headtopics
Norways Philosophy of Sports Is Very Different From Americas.
Only One of Them Is Still in the World Cup.
Were fundamentally misunderstanding the point of sports.
Erling Haaland is having the time of his life in the World Cup.
The Norway national team striker scored two goals to send soccer royalty Brazil home.
After the game, hes chuckling to himself, telling reporters that eventhat game.
Haaland has spent most of this World Cup looking like two completely different people.
On the field, he is still the Striking Viking, a terrifying 6-foot-4 goal machine who runs at defenders like a marauding berserker.
Off the pitch, hesThe internet has, predictably, fallen in love.But there may be more going on here than the discovery that Haaland is extremely funny.
Norway has become one of the most surprising stories of the World Cupqualifying for the first time in nearly 30 years, then making it to the semifinals.
But to Brad Stulberg, a performance coach and professor at the University of Michigan and the author of the book, Haaland offers a useful rebuke to the idea that greatness has to hurt.I spoke with Stulberg about what Haalands memes tell us about Norwegian athletic success, why Americans are so suspicious of fun in sports, and whether any of this would matter if Norway werent winning.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.fun at the World Cup.
Hes being extremely silly, making memes nonstop, posting hilarious selfies to Snapchat.
And then hell go on to knock out Brazil, scoring 2.What do you think explains that?after games with a huge smile on his face.
Its clear: The dude is having so much fun out there doing something that youd think an 8- or 9-U soccer team would do.
Imagine Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the middle of the NBA playoffsnot after winning it all, mind you, just after winning a playoff gamegoing to half-court and doing a celebration.
Theyre not doing that.Theyre all business.
Theyre going back to the locker room.
The Michael Jordan thing is: Youve got to suffer for greatness, everything needs to be serious, you always need to be angry.
, but at the same time, Haaland is out there being innocent and joyful, putting on the Viking helmet and doing an interview.Hes just having a blast.
That combination has been really neat to watch.
My wife started following him on Snapchat.
She was really tickled when he answered a fan asking if he was a boy or a girl with My dad is a boy and my mom is a girl.I am a mix.
Xoxo I recently saw a randomNorway dominates the Winter Olympics, and its remarkable, because its such a small country compared to a place like America.
Everybody always says, Well, its the Winter Olympics, and its always winter in Norway or Nobody cares about those sports.
But they also have one of the worlds best triathletes, Kristian Blummenfelt.Their mens beach volleyball program is a perennial favorite to win.
They have some of the best Tour de France riders.
And now theyve put together this incredible soccer program.
It all flies in the face of those typical retorts.There are a couple of things going on.
The first is undeniable: Norway is an extremely rich country, and it invests heavily in sports and its talent-development pipeline.
Whats interesting, though, is that its youth sports programs dont take the shape of this crazy Americanized system where it gets professionalized really early.
We have rankings, A teams and travel teams, and kids specialize when theyre 7 years old.Norways sporting culture is entirely different.
They dont post scores or standings for young kids.
They give participation trophies.
And its such a joke that people think that turns you into a snowflake, because theyre world-beaters.The whole philosophy is.
Thats the actual phrase.
In the U.S., if an 8-year-olds coach sees that youve got a good pitch or a good jump shot, theyre like: You should be playing this sport year-round.
In Norway, kids play multiple sports before they specialize.The other thing is access.
In the U.S., a lot of kids get priced out of sports.
Norway invests heavily so more kids can play.
When you have a country of fewer than 6 million people, you cant afford to lose kids because they had a bad experience at age 8.You dont know if that 8-year-old is going to turn into Erling Haaland at 15, 16, 17.
You have to keep the pipeline as robust as possible.
It makes me wonder how different the experience is for the players on the other sideIm thinking about Vinicius Junior, Raphinha, Hendrick.
These guys are under enormous pressure because of what Brazil represents in the sport globally; the expectation is that they ought to waltz into the final.Do you see a difference there? I think its hard to know whether its pressure or just a different response to pressure.
My sense is that Norway feels a lot of pressure too.
Maybe the expectation wasnt that they were going to win.But once youre this deep into the tournament and the entire world is watching you, of course you feel pressure.
, the response to pressure can be to go narrow and become even more obsessed.
Someone like Haaland grew up in a culture where its all about the joy of sport.
He feels the pressure, but theres some version of:.The ability to have fun is part of that release valve.
Thats obviously easier to say after you get the win.
Who knows what that press conference looks like if the game goes the other way? But I think there are enough data points throughout the tournament to believe that the sentiment behind it is real.Because you think of these elite athletes as sleeping in a freakingTheres this misconception, especially on the internetin the grind-slop, alpha-bro hustle culture, whatever you want to call it; in my book, I call it pseudo-excellencethat you have to suffer for greatness.
