Rapidly changing worldwide, economic, financial, social, and cultural conditions enforce the development of human identity. People change their occupations and jobs, leave their dwellings and move to other residences, and completely modify their behavioral patterns and customary lifestyles. Changes occur in a wide range of populations involving all individuals, irrespective of their gender, age, and social and national background. Human development and social outcomes are influenced by government policies, demographic changes, economical factors, relationships with others, engagement in various activities, and personal experiences, decisions, choices, achievements, and failures.
Robert S., while being a newcomer in a local soccer team, perceived this activity as an excellent opportunity to become one of the most outstanding football players. He has dreamt of a career of a soccer player since his early childhood. Growing up extremely devoted to soccer, he adored the top football players and perceived them as models of extraordinary qualities and exceptional skills. He often imagined that he impetuously crossed the field scoring a victorious goal, autographed posters with his valiant image, and read sports reviews of his achievements written by prestigious sportswriters and commentators. Robert’s passion for football predetermined his engagement in soccer.
However, his sports career appeared to be full of unexpected events and experiences. A football team or any sports organization involved in the sports industry is a special community living in accordance with its own laws and principles, with specific customs and rituals, activity conditions, etc., mysterious and inaccessible to the understanding of people unrelated to sports. Soccer, as well as other kinds of sports, is a very complicated and inconsistent phenomenon. Today, soccer is characterized by the complexity of various game situations, high emotionality, increasing demand for well developed operative thinking, coordination of movements and line-ups, and result-oriented collaboration of all team players.
He was an ordinary substitute instead of a desirable position of a captain. His fitness level and attitude to others dramatically differed from those of the rest of the team. He had to accept his role in the team. Being significantly influenced by numerous challenges facing him, he reevaluated his views of a successful career of a soccer player.The drive for success in football leads soccer players, as well as their coaches, to search for the best possible means of improving competitive performance. At the beginning of his career a soccer player “earns his name”, creates his image, and works for his own future. After a player has shown some outstanding and serious results, his image starts to work for him, allowing him to conclude more beneficial contracts or earn money while being involved in advertizing. Profitability of contracts with athletes is influenced by levels of their skills, personal characteristics, achievements, and results. Therefore, he realized that his future achievements and glorious career are closely connected with the significance of his contribution to football, intense training, and relevant modifications of his behavior.
However, although achievements in sports are frequently associated with athletes’ natural abilities and talents, their results are interrelated with discipline and docility. Training is a sustained, multifaceted, and complicated process due to increasing requirements for modern athletes’ abilities. A disciplined soccer player should follow his coach’s advice and recommendations concerning behavior, membership in a team, health conditions, harmful substances abuse, regimes, and diet restrictions in order to achieve outstanding results. Roughness, rudeness, disrespect for the contender and spectators, the use of obscene expressions cannot be perceived as an advantage in any civilized society. Firstly, all the above-stated qualities are incompatible with humanistic ideals and functions of modern sports. Secondly, athletes who are constantly in the center of attention of the mass media have no moral rights to behave in a similar way as ordinary children, women, and people of senior age observe their sports activity. Thirdly, each sportsman in any international competition represents his country, and the whole world community has the possibility to judge a level of civilization in the given country by an athlete’s deeds and actions. Unfortunately, there are many examples of unworthy behavior in the sports arena. Robert had to follow his coaches’ instructions though he considered himself to be completely aware of soccer tactics.
Serious violations of rules by the soccer players, insubordination to coaches and referees, aggressive behavior, and misconduct were caused by their obsessive “desire to win at any cost”, “achievement motivation”, and specific personal characteristics. Ambitions are often the main guiding motif of athletes’ behavior. “Athletes whose primary focus is to win justify these kinds of actions by reference to the competitive context, or motivational climate”. Moreover, misconduct can occur due to athletes’ carelessness, haste, competitiveness, and fervor and lead to such negative consequences as traumas and injuries. Methods of motivation and communication with soccer players, applied by the coaches while training, assured athletes’ safety and health.
