You don’t loose the battle until you quit. Losers are the people who do not participate in the battle. More important is the participation and the spirit. Winning or Loosing is just the outcome.
With this Mindset, we set to play against, arguably the second best team of the tournament. We had never practiced before, and some of the players have never played soccer before. Yet, we were dominating the game with 1-0 till the last 2 minutes. Blooper can be termed as an appropriate word for the goal that opponents scored against us. Nevertheless, we put up a good fight thereafter during penalty shoot-out. We scored all the three penalty shots against an experienced player who was their Goal keeper cum forward cum defender cum penalty shooter. The referee decided to opt for sudden death since it was a knock-out match. Opponent’s goalkeeper was able to save the penalty kick and that’s when the match ended.
I will never forget this match for two reasons. First, I saw an ordinary team delivering an extraordinary result. Second, I saw that attitude is what that makes the difference. Our attitude was simple, we were playing and enjoying the game and we were not under any pressure. None of the player tried to become a hero and none kept himself above the team. It doesn't matter for me as a captain that we lost the game but it’s a pride for me that I got such a good team to play along and I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game like I did never before.
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