When educational speaker Dan Haesler addressed our Expo events in Dubbo and Wagga this year, he spoke about the importance of teaching our kids that losing is OK. Dan argued that, in the pursuit of success, it’s important to teach children to fail so that they can grow into well-balanced adults.
We saw an example of learning from losing at the highest level in sport this week. Brazil, the host nation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, lost 7-1 to Germany in a humiliating defeat on home soil on Wednesday.
Semi-finals are renowned as being tight and tense affairs, but one SBS commentator described the match as “the worst day in Brazil’s World Cup history”. The stats speak for themselves – Brazil was won the World Cup five times and had not lost a competitive international game on home soil since 1975.
The Sydney Morning Herald described it as “… not just a humiliation, a beating, a complete and utter demolition job. It was the ritual disembowelling of a team, the deconstruction not just of a squad of footballers, but of a nation’s hopes and dreams.”
Captain on the day for Brazil was David Luiz, whose post-match interview on SBS spoke volumes for how crushing the defeat was. Luiz could barely speak as he held back tears. He and his team knew they had let down an entire nation.
He admitted that his team had made some mistakes. But he ended the interview by saying “we won’t give up” – and that’s the lesson our children need to take from this defeat. As young soccer players around the world continue to enjoy the game and idolise their heroes, let’s teach them that losing isn’t the end and that they need to pick themselves up and try again.