When you want something so much and you’re so close to it, then you can’t physically be in the game to get what you want.
He cried. At the end, he was ecstatic, because his team still won the cup! Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro will be remembered for his fight and his team’s victory in the Euro 2016 tournament.
I followed the games mainly from the comfort of my phone – on Twitter. Twitter commentary by our Head of Sports – Michael Oti Adjei was phenomenal. Listening to the 3FM Sports team recap the games on a daily basis as part of our Sports News gave me all the information I needed to be up-to-date without actually watching the matches. Okay, that’s no excuse to miss all the games, Petra! But I did. Back to Cristiano Ronaldo. He’s a star, a player par excellence but he didn’t score the winning goal. In fact, he played for only twenty-five minutes in that final game! How the Portuguese team was able to succeed without him is evidence to the fact that there is more to a team than one star.
A quick look at a production team for a radio programme like Sunrise, the morning show on 3FM 92.7 will help my illustration. There are close to ten individuals who contribute on a daily basis to the production of Sunrise. Tasks that may seem insignificant to the output of a team…like standing on the sidelines instead of playing in the game, as was the case for Cristiano, are really very critical to the success of a team.
Why was Cristiano in tears, anyway? I can conjecture that he felt a huge sense of responsibility and loss that he wasn’t going to be able to actively contribute to the winning fortunes of his team. He may have also been crying because he was physically injured. Yes, that too does make grown men cry. Pain, good old pain. A team mate who feels personally responsible for the success of a team is a star player, but that team member must never think the success of the team depends on them alone. That’s not a contradiction. Let me clarify. I must be so confident that my contribution as part of my team will lead to the success of the team. But, I must never think that without me, my team will fail. Teams succeed when everyone plays their part. At 3FM, I play a background role, a role I feel very excited to play, but I know that without the men and women who do the things they do every day to make the station run, there will be no 3FM. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be introducing you to my team and our programmes. We’re on our way to winning big! You don’t want to miss this.
By Petra Aba Asamoah
The writer is head of station at 3FM