Watching the Football. Studying the Performance.

As we reach the semi-finals of the World Cup, I’ve realized I’ve been watching this tournament through two very different lenses.

There is the England supporter in me, experiencing all the familiar hope, tension and emotional swings that come with following your country.

Then there is the performance psychologist and consultant in me, who can’t help watching what is happening beneath the scoreline.

How does a team respond when momentum turns against it? What happens to its identity when pressure rises? Why do some teams exceed expectations while others struggle to access the talent they undoubtedly possess?

I’ve found myself watching the football but studying the performance. And a few stories have stayed with me…

Cape Verde made me think about the stories teams tell themselves.

The first team that really made me stop was Cape Verde.

Simply qualifying for their first World Cup was historic. They arrived without the depth, resources or global profile of many established footballing nations. It would have been easy to approach the tournament as though appearing on the stage was enough.

But they didn’t look like a team simply grateful to be there. They looked like a team that believed they belonged.

They competed with conviction throughout the tournament and, even against defending champions Argentina, refused to accept the narrative that they should quietly step aside. Twice they fell behind. Twice they responded. They eventually lost 3–2 after extra time, but they left having challenged assumptions about what was possible.

That stayed with me.

There is a difference between saying, “We deserve to be here,” and operating as though you genuinely believe it. That belief affects how courageously people make decisions, how they respond to setbacks and how much of their capability they can access when the surroundings feel unfamiliar or intimidating.

Organizations carry stories about themselves too.

We’re not ready for that market. We’re too small to compete for that client. We’ve never operated at that level before.

Sometimes those stories reflect reality. But sometimes they are inherited assumptions that have outlived their usefulness.

Growth asks people to enter rooms they have not occupied before. A founder pitches to major investors. A newly promoted leader joins the executive team. A challenger brand competes against an established organization.

Capability matters in those moments. But if belief doesn’t keep pace with capability, potential remains inaccessible. Cape Verde reminded me that talent creates possibility, but collective belief can expand what a team thinks it is capable of doing with it.

What story does your team currently tell itself, and is that story helping people step forward or quietly encouraging them to stay small?

The United States made me think about momentum and what happens when it stops.

Then my attention shifted to the United States. As one of the host nations, the team entered with both an extraordinary opportunity and considerable expectation. Momentum built quickly. Results created energy. Goals created belief. With every step forward, you could almost feel expectations changing around the team.

Then Belgium happened.

A 4–1 defeat brought their tournament to an abrupt end. That result doesn’t erase the progress that came before it. Nor does earlier progress remove the disappointment of how the journey ended.

Both things can be true. That is often difficult for leaders and teams to hold.

We naturally want to label an experience as either success or failure. The target was reached or missed. The strategy worked or it didn’t. The person performed or underperformed. But high-performance environments need more nuanced reflection.

What genuinely progressed? What did the setback expose? What should be retained? What does the next level now require?

Momentum is powerful. When things are going well, confidence rises and decisions can feel easier. But momentum can also disguise gaps. A setback interrupts that rhythm and gives us information that success sometimes cannot. The important part is what happens next.

Does disappointment lead to blame or dramatic overcorrection? Does the team dismiss the result as one bad day? Or can it acknowledge the hurt, examine the performance honestly and use the experience to prepare more effectively for what comes next?

Resilience is not about pretending disappointment doesn’t matter. It is the ability to process what happened accurately, recover deliberately and move forward with greater understanding.

When momentum stops in your organization, do you have the discipline to learn from the interruption, or do you simply try to recreate the feeling you had before it?

England made me think about the difference between perfection and effectiveness.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, England has taken me on the emotional journey I expected.

Following England is rarely a neutral experience. Every performance seems capable of moving the national conversation from confidence to concern and back again.

But what has interested me most is not whether every performance has looked perfect. It hasn’t. What has stood out is the ability to keep finding a way.

England has encountered different opponents, different problems and periods when games have not unfolded as they might have wanted. Against Norway in the quarter-final, they again had to remain patient, manage pressure and find a route through a close contest.

That matters because we often talk about high performance as though it should always look fluent, confident and controlled. In reality, sustained performance is not the absence of difficulty. It is the ability to remain effective within it.

Sometimes the task is to dominate. Sometimes it is to adapt. Sometimes it is to regain control after losing momentum. And sometimes it is simply to find another way forward.

That doesn’t mean lowering standards or excusing poor performance. It means understanding that effectiveness can look different depending on what the situation requires.

The same is true in organizations.

There are periods when the plan works exactly as intended. There are others when circumstances change, information remains incomplete and the route forward becomes less tidy.

Rigid teams interpret any departure from the plan as failure.

Adaptive teams stay connected to the objective while changing how they reach it.

A strong identity should provide stability, not become a cage.

How effectively can your team adapt its approach without losing sight of who it is and what it is trying to achieve?

Four teams, four different routes.

And that is what fascinates me most as we arrive at the semi-finals.

France, Spain, England and Argentina are still standing, but none has reached this point in exactly the same way.

Spain brings a clearly recognizable way of playing and the confidence to continue expressing it under pressure.

France offers depth, quality and the experience of navigating the later stages of major tournaments.

Argentina carries the belief and expectation of defending champions, alongside players who understand what these defining moments demand.

England has shown adaptability and a growing ability to solve different problems as they appear.

Different identities. Different strengths. Different routes.

Yet each has retained enough clarity to keep moving forward.

At this stage, every team has talent. Every squad includes players capable of changing a match. The margins are increasingly small. What begins to separate teams is how much of that talent remains available when the stakes are highest.

Do people trust the plan? Can they reset after mistakes? Are roles still clear when the game becomes chaotic? Do leaders create calm or transmit anxiety? Does the team become more connected to its identity – or begin to abandon it?

Identity isn’t what a team says about itself when everything is comfortable.

It is what people experience when everything is on the line.

The same applies in business. Purpose and values can sound abstract during stable periods. Their real value appears when a difficult decision is required, a target is threatened or the organization is pulled in competing directions.

When pressure rises, does your organization become more like itself or less?

Performance is revealed in the moment, but built long before it.

There is still a World Cup to be won. Over the coming days, individual moments will become part of football history.

A goal. A save. A mistake. A celebration.

Those moments will dominate the headlines. But they will not have been created in isolation.

They will have been shaped by preparation, conversations, setbacks, relationships, standards and countless ordinary decisions made long before the pressure reached its peak.

Performance isn’t built in the moment it is needed. It is simply revealed there.

When I look back on this tournament, I suspect I will remember more than the final score.

I will remember Cape Verde refusing to behave as though they didn’t belong. I will remember how quickly belief and expectation grew around the United States and how abruptly the tournament asked them a different question. I will remember England finding another way. And I will remember four very different teams arriving at the same destination by trusting their own strengths rather than trying to become somebody else.

Perhaps the biggest lesson this World Cup has offered so far isn’t really about football at all. Talent gets you into the conversation. But the environment determines how much of that talent people can access when it matters most.

If your team’s current performance is a reflection of the environment you have created, what is it telling you?