Failure: a buzzword or good word used in sports?

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In football, teams like Real Madrid or PSG, or coach Pep Guardiola, have been the target of the word "failure", which often turns out to be relative

The word "failure" is used more and more frequently and lightly since it tends to qualify who does not end first or who does not win a cup. But this expression can be relative, since some overlook the trajectory of a player, athlete, team or coach and take as a reference the last game or season to give this qualification.

Leer en español: Fracaso: ¿una palabra de moda o bien utilizada en los deportes?

The reason for this overrated use of the word, may be due to journalistic strategies to attract public with extremist terms such as "failure" or "success", according to a report published by the BBC.

In the Futbol Moderno portal, they make a statement about the failure in football. The word "unsuccessful" is said to those who do not finish first (despite being only one who does it) and therefore, if it is consistent with said definition, the "professional sport would be full of failures". In this sense, any football team that does not win the UEFA Champions League, for example, would be a failure. For example, referring to Pep Guardiola along with Manchester City for losing to Tottenham in the quarterfinals.

Pep Guardiola Case

Last April 17, the second leg of the UCL was played, where Tottenham secured their place in the semifinals, and many of the holders of the sports portals focused on "a new failure for Guardiola", after being left out of the competition for the third time in a row with City and not be able to raise the cup. According to Modern Football, Pep said he was not with City to get the cup: "I know what people say, but I did not come here to win the Champions League. I have come for the team to play as it has been doing for the last 20 months. "

After that comment came many criticisms, because to be considered one of the best coaches in the world, have invested 600 million euros in signings and their titles and career along with FC Barcelona, it is expected that their goal is to win the Champions League. In addition, the term "failure" has intensified because, against Bayern Munich, Guardiola's team was defeated three times in the semifinals, so they claim that Guardiola without Messi can't win this type of competition, according to El País.

Read also: PSG: the champion of European failures

Real Madrid Case

Others who have taken the title of "Failure" are those of Real Madrid. This, because after being champion four times in the last five years of the Champions League, in this edition were left out after being defeated by Ajax in the last 16. Plus, they were also eliminated from the Copa del Rey and the League Spanish.

The possible causes of their bad season? One of them is that the star player, Cristiano Ronaldo, was signed by Juventus and therefore, the team lost its effectiveness when winning the cup. Another reason, is due to the activation of the VAR because when applying this season this technology, Madrid has not managed to win anything, says El País.

Other cases

The PSG is a team that has also been classified as unsuccessful because despite the immense investment in the club (1,149.1 million euros) and having the powerful trident Cavani-Neymar-Mbappé, according to information from the Marca website, have been unable to conquer Europe. The reasons that are stated are multiple: injuries in the players, lack of a goalkeeper to respond, lack of teams of more level in local competitions and imbalance between the back and front of the midfield are some of them.

Cristiano was signed by Juventus to try to finally get the cup, because they trusted that the four-time UCL champion was going to be the key card to be crowned champions, according to the newspaper La Nación of Argentina. However, after being eliminated by Ajax the press did not skimp on calling it a failure, despite the fact that in the return game of the round of 16 it made a spectacular hat-trick.

As you can see, the word failure, despite being strong, is used in a very versatile way, as a qualifier to evaluate the performance or results of players, teams or technicians in the almost immediate past. It turns out to be a relative term and there are no defined parameters to determine concretely what to call failure.

LatinAmerican Post | Daniela Escalante

Translated from "Fracaso: ¿una palabra de moda o bien utilizada en los deportes?"