Last week Tunisia lost 5-1.<\/p>\n
Their response was immediate.<\/p>\n
The manager was shown the door.<\/p>\n
A new man was appointed.<\/p>\n
Fresh ideas were promised.<\/p>\n
Optimism returned.<\/p>\n
Then yesterday Tunisia lost 4-0.<\/p>\n
Which raises an awkward question.<\/p>\n
Was the manager really the problem?<\/p>\n
Football has become obsessed with speed.<\/p>\n
Not on the pitch, although that seems to be happening too.<\/p>\n
I mean the speed with which we expect everything to be fixed.<\/p>\n
A team loses a few matches.<\/p>\n
Sack the manager.<\/p>\n
A striker goes three games without scoring.<\/p>\n
Drop him.<\/p>\n
A young player makes a mistake.<\/p>\n
Replace him.<\/p>\n
Nobody gets time anymore.<\/p>\n
The new Tunisia manager has had approximately six days to solve problems that may have existed for six years.<\/p>\n
That’s not a football strategy.<\/p>\n
That’s wishful thinking.<\/p>\n
It’s a bit like hiring a plumber to fix your house and firing him because the roof is still leaking while he’s parking the van.<\/p>\n
Yet football keeps doing it.<\/p>\n
Every tournament seems to produce another crisis.<\/p>\n
Another emergency meeting.<\/p>\n
Another declaration that immediate action is required.<\/p>\n
The funny thing is that football isn’t alone.<\/p>\n
Modern life seems to suffer from exactly the same condition.<\/p>\n
Nobody is willing to wait for anything.<\/p>\n
Companies reorganise departments every six months.<\/p>\n
Governments announce reviews before the previous review has finished.<\/p>\n
People buy a new gadget and complain it’s outdated by the following Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Everything has become urgent.<\/p>\n
Everything has become immediate.<\/p>\n
Everything has become a race.<\/p>\n
When I was younger, people seemed to understand that improvement took time.<\/p>\n
You planted seeds and waited for them to grow.<\/p>\n
You learned a skill and accepted you wouldn’t master it overnight.<\/p>\n
You appointed a football manager and gave him enough time to unpack his suitcase before judging him.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it worked.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it didn’t.<\/p>\n
But at least it had a chance.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, while everybody was panicking about Tunisia, something rather interesting happened elsewhere.<\/p>\n
A week after losing 7-1 to Germany, Curacao held Ecuador to a 0-0 draw.<\/p>\n
No drama.<\/p>\n
No panic.<\/p>\n
No emergency summit meetings.<\/p>\n
Just a team learning from a difficult experience and getting a little bit better.<\/p>\n
Which is usually how progress works.<\/p>\n
Slowly.<\/p>\n
One step at a time.<\/p>\n
Not every problem has an instant solution.<\/p>\n
Not every setback requires a revolution.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you simply keep going and trust the process.<\/p>\n
I realise that’s not a particularly fashionable opinion these days.<\/p>\n
Patience has become about as popular as defending.<\/p>\n
Still, I can’t help thinking we’d all be happier if we slowed down occasionally.<\/p>\n
Football certainly might.<\/p>\n
And perhaps so would the rest of us.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Comments welcome. Bonus points if you\u2019re grumpier than me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why Is Everybody Always In Such A Hurry? Last week Tunisia lost 5-1. Their response was immediate. The manager was shown the door. A new man was appointed. Fresh ideas were promised. Optimism returned. Then yesterday Tunisia lost 4-0. Which raises an awkward question. Was the manager really the problem? Football has become obsessed with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[91,112,135,79,109,136,97,134,101,102,106],"class_list":["post-1151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-grumpy-old-man","category-humour","category-soccer","category-world-cup-2026","tag-british-humour","tag-curacao","tag-football-managers","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-modern-life","tag-patience","tag-tournament-football","tag-tunisia","tag-usa-world-cup","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1154,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions\/1154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}