Final minute of the match between Norway and England. Norway is chasing the equalizer to keep dreaming.
Alexander Sørloth receives the ball with space to advance toward the goal.
Haaland appears completely alone to his right. For an instant, the pass seems the clearest option, since Haaland is in a position many read as a clear goalscoring chance.
Sørloth decides to finish the play himself, shoots and the ball doesn’t go in. A few seconds later, the referee blows the final whistle and Norway is knocked out.
The play goes around social media within minutes, and not because of the miss. The conversation revolves around another question.
Why didn’t he pass the ball?
Some people were convinced he’d wanted to settle the play on his own.
Others argued that the pass was no longer possible and that the decision made sense in an action that lasted barely a few seconds.
It’s hard to know what really went through the player’s mind.
What we do know is that the play opened a debate that goes far beyond football.
A debate about how we make decisions when individual success and collective success seem to compete with each other.
The play lasted barely a few seconds. It’s hard to think that a decision like that really begins when a player receives the ball.
What happens in a moment of maximum pressure is usually the reflection of many other things that happened before. Trust between teammates, the way a team understands success or the place each person occupies within the group aren’t built during a match. They’re built much earlier.
Psychology has spent decades studying how shared identity transforms the way people relate and make decisions. When someone stops feeling merely like an individual and starts feeling like part of a group, the way they interpret what happens around them also changes.
That’s why it’s so hard to build a true team mindset. It doesn’t depend solely on talent, or on goals, or even on motivation. It depends on getting people to genuinely feel that the group’s success is also their own success.
Some decisions that seem improvised actually begin long before the ball starts rolling.
Just as a team doesn’t win a World Cup with a single play, a leader isn’t built from a single lesson either. It’s the sum of all of them that ends up making the difference.
That was precisely the idea behind Road to 2026: Leadership to win as a team, a comprehensive program inspired by the lessons the football World Cup leaves.
Through seven workshops we work on the challenges that most shape leadership within organizations today: managing talent, adapting to change, strengthening communication, making better decisions under pressure, building high-performance teams, developing people’s potential and improving analytical capacity.
→ If you’re interested in learning more about Road to 2026 and discovering how we bring these seven lessons to the development of leaders and teams within organizations, we’ll be glad to tell you about it.
— Berta