A wide range of interpersonal conflicts arose in the team due to athletes’ competitiveness. In order to manage athletes’ behavior, a coach should possess advanced knowledge of pedagogy and psychology, be able to communicate his instructions, admonitions, and ideas to young athletes, as well as their parents. Robert’s coaches paid special attention to players’ steady performance of certain instructions, requirements, and rules of competitions and training. All cases of misconduct were discussed with athletes. Conflicts among soccer players were often aggravated and sharpened due to specific emotional characteristics of athletes. However, following the principles of collaboration and partnership, coaches and administrators of the team utilized the most effective strategy such as a combination of cooperative problem solving and compromising tactics. They pursued a flexible and rational approach to personnel and athletes, provided optimal solutions to any issue and successfully manipulated financial, natural, human, and technological resources of the team.
In addition, they were able to specify and allocate a range of problems which needed to be discussed before training, carefully prepared arguments approving their position, estimated their efficiency, developed negotiating strategy and tactics, and predicted opponents’ behavior. Being unsolved, contradictions could lead to collaborative play stoppages, conflict escalations, and thus, make a negative impact on athletes and their prospects. All team players recognized the necessity of cooperative decision making and benefits from their mutually coordinated actions.
Actions of soccer players are characterized by their consecutive specificity. The simultaneous performance of such sports activities during a football match as the selection of the most beneficial position, preparation for attacks, deceptive movements, derivations, support of partners, etc. is directed to the maintenance of the efficient play of the whole team. Results of any match are inextricably linked with coordinated interactions among all team members. The negligence or inattentive performance of separate game elements complicates and, occasionally, absolutely blocks a way to success. Various tactical line-ups, goal kicks, passes, crosses, defence tactics, etc. are successful under conditions of concerted actions of soccer players; therefore, their sports activities on the field can be defined as teamwork. Victorious games are impossible without team spirit, mutual understanding, support, and cooperative actions. These are the reasons why soccer significantly influences the development of collaboration among the team players.
Differentiating in their personal characteristics, athletes appreciate different sides of sports. Although doing sport, a person primarily improves and strengthens his organism, body, muscles, and abilities to operate movements and impelled actions. In the course of sports activities, human morals and qualities significantly modify due to high requirements for contemporary athletes. Doing sports, athletes “develop a reflexive conception of self and their position in the community. Through the performance of a specific position, the player must address his or her actions to the expectations of the generalized team”.
It is impossible to develop personal skills without unprejudiced self-evaluation and specification of job requirements. Self-evaluation includes a thorough assessment of personal abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Specification of requirements consists in determining particular responsibilities, identifying criteria of training, and estimating demands for the most effective skills and personal attributes. Therefore, a person should evaluate his strengths and weaknesses impartially, determine strategic objectives, and outline a roadmap. The recognition of his weaknesses influenced the development of Robert’s identity.
The necessary abilities of a contemporary soccer player, which can provide his team with victorious matches, are numerous. They include such characteristic features as quick adaptation to changing conditions and terms, psychical stability, creativity, ability to operate according to a plan set beforehand, readiness for unexpected situations, flexibility in communication with partners, respect for coaches and other soccer players, and collaboration-oriented behavior. These skills and abilities are crucial to all careers and jobs due to the unprecedented and tumultuous changes in managerial practices and the increasing demand for those professionals who can efficiently collaborate with their associates contributing to the profitability of their organization. In addition, according to surveys and focus groups, the effectiveness of collaborative efforts in decision making and job performance has been cited as an important factor in employees’ satisfaction with their jobs.
In conclusion, having acquired these abilities, this person has become able to benefit from his readiness for collaborative work in diverse environments. Collaboration involves different practices. Collaboration is generally associated with aligned business processes and practices, yielded profits, joint efforts, clearly stated agreements among partners, and their common objectives, tasks, and strategies. Implementation of effective collaborative initiatives mitigates potential risks, leverages business performance, and ensures long-term relationships between parties.