Are You Playing to Win - Or Not Lose?

The Rose Bowl stadium was a caldron of tension in the closing moments of the 1994 football World Cup final.

Under the sapping heat and through two grinding hours of regulation and extra time, Italy and Brazil had fought each other to a stalemate.

To split the teams and crown a new World Cup champion, it all now rested on the penalty shootout and the individual bravery of a few chosen players.

In the 64 year history of the World Cup this would be the first one to be decided by penalties.

Just after 3pm, in front of a crowd of 94,000 fans, 700 million people worldwide, and with the hopes of the whole Italian nation on his shoulders, Roberto Baggio stepped up to the penalty spot.

If he scored, Italy had a chance to win, but if he failed Brazil would win.

Italy couldn't have hoped for a better player for this moment of intense pressure.

Baggio who was affectionately known as "Il Divin Codino" (The Divine Ponytail), was the current holder of the Ballon d’Or - the award for the best player in the world.

He had excelled during the tournament, scoring the winning 88th-minute goal in the quarter-final against Spain and scoring twice in the semi-final defeat of Bulgaria.

Stefano Bozzi of BBC Sport said, "At the USA 94 World Cup, [Baggio] single-handedly hauled Italy to the final."

He was also one of the greatest penalty kick specialists in Italian football history, scoring 85% of his career penalties (and he still hold the record of 108 penalty goals).

He also had the experience of scoring in another penalty shootout in the last World Cup.

He carefully placed the ball down and paced out his run up.

“When I went up to the spot I was pretty lucid,” he recalled in his autobiography. “I knew [Taffarel] always dived so I decided to shoot for the middle, about halfway up, so he couldn't get it with his feet. ^[1]

The whistle blew and he started his run up.

“It was an intelligent decision because Taffarel did go to his left, and he would never have got to the shot I planned.”

And then he did something he had never done before or since - he smashed the ball far over the net.

The world was stunned.

While the Brazilian players celebrated wildly around him, Baggio stood defeated and alone on the penalty spot, with his head down for 8 minutes.

It was a moment that became known as “the man who died standing."

"If I had had a knife at that moment, I would have stabbed myself. If I had had a gun, I would have shot myself. At that moment, I wanted to die."

The science of penalties

Penalty shootouts are the most intensive and individual moments for football players.

Researchers assessed all of the penalty shootouts across the major competitions of the World Cup, the European Championships, and the UEFA Champions League. ^[2]

There were 36 shootouts and 359 kicks between 1972 and 2006.

They measured the consequences of the shot.

If scoring the penalty would instantly lead to victory it was a positive opportunity, and if missing immediately leads to a loss (like Baggio’s) it’s a negative situation (all the other shots were considered neutral).

They also measured the behaviour of the footballers as they prepared to take the shot, looking for signs of avoidance.

They watched to see if the players would face away from the goal and goalkeeper, and also timed the time between the referee's whistle and the player starting their run up, because the shorter the time the more the player was trying to get it “over with”.

In the positive situations the players would score 92% of the time, but in the negative situations it was just 61.8%.

And players facing a negative situation were 2.9x more likely to display avoidance behaviour.

In the previous World Cup, Baggio’s penalty shootout goal was a ‘neutral shot’ , he was the second person to take one in the Italian team.

But this time it was different.

Now he faced the most severe negative situation.

And for this unique situation, he suddenly behaved very differently to the other penalties he had taken.

He placed the ball down carefully and retreated ten steps while his eyes flitted between the ball and the referee.

The whistle blew and just over a second later he started his run up.

The average start time for the positive and more successful shots was 2.01 seconds.

Motivational focus

In 1997, The Columbia University professor E. Tory Higgins defined two distinct ways that people approach goals. ^[3]

They can focus on achieving gains, which he called ‘Promotion’ mindset.

Or they can focus on avoiding losses and problems, through a ‘Prevention’ mindset.

People with a Promotion focus are motivated by growth and possibilities.

They are anchored by purpose and aspiration.

This mindset encourages experimentation and reframes failure as feedback.

People with a Prevention focus are motivated by avoiding mistakes.

They are anchored by responsibility and duty.

This mindset can create fear of mistakes, which can reduce team performance by shutting down innovation.

“The promotion-focused are engaged by inspirational role models, the prevention-focused by cautionary tales.” - Heidi Grant and E. Tory Higgins ^[4]

In the game of football the forwards must have a Promotion mindset.

They need to constantly embrace risk in the search for creative ways to attack the goal.

At the other end of the pitch you have the defenders, who must have a Prevention mindset.

They need to be focused on anticipating problems and cutting risks.

Place players who naturally operate with these differing mindsets in a penalty shootout and you can see the difference. ^[5]

Forwards with their Promotion focus are 1.76x more likely to score than defenders when you compare the odds ratio.

As an exceptionally talented forward Baggio naturally had a Promotional mindset, but for one brief moment he flipped.

Instead of imagining scoring a goal, he imagined what would happen if he didn’t.

Instead of believing Italy would win the World Cup he was suddenly weighed down by the responsibility on his shoulders.

If you are selling, being creative, running a startup, leading innovation, or need to score a crucial penalty - you have to think with a Promotion focus.

If you are accounting, auditing, evading capture, or defending a goal - you have to think with a Prevention mindset.

For certain things, like taking a penalty, you must always be in a Promotion mindset.

But for a lot of the time you have to be a midfielder, constantly working between the two mindsets, adapting rapidly to where you are in the game.

You have to make sure you are in the right mindset when it matters.

So are you playing to win - or not lose?

"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude." – Zig Ziglar.

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[1] Baggio, R., "Una porta nel cielo. Un'autobiografia", Limina (2001)

[2] Jordet, G., Hartman, E., “Avoidance Motivation and Choking under Pressure in Soccer Penalty Shootouts”, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (2008)

[3] Higgins, E. T., Shah, J., Friedman, R., "Emotional responses to goal attainment: Strength of regulatory focus as moderator", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1997)

[4] Grant, H., Higgins, E. T., “Do You Play to Win—or to Not Lose?”, Harvard Business Review (2013) [I only found this article late in the writing of this post, but such a lovely headline I'm now fixated on it]

[5] Jordet, G., Hartman, E., “Kicks from the Penalty Mark in Soccer: The Roles of Stress, Skill, and Fatigue for Kick Outcomes”, Journal of Sports Sciences (2007)