I've been watching Arsenal this season because Callum is obsessed with Arsenal, and so we watched the second leg of Arsenal vs Madrid. We watched as Thomas Partey was booked with 5 minutes of normal time remaining when Arsenal had already won the tie. We watched what Declan Rice did to him, how he shouted at him, and how he berated him for letting the team down for something that was stupid, which would keep him out of the next leg against Paris Saint-Germain.
In the end, Partey was a big, big loss against Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg; they've probably lost it now.
I watched that football metaphor and was reminded by another when Callum and I were walking down in Stuttgart to the stadium before the last Scotland Euros game, where we lost devastatingly right at the end to Hungary, 1-0 and went out of the tournament, and I had to console my son for 30 minutes all the way back to our accommodation.
We saw a scene where the Scottish culture policed itself, just like Declan Rice was policing the Arsenal culture when he was berating Thomas Partey. A guy emerged among the thousands of Scottish fans wearing a Celtic strip (Scotland fans don't wear team colours, they wear Scotland colours). There is enough sh*t in Scottish football on a week by week basis that it doesn't come into the national team, the unspoken rule in Scottish football is you don't wear team colours to a Scotland game.
What I watched was the self policing of phenomenal culture, which is the culture of the Scottish football fans. 2 or 3 guys just went to the guy and said, "No, mate, we don't wear colours here," and they stopped him until he took it off. He took his shirt off and went bare-chested, tucked it into his pocket because he was told off by the group, he was brought down, he was countercultural, and he wouldn't be allowed.
This is how culture works in brilliant organisations; once you see it, you can see it everywhere. It's when the team says, "People like us do things like this, around here we don't do that". That is the sign of culture policing itself; that is when you know you're winning, and that is when great things will start to happen.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast".
Good culture polices itself and doesn't need anyone else.
Blog Post Number - 4163
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