THE SHOCK OF ENGLAND TEAM’S FAILURE AT WORLDCUP 2010 – a sport psychology analysis

Before World cup 2010, England team was expected to continue the tradition of World cup 1966 to beat Germany and win the cup. In recent games, England destroyed Germany 5–1 in 2001, or a 2-1 win in a friendly match. Those are a few signals that together with the team of stars make England become a favorite. But this year, England's 1-4 defeat against Germany raised a lot of questions about what went wrong. Let's try and make sense of it all under the lens of sport psychology.

Even before the final game against Slovenia, England team had gone through a tough time with the team’s unrest. John Terry told reporters that nine players met in Cape Town to examine the side's failings and, saying he represented the players and the team, said it was time to air truths that might upset the manager. Similar to the case of crisis in France team, a norm in England team was broken. Norms are the standards for behavior that are expected of team members. Norms are different from rules in that rules are formal for everyone and there are normally some punishments for breaking the rules. In many sport teams, there is a norm (or a non-written rule) that what is said in the locker room stays in the locker room. By speaking against the manager in front of the media, Terry upset the rest of the players and undermined the skipper.

This leads us to point number two on the leadership style of Capello.  There are two types of leadership namely democratic vs. autocratic. Democratic leadership seeks consensus of everybody before the decision is made. Conversely, autocratic leadership style requires players to follow the direction of the coach with no question asked. In the case of Capello, he belongs to the second group.  Each leadership style has its own pros and cons, and in this case autocratic style has helped Capello succeed at a certain level. Having an all-stars-highly-paid team, it is difficult for the coach to gear players into sacrificing their own ego for the sake of the team. Capello with his autocratic style has managed to make the stars train and grow as a team by being decisive in choosing players based on capability, not their previous fame.

If that leadership style is so good, then what is the issue? One of the cons of autocratic leadership is that it doesn’t give much space for players to express their opinions and concerns over the matters. Look at the way he handled the unrest issue with Terry.  Instead of having open communication to let players express and discuss their feelings, Capello put the kibosh on the whole affair, quashing any potential rebellion by simply playing a DVD of the Algeria game. After that, none of the England players could muster a word. It could not be a healthy situation when an international manager ruled with an iron fist at a World Cup, and even Capello's assistants were not endearing themselves to the players. Although Terry's outburst was risky, ill-conceived and left him exposed, his manager reasserted his authority over proceedings, isolated the dissenter and switched the focus firmly back on to him.

In modern sport psychology, open communication is critical. By letting players express themselves and solve issues when they are small, the team will have a better chance to fix problems and move forward cohesively. In Capello’s case, as typical as an autocratic leader, since he was always single-minded in his decisions, players were afraid to speak up. "I spoke with some players and I think it is only John Terry who said this" said Capello. "No-one spoke with me about these comments. My door is open always. If you want to speak with me you can speak with me. Every time when I have a meeting I ask my captain: 'Problems? You want to say something?”added Capello. Unless he made a norm and clear the air about how players’s feedbacks can be evaluated positively, his autocratic authority might make people afraid to voice up any issues. To England team, this could be the cause for a critical unrest.

Looking back at the issue of Terry on the media, beside the above-mentioned issues, there is also a situation of informal leadership. In England team, Steven Gerrard is the official captain, but the real voice in the locker room is John Terry’s. Normally, formal leaders are those who are assigned officially. On the other hand, informal leaders develop their roles on the basis of interactions with other members through activity, task ability or likability.
Informal leadership itself could be a good factor for team success if it is done right. It could fulfill needs of members that the formal leader is not addressing, maintain group solidarity, integrate team members or an additional resource for decision making. However, the man who has been appointed twice and sacked once as England captain tried to muscle his way into power within the England camp. While his attempted mutiny may have been quashed, it was still hugely disrespectful. When informal leadership is not considered and used properly, it could be a potential thread for team success as in the case of JT.

Isn’t John Terry the trouble for all England’s loss then? The answer is far more complicated than that. As mentioned by Capello in an interview with the BBC: "It is a mental thing. Absolutely. When you are under pressure, big pressure, sometimes the legs do not work normally" . The most obvious case of falling under the pressure is Wayne Rooney. He has been a super star for his club MU. But when it comes to World Cup, Rooney failed to score in his last ten games for England, his longest barren run for the national team. He also lost the ball by being tackled in possession 32 times, more often than any other player at the 2010 World Cup. Lastly, Rooney completed only 55 per cent of his passes for England against Germany - the lowest rate in the game.

So what made one of the best players in the world playing like one of the worst? The answer could be pressure and performance slump. As sport psychology consultants, we see this issue happen quite often, especially with a young, skillful yet highly expected like Rooney. Performance slump is usually a string of events where players can’t perform the way they normally do, even though they try really hard. This can possibly be explained by the psychological issue: When player is under high pressure to score, he is furious to make things happen quickly. A simple miss or an unavoidable error could make him angry to himself. His inner voice in his mind would criticize every possible thing, and that leads to a snow ball effect whereby he totally loses his coolness. That explains why Rooney showed his anger and said bad things to his faithful fans.

To break a performance slump, it requires cooperation between a sport psychologist and the player. The player needs to be trained to focus on each task only and not get distracted by the possible consequences or the media; reward himself for every small improvement in performance and by all means avoid negative self-talk. This is a time consuming process, and in a short, intense tournament like World Cup, Rooney might not have had enough time to get out of his own issue of the mind.

In the 1-4 defeat against Germany, many would blame referee Jorge Larrionda and assistant Mauricio Espinosa for the wrong decision. As angry as any England fan, I find issues beyond the misjudgement. Fabio Capello was right to mention mental weakness as the principal reason behind England's shortcomings in South Africa. At World Cup level, players need to be prepared psychologically for any unfair situations, be it red cards or unapproved scores… It is not the goal being denied itself, but the mental collapse by bad decisions that made England unable to beat Germany.

Capello might have been delighted by the manner in which his team regained the spirit when they beat Slovenia: "And I saw the team play with the spirit that we lost in the games we played before this game. This is the spirit that I remember when we played in the qualification games. I am really happy with the performance of the team.". But they were not able to bring back that spirit after Lampard’s goal was denied. Even a team less mentally fragile than England could be forgiven if they felt a bit discouraged after they put the ball a yard over the line and had the goal chalked off.

Capello had spent a lot of time to prepare his players to practice penalty kicks prior to the game against Germany, yet they were somehow not trained to face misjudgment. Some possible mental games could have been done prior to this tournament is: a friendly game where the coach purposely asks the referee to be biased, or one team has to play with fewer players than the other team… All these practices take time but it will help tremendously to prepare mental toughness for England players.

What is done is done. England team is having yet another empty-handed World Cup. As an England fan, I hope the England team management realizes their players’ shortcomings in mental training and team dynamics to improve on. By doing so, England fans won’t have to be disappointed again when it comes Euro 2012.

If your team have some similar issues and would like to hear some advices from a sport psychology consultant, you can drop me an email at: sportpsychologyconsultants@gmail.com

This article is written based on the source of information available (newspaper, blog, internet web…) which aim to offer a possible explanation for the event that happened based on a sport psychology view. Hence, readers should not consider this explanation as 100% truth but rather what lesson can be learnt to avoid the same situation that could happen to your team.