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The Importance Of Having A Selfish Player In The Team

Are they selfish? 

 

Not every football club in the world is instructed to play like Barcelona. Barcelona are one of very few clubs where every single player is on the same wavelength with one another and the style of play they display is almost telepathic at times. With the world’s greatest player amongst their ranks, you would be able to find it in yourself to forgive, Lionel Messi, for spending slightly more time in possession than his ‘less’ talented team mates. However, this isn’t the case but although he steals the headlines with his goal scoring capabilities, you wouldn’t label him as a selfish player.

But some teams across the world are extremely successful because they do boast one if not more selfish players in their side. A lot of people would associate the term selfish in football as someone who dwells on the ball and is unwilling to part with it for greed or personal glory. This is somewhat a bad reflection of the term as a lot of teams demonstrate.

There is no question that Luis Suarez at Liverpool FC in the English Barclays Premiership is a selfish player but no one can deny that he single handily wins games for Liverpool. At this day and age and the rate of what world class players go for, £22 million for Luis Suarez from Ajax was a snip. This is a man who has just reached 50 goals in all competitions for Liverpool in just 2 seasons and a major chunk of the goals arrived because he had the ability to create and score goals on his own, not because he was selfish. He is a good example of how important it can be to have a selfish player in the team and not only for club but for country as well. In the quarter finals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, he denied Ghana a certain winner which looked to send Uruguay out of the world biggest tournament but he deliberately handled the shot to prevent the goal. Having known that he would be immediately sent off and miss the semi-finals should his team progress.

Having a selfish player can also help relieve the pressure off a team in vital moments of a match. When you’re defending for your lives in the dying minutes of a game, holding onto a slender lead, there is nothing more beneficial than having someone in your team who boasts the ability to hold onto the ball individually and retain possession of the ball. His team mates would be praising the player for relieving some of the pressure and helping his team secure the win.

Another example of a selfish player in football that is vitally instrumental for his team is Cristiano Ronaldo. There is no doubt that he holds onto the ball at times when his team mates are in a better position but more times than not, he will produce a moment of magic that his team are eventually grateful for.

Some players are more naturally gifted at doing certain things in life, whether it’s on or off the football field. For Cristiano Ronaldo, he is the best at going past opposition defenders and scoring goals for his side. He knows that he has more ability than his team mates to create an opportunity so he will take it upon himself to make it happen for the better of the team, not just for personal glory.

He often shoots from distance and all sorts of angles on a football pitch, not because he dislikes his team mates or because he doesn’t want to see them succeed, but because he has such confidence in his ability to shoot from range. More often than not his actions on the pitch help Real Madrid win as the Portuguese star has contributed 146 goals in 135 league matches for Madrid and 35 goals in 40 European fixtures. So he is a perfect example of having a selfish player  in the team as it helps Real Madrid win matches which is what every club in football sets out to achieve.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Suarez are just a couple of examples of how their selfish actions on the pitch help their team. There are many others such as Arjen Robben at Bayern Munich and Zlatan Ibrahimovic at PSG who are valued at their clubs respectively despite coming across as selfish.