Teams need leaders for sustained success

A top European football club, with the riches of the modern game at their disposal, may buy all the talent it can but without a leader, whether it is on the pitch or off it, it has little chance of success.

It is not a coincidence that team sports like football, cricket and rugby were invented in Great Britain and that the sun never set on the British Empire once up a time. While there may have been sociological studies as to why these team sports as well as other individual ones like golf and tennis started and grew there, the role of the sport to build character in individuals cannot be doubted. The attritional battle between bat and ball in Test cricket, the pure form of the game, the batsman playing for the team rather than individual glory, the harmony of the scrum in rugby are examples of character building and teamwork as a team.