maradona … Let’s hope with Messi we learn to modify our behaviour”.
As parents, coaches and responsible citizens can we modify our behaviour?
If ‘values are the intentions of the world as a self-organising system and the ends towards which the ecosystem as a whole is directed’ then shouldn’t we be more aware of the values we currently embody and better understand their dynamics?
Shouldn’t we be worried that more and more player development environments are succumbing to the toxic cocktail of ‘win at all costs’ & ‘balls’.
Argentina isn’t the only football nation suffering from an obsession with some values at the expense of others.
Talking about Argentina’s performance at this World Cup Valdano said: “Lionel Messi can do only so much when our football is crippled by an ugly obsession with winning at all costs”.
The intention to divide the world into winners and losers and win at all costs comes from an obsession with extrinsic achievement values. Extrinsic motivators shape controlling (autonomy suppressing) environments at all levels of the game.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a four-time Ballon d’Or winner or a 7-year-old on trial at a Premier League Club controlling environments emerging from the values we’ve discussed kill creativity and threaten your psychological wellbeing.
Cover Image: By Alexander Hassenstein
