Stay in the game

In a recent interview Mo Salah shared some advice he received from the ex-Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger that has stuck with him.

Salah asked him “What’s the difference between a good player and a really, really good player?”

Wenger responded with “I think the very, very good player is always focused on the game, even if he doesn’t have the momentum. He stays in the game until the last minute or until the whistle.”

Salah added “It’s okay to have a bad game, but the most important thing is to stay in the game and try to make a difference.

My son plays football on Sunday mornings. This weekend the team they played against had 4 attacks and scored each time. His team were losing 4-0. It would have been easy for them to let their heads go down and to give up. Instead they kept fighting and got it back to 4-3. They went on to lose 6-3 but they kept battling until the end.

In work we can have days that are full of meetings and there is little or no time to do other work. Or we can encounter all sorts of issues that can demotivate us or make us feel like we are not able to achieve what we want.

Sometimes in life we can have things go against us. No matter what we do or how hard we try, things conspire to not go our way. In some situations the best option maybe to walk away or change course however in some cases it is just a case of sticking with it and looking for ways to “stay in the game and try to make a difference.”

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Mohamed Salah still lives by the advice Arsene Wenger gave him at Liverpool training ground