You have to make all these sacrifices.
And if youre having fun, youre doing it wrong.
Its the: Be hard.You have to be angry and resentful and have a chip on your shoulder.
Theres a time and a place for that.
I just think its one small tool in the tool kit.
Haaland is a great example of someone who is clearly a fierce competitor and very intense on the pitch, and hes having fun at the same time.These things get pitted against each other.
Its like: Either were going to hold hands and sing and not care about winning, or were going to be so cutthroat that we literally want to kill our opponent.
In a lot of the best performers, its not.
They can be killers on the pitch or the court while, at the same time, having fun.Steph Curry isWhen the book first came out, people would ask me: Why is there a chapter on joy in a book about excellence? That was confusing to people.
I think what Haaland is doing makes it less confusing.
The pendulum has swung so hard, especially in this hypermasculine online world, toward being resentful and angry and killing and all that.And its just not how performance works.
The No.
1 thing people say to me is: What about Michael Jordan? That guy was a killer.
He was angry.He literally invented enemies to compete against in his head.
My response is twofold.
One, most people arent wired like Michael Jordan.
And for every Michael Jordan, theres a Steph Curry.But the more interesting thing is that Jordan didnt win a championship until Phil Jackson came along, and he won all of his championships under Phil Jackson.
And what is Phil Jackson known for? Hes the zen, compassion, joy coach, right? Now, Im not trying to take away any of Jordans greatness.But I do think he might have self-destructed without Jackson as a balancing force.
So even when you look at the strongest counterexamples, you still see this undercurrent: Fierce intensity has to be balanced with some lightness and some joy.
Otherwise, it just eats itself.
It becomes too much.And in my own life, I think I used to undervalue having fun.
Now, if I stop having fun for too long, thats a cue that I need to investigate my approach, because somethings wrong.
That doesnt mean every day is going to be fun.
Youre a writer.Writing sucks.
Its hard.
Its not always fun.
But the totality of it should be joyful.I was thinking about that while reading the Supreme Courts recent decision involving transgender athletes.
Theres a passage in which the majority asks, What is the harm in allowing an additional athlete to compete in womens or girls sports? Then it says that sentiment misunderstands the nature and reality of sports.
The opinion describes sports as highly competitive and generally zero-sum.What do you make of that conception of what sports fundamentally are? The idea that a 10U rec soccer league is all about winning and nothing else, and that thats the spirit of sportto me, thats a misunderstanding of the spirit of sport.
Ive got kids, and Im a volunteer coach in my community.
Everything we do is based around having fun, being a good teammate, and building character.Thats the point of youth sports.
Nobody cares if you win an 8U trophy.
What matters is that youre being a role model and hoping that these kids develop some good life skills.
I think thats the beauty of sport right now, especially at a time when so much of life is automated and moving online.There arent that many venues where you can succeed or fail, and its very concrete.
Theres generally a direct correlation between the effort you put in and what you get out.
Sport is such a great container for building self-confidence, for teaching people how to lose, for teaching people how to win.
To me, that ought to be the role of sport at all levels.But certainly in youth sports, the point isnt to win.
Its to develop athletes and develop people.
Im going to change the way I talk to my kids about sports.
I think Ive been responding to how excited they get about points.Mine are a little older.
Heres how I do it.
I dont pretend that winning doesnt matter, because I think thats dumb.
Competitive kids are going to be like: Dad, thats dumb.Winning matters.
Why else do we keep score? So I say: Winning matters.
Winning is part of the game.Were trying to win.
And you know how youre going to have the best chance of winning? By having fun.
If youre not having fun, I can almost guarantee that youre not going to win over the long haul.
Then I tell them that there are things we cant control.
We cant control the points, because we dont know how the other team is going to play.
We dont know what the weather is going to be like.
All we can control are these two things: Whats our effortare we trying hard?And are we appreciating the moment and having fun? If we do those things, then weve already kind of won the internal game.
And if you play sports for long enoughwhich is the goal, because youre having funyoure going to lose a lot and youre going to win a lot.
You can be sad when you lose.You have to enjoy the wins.
But thats why you need to find joy in the game itself.
You just keep coming back.
My son used to get so upset playing basketball when he was 5.One time I asked him: Theo, if you scored every time and beat me every time, would it be fun? And hes like: No, itd be boring.
And Im like: Yeah.
So you kind of need to lose sometimes.Otherwise its not fun.
, right? Yes, you need to win, obviously.
We wouldnt be talking about a lot of these teams if they didnt get out of group play.And is inspiring people the same thing as actually holding up the trophy? Of course not.
I think thats where everything goes to extremes.
Theres one extreme where its:.Its like, no, thats actually not true.
But the other extreme,Become a member.