We are all, no doubt, very familiar with acronyms though we usually refer to them noawadays as ‘text speak’. Many years ago it was a popular thing for a teenager to send a letter to his or her loved one with the letters SWALK on the back; if we know what that stood for we may be revealing our age, not least as very few people will write letters anymore! SWALK was, of course, an acronym for Sealed With A Loving Kiss. How we treasured such a thought! Interestingly, the last word in that phrase, KISS, is also a popular acronym and piece of advice, standing for Keep It Simple, Sunshine (though it has to be admitted that most folk use a different word beginning with ‘S’ than Sunshine). Such advice should equally be treasured, especially in the sports world.
One of the world’s most skilful and exciting soccer players, Johan Cruyff, was part of the Dutch soccer team that revolutionised the game with what came to be known as Total Football. His thinking on soccer was radical and certainly worth considering. “Playing football is very simple,” he once said, “But playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.” In other words, he was exhorting us to keep it simple, sunshine. He does raise an interesting question though: why is playing simple football the hardest thing? What is so difficult about doing something simply? And why is doing the simple thing so difficult?
Part of the problem may be our ego; we love to do things, and to be seen to be doing things, that appear impressive, clever, complicated and exciting. Sportsmen only seem to be able to react when the crowd comes alive and often the crowd only comes alive when something rash or daring or individual is performed. Crowds go wild when a soccer player dribbles round other players or flicks the ball from behind his back over the opponent in front of him, so the player will do it again and probably fail next time. Yet all the time, all we need to be doing is the simple thing; we only need to do what is simple, easy, straightforward, uncomplicated, clear, accurate, effective and unambiguous.
In that regard the words of the great entrepreneur Richard Branson bear consideration: “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.” Many a soccer player makes the game look complicated! Few can make it simple. C.W. Ceran, a German journalist and author, echoed such a sentiment when he argued that, “Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple”. Indeed, it was the man who often will epitomise the concept of ‘genius’, Einstein himself, who said, “If you cannot explain something to a six year old you do not understand it yourself”. Do the simple thing; keep it simple, sunshine. One of cinema’s greatest characters, Forrest Gump, in the film of the same name, discovered this fact when he described how “Army was real easy. You just have to stand up straight, make your bed real neat, and always answer every question with ‘Yes, Drill Sergeant!’” And the Drill Sergeant described him as a genius!
Playing football (or indeed any sport) is very easy – stand up as a team, make your passes real neat and score a goal! As we saw when considering celebrations in sport, a goal is a goal is a goal. It does not need to be a brilliant overhead kick from the halfway line; such a goal still counts as much as a simple tap-in. Keep it simple, sunshine!
Often the greatest lessons we learn in sport will be carried across effectively into life. So we can take the words of the great Johan Cruyff and adapt them to say that living is very simple but living simply is the hardest thing there is. One of most difficult things to do is to make a difficult thing look simple
yet one of the most common things to see is someone making a simple thing look difficult. We would do well to keep life, work, love, sport, faith, whatever simple. That is when the sun will shine! We will be the genius if we help our youngsters realise the truth of that maxim.
Every team or indeed every player (or school) wants to have it sung about them that they are simply the best team or player (or school) but the fact is that it is not a matter of being simply the best but a matter of simply is the best. Keep it simple, sunshine; that is the best advice we can give to our youngsters, whether it is about sport or about life as a whole. Seal life with a KISS and we will be loved and treasured. Is that too difficult to understand?
