So there I was, as an accidental coach for a youth soccer team when I know very little about youth sports, and even less about soccer. I stepped in because my sweetie pie was there, not because I had an understanding of how soccer was played.
Nonetheless, as I stepped in, I watched my sweetie pie’s team incessantly pushed back against their goal, defending to the best extent possible, to make sure the invading team was not going to get a goal. One goal. Two goals. Three goals. As hard as they fought, sooner or later, the invading team was going to eventually win.
During halftime – down 3-0 – I simply said to them, “Guys, you’ll never win by defending. You can only win by attacking.”
From that point on, we attacked. We were not successful at getting any more points, but we at least neutralized the invading team and kept the score at 3-0.
However, it taught me a valuable lesson that I’ve thought about ever since. You can’t win a battle by defense alone. You can somewhat protect your turf through defense, but you can only ultimately protect yourself by being incessantly on the attack. The more you attack – the more you press your case – the more successful you’ll ultimately become in defending both your home turf and expanding your territory.
We lost the game, and we ended up coming in third for the season, but we never again battled the competitors near our goal post. From that point on, it was always about the offense, not the defense