The sad sight of Didier Drogba dejectedly trudging off the pitch in Chelsea’s match against Manchester United in Wednesday’s Champions League Final evoked memories of another talisman leaving a final in shame: Zinedine Zidane. Drogba has been instrumental in Chelsea’s recent success and last year was the scorer of Chelsea’s goal in their 1-0 FA cup triumph over United.
It has been argued that after Zidane left the field of play France psychologically surrendered the fight for the World Cup to the Italians. It’s contentious that professional footballers who are paid enormous amounts can lose their composure when a key team player is sent off but with so much on the line even the most battle hardened warriors crumble.
Can Chelsea’s defeat be attributed to the fact that Drogba was red carded? The immediate answer would be yes as he would have taken the fifth penalty that defender John Terry took, slipped and missed. Truth told there are a myriad possibilities of what the outcome would have been had Drogba stayed, one of which is he may have missed the penalty himself.
Playing in a team of footballers is really no different from being part of a corporate team. Sport is ruthless, there is a winner and a loser and history as they say never remembers who came 2nd. It’s pretty much the same in the untamed jungle of business, companies fiercely compete for clients, customers, market share, talent, capital etc and the losers of corporate battles are confined to the dustbin of history.
In business like sport conditions are amorphous and ambiguous teams need to continuously adapt to the changing terrain. Teams need to adapt even to the loss of a key player. The greatest testimony to good leadership is how well the team performs when the leader is absent: winning whatever the in spite of the external circumstances.
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