I had promised myself that I would not
write another column about this World Cup. It’s all too easy to draw football
and business lessons from a tournament that puts so much human emotion and
skill on raw display, which is why newspapers worldwide are chock-full of them.
But then again, the fact that advantages and frailties are so transparent means
that they are irresistible. And the main reason why I have written another one,
obviously, is because of last Tuesday’s semi-final.
This was the punniest of all World Cup
matches, especially in a Kenyan context. BRA71L. The ‘Saba’ boys. Did you miss
out live coverage of ‘saba saba’? There it was on a football pitch on Tuesday.
‘Mass action’ by the Germans.
Annihilation does not quite begin to
describe the events at the football pitch in Belo Horizonte. The Selecao were supposed to be on a stately
match to the final at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro, where they would finally
expunge the ghosts of 1950, where they were shocked by Uruguay in a defeat that
had major implications for the nation’s psyche and self-regard for generations.
Pundits had their pens out ready to draw
portentous lessons from the humiliation the Brazilians suffered. As the
anticipated riots failed to materialise, though, the prognostications looked
quite premature, if not outright wrong. That doesn’t mean they were all off,
however. There are some useful lessons to be drawn.
The first is about the football itself and
the psyche of the Brazilian nation. In 1950, the recollections go, this was a
nation unsure of itself. It was on the rise through the global rankings, but
with the attendant anxieties and angst expected of such a moment. The one
bright spot was the football team, which was all-conquering, and which was
expected to take the home World Cup with ease (Brazil still hadn’t won a single
cup – the first came in 1958). The Brazilians, needing only a draw to take the
cup, were only 11 minutes away from the feat, when the Uruguayans scored and
scarred the country for more than half a century.
The defeat on Tuesday is supposed to be an
even worse psychological blow. There are reasons, though, why this may not be
so. First, the sheen of the World Cup was already effectively tarnished last
year, when demonstrations and riots around the Confederations Cup showed that
Brazilians cared more than just about samba and soccer. The outrageous cost of
the tournament (and the attendant corruption and brazen financial demands by
FIFA) led many to ask fundamental questions about the aftermath of such an
expensive tournament, regardless of the shiny promises and brochures.
International sporting events and tournaments almost invariably prove financial
black holes for hosting countries and cities, and this is something every
Kenyan President and Governor needs to be aware of before they make hollow
promises about attracting World Cups, Olympic Games and Grands Prix to the
country and county.
The wider business lesson is the second
reason. As much as Brazilians were praying for a home win, they knew deep down
that the team was a spent force. Brazilian coaches have been trying to recreate
the best national teams ever seen – the victorious one of 1970 and the defeated
one of 1982. Past success has been a hindrance to imagination. Even as the
world moved on and re-imagined and re-thought the game of football, Brazilians
were still after the modern incarnation of jogo
bonito (the beautiful game). The Germans, who were at their worst ten years
ago, recreated the ruthless team we saw over the past month, and have now conquered the world. Even when
Brazilians won, as in 1994 and 2002, they did so with largely forgettable
teams. As a matter of fact, they were now caught between the need to recreate
the samba brand of football and the ugly, negative play of Luis Felipe Scolari.
This confusion was ruthlessly and humiliatingly exposed as a fraud in the
semi-final. Similarly, Kenya is still assuming that the
‘island-of-peace-in-the-midst-of-troubled-neighbours’ narrative is still an
attractive one, even when it is false at its core. We still assume that we keep
Presidents and Prime Ministers up at night as they think of how to get on our
good side, despite the fact that the world’s powerful countries now have more
choices of interlocutors in this region.
Kenya’s blue chip companies rest on their
laurels, in the comfortable (and mistaken) assumption that their markets and
customers are safe. There is little innovation and a certain disregard for
customer service that are indicators of complacency. The expectation is that
past performance is a guarantee of future results. They forget how low the
barriers of entry have fallen. They forget that competitors, both local and
foreign, have been studying and strategising on how to beat them. Many are yet
to suffer their Belo Horizonte moment, but they should have no doubt that it is
coming. As a matter of fact, many will end up in a situation of praying for a
slow, invisible decline, as opposed to a public humiliation.
Enough of the World Cup, though. After a
month of late nights, it is now time for sanity (at least until the start of
the regular football season). Congratulations to Germany.
Also published in the Business Daily on 15 July 2014, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/similarities-local-firms-and-Brazilian-football-team/-/539548/2383662/-/item/0/-/sg41qs/-/index.html
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