Strategic Penalty Kicks

I love soccer! I played it growing up on my tiny island home of St. Vincent. It’s a sport both males and females enjoyed and can play very well. I was on my High School soccer team (St. Vincent’s Boys Grammar School) and later when I joined the U.S Navy, I played for my Ship’s team (USS Frank Cable) in Guam, and Japan as well as for the base team at Naval Air Station Sigonella (NASSIG) in Sicily, Italy.

If you’re a soccer fan, watch the FIFA World Cup, or just interested in the sport, don’t only watch it for entertainment, watch it for life and career secrets. You can learn a lot from playing soccer or watching strategic penalty kicks. To win the game, you don’t necessarily have to be the strongest or the fastest. But, you do have to be STRATEGIC.

For example, though we won games as a team, especially in Japan and Guam, I remember how badly we lost to a bunch of older guys in a scrimmage match in Sicily. These “grandpas” were about 40-50 years old and of course, our Navy guys were in the late teens and early twenties. However, in this match, they beat us double digits to zero (nil)!

Can you imagine that? I’m even ashamed to say the exact number.

In soccer, it’s seldom that either team score double digits but oh did we get a whooping that day! Why? Not because the 40-50 year olds were strong and fast, but they had strategy. Pure Strategy!

They ran circles around us young bucks because they learned and knew the inside secrets of the game. While we ran, huffed, and puffed trying to get the ball from them, they passed the ball to each other, took long distance shots, did not run fancy plays, and played good defense.