I had a very good day on Saturday, 24th September. A good day compared to the day before when I had a dental procedure that sent me into the emergency room.
It was a much better day than Friday by all standards…because I had a lot of fun. The English Premier League team I support is Chelsea FC and on Saturday morning whilst listening to my colleague, Yaw Ofosu Larbi on 3FM’s Warm Up, I was nicely informed of some very interesting statistics. Arsenal FC that was scheduled to play Chelsea later that day, had won only five times in thirty-one games with Chelsea. That represented a 16% success for Arsenal. I posted this on my Facebook wall and attached a picture of me in a Chelsea T-shirt with the sign of victory. That was the beginning of my good day.
A friend of mine – Jojo Quansah – shared the posts and captioned it as below:
To cut a long story short, Chelsea was walloped 3–0. But why would I say that I had a good day, especially when before the end of the day, a trotro (commercial bus) driver had rammed into the rear of my car? This same Jojo has a theory that the driver of the trotro must have been an Arsenal fan who was too excited to watch where he was going.
Well, back to my good day story. No, I’m not being sarcastic. It was good really. It was, because I learnt a few things and even though I won’t admit this to my friends, the Chelsea loss go me papa (to wit, I was affected a lot)! My pain was due to the inability of my dear Chelsea to organize against the opponent. They seemed confused and disorganized to say the least. I won’t attempt to run a technical commentary on the match, we lost. Period.
Whilst I was in the middle of getting the trotro driver to the police station, I checked my phone and saw:
That’s where my day took a great turn! The comments, were amazing. Comments from Facebook friends and family as they all joined in the chorus to tease us – the blue family and me, specifically for my earlier gloat.
Now, let’s talk about Wayne Rooney. I remember Wayne Rooney from a while back. I remember my father speak of him in such glowing terms, a little over a decade ago. He was excited about the prospects the young Rooney had for English football. That same Rooney was benched in Manchester United’s game against Leicester. In that game, Manchester United won by 4 goals to nil!
There was the tweet by @theyawofosu “We took Jonah off the ship and now look. 4 goals” that tweet really got me thinking. Rooney is the captain of Manchester United and he was ‘benched’ during that game. As a leader of a team, there are a lot of questions that come to mind. I was really sad for Rooney, that it was when he was not in the team that the team did so well. There must be other factors besides just his exclusion from the team that brought about their success, but do the numerous fans who wanted him out care? No. I’ve wondered what was going through his mind. I felt sorry for him…(a teeny weeny bit). Leadership is a very big challenge and at times it can be a very lonely place. I wrote an article about Christiano Ronaldo (CR7) and how he had to watch his team from the bench – albeit reluctantly, because of an early injury. CR7’s team won the Euro 2016 Tournament, without their captain in that final game. He too watched his team from the bench. Rooney’s situation was different. It was one of a leader who had been set aside…especially in the eyes of the fans.
I had a good day because I learnt two important lessons. Firstly, statistics of success don’t matter if you’re not going to be consistent with your winning. It’s a good place to know you have the potential and track record to succeed, but you can’t rely on that to succeed (just because). Chelsea, like Rooney, have a sterling record of success, but that doesn’t mean jack if they are not winning now! Lesson Number Two! Don’t celebrate before the win especially when it’s a game as unpredictable as football. Let’s see how the Special One works Manchester United out of their conundrum of post-Alex Ferguson troubles. Whilst they are at it, I’m going to get another Chelsea jersey that says – Never say die! Yes, I also support Accra Hearts of Oak.
By Petra Aba Asamoah
The writer is the head of station 3FM 92.7MHz.
