El Tri has all the pieces
My son loves getting new lego sets. For him opening the box and seeing all of the colorful and different pieces is a very exciting moment for him. After he rips open every bag at once, even though they are numbered in sequential order, he places all of them in a huge pile. Then, he enjoys organizing them by color and shape and hits the instruction booklet. Lego understands that it must foster success in order to keep the customer coming back and buying new sets. Both the pieces and booklets are equally important in order for their mission to be genuine.
See, if I purposely take away the instruction booklet. My son would be lost even though he would still have all the pieces to construct the lego. I’m sure over time, he would eventually build something identical or similar to what the design of the lego is supposed to be. But it would take a lot longer then normal and in most cases he will be disappointed.
So were am I going with this. Well the above situation can be represented with how soccer functions. And yes, not all of it, just some of it. In soccer the lego pieces are the players and the coach is somewhat the instruction booklet. The coaches responsibility is to provide order, purpose to the players (pieces) and steps for the pieces to work with each other.
But in reality most teams will never have a system that works in this fashion. It would be too easy and the sport would be too predictable. See in soccer you have too many factors that play a role in how the pieces will function and wether or not the instructions of the booklet will remain the same or provide each step for the players success. If you lose a piece because of politics or because of emotion, you risk the integrality of the overall structure.
Looking at the struggles of the Mexican National Team, its easy to notice that the instruction booklet has not aligned with the pieces for sometime now. And the reasons are not yet clear. There is a lot of speculation, but I don’t think we will ever understand the scope of the matter.
In my view, it seems that each new booklet always fosters some type of resentment, individuality and cannot build an environment of common interests. Sometimes it seems that the pieces are designed for a different system. Whatever it is, the reality that I’m trying to portray is that the Mexican National Soccer team is gearing up to be in a similar situation as it was in 2013 and 2014 year. Which was a year long nightmare because of the poor form that they found themselves in during the hexagonal qualification round for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
The Mexican players are not able to showcase dominance even though on paper their skills out pace their rivals. Which is bad for Mexico, but great for those that love the sport of soccer. Meaning, it doesn’t matter how many players you have in certain leagues, if you can’t play together as 11, then individual success is all you can hope for.
