Starting over
Great football teams, and good footballers, aren’t always measured by their success, but rather by how they respond to defeat. Cape Town City, as they contemplate their loss to SuperSport United in Saturday’s MTN8 final in Durban, both as a club and as individuals, now have to prove to us that they won’t be defined by that failure.
In their brief period as a football club – formed in June last year – City have experienced nothing but joy. The rise has been nothing short of meteoric.
A third-place finish in their debut season in the PSL and crowned Telkom Knockout champions, together with their dominance in the Cape derby, have rocketed the new team into the imagination of the public. On Saturday, despite SuperSport playing with 10 men for the last 40 minutes of an energy-sapping encounter, City were just unable to find a way through. And, for the first time, the Capetonians, so used to the dizzy heights of success, experienced the pain of defeat.
As much as we would have liked City to win, we also have to admit that, perhaps, the heart-breaking defeat was just the universe’s way of reminding the Cape side that life, like sport, is not an easy, smooth-sailing vessel. It has its ups and downs – and, in the same way the flat, tranquil seas are joyfully negotiated, so, too, the rocky waves have to be expected and accepted.
Everyone, City too, has to learn how to lose. There is honour and dignity in that. Every defeat is a chance to learn; in every failure, there is an opportunity to bank the experience, and then, having taken the lessons, to withdraw it at a later occasion.
For City, there is no better example of bouncing back from adversity than their head coach, Benni McCarthy. As a player, the former Bafana Bafana striker was often put down, trampled on and ridiculed. There was even the time at West Ham when he was dismissed as an over-weight, over-rated charlatan. But always, whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, McCarthy would reinvent himself and rattle back to put one over his critics.
One defeat in a cup final is but a blip on the radar in the bigger scheme of football. Now, as a coach, McCarthy needs to instil some of his strength of character in his players – and remind them that failure is but an opportunity to begin again.