In competitive amateur league football matches, you would have witnessed certain situations where the team manager of a particular amateur team berates his players during the half time talk due to their poor performances in the first half. At times, players themselves could even blame each other for making mistakes in the game. Interestingly, when their team obtained three points despite performing terribly, the team manager and the players appeared to take an amicable approach in their post match briefing as previous remarks about the team’ poor showing in the game were ‘forgotten’.
Judging on scenarios as mentioned above, attaining positive results consistently have started to become a major concern for most amateur teams today. Deriving strong influences from their favorite professional teams in Europe, amateur football teams are embracing the practice of ‘dipping into the amateur football transfer market’ by adding new players to their team roster and offloading unhappy players who they believed to have underperformed.
While an ambitious team manager has the notion that he has strengthened his team roster by roping in quality signings from another team, this could ignite the start of more problems within the team roster gradually. The idea of bringing in quality signings may not be well received by the current players as this could make their side less cohesive subsequently. To make matters worse, some current players could show sign of unhappiness when they are replaced by their new signings based on the team manager’ desire to secure results.
On the other hand, you have a minor group of amateur teams who do not emphasize heavily on winning. With a laid-back mentality, losing is just simply ‘part and parcel of football’. These football enthusiasts pick up amateur football as a social activity to congregate with their friends and relatives. Motivated emotionally, these amateur teams are not supportive on the idea of bringing unfamiliar faces into their team roster as they strive to retain the camaraderie within their players. To them, results are a secondary concern as amateur football is seen as a good opportunity to socialize and have fun.
Are results or the ‘team’ more important in amateur football?