Car­la Rauseo

It has been a goal-filled, penal­ty-strick­en and quite ex­cit­ing World Cup foot­ball tour­na­ment thus far, and emo­tions and an­tic­i­pa­tions are run­ning high.

Dis­ap­point­ing play from hosts Brazil and foot­ball gi­ants like Ar­genti­na and even Italy, have left fans at the edge of their seats, won­der­ing "What next!" The sur­pris­ing bull­doz­ing of for­mer de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Spain by the Nether­lands and Chile, and of two time cham­pi­ons Uruguay at the hands of Cos­ta Ri­ca, a clear un­der­dog who has not won an open­ing game since 1970, has blown this World Cup wide open. It seems to be any­one's for the tak­ing, and has high­light­ed the pow­er of the un­der­dog.

The gen­er­al de­f­i­n­i­tion of "un­der­dog" is the per­son or team that is ex­pect­ed to lose a game or fight. The term orig­i­nat­ed from nine­teenth cen­tu­ry dog­fights. The beat­en dog would nor­mal­ly be pinned un­der­neath the win­ning dog, giv­ing rise to the terms "un­der­dog" and "top dog," as the win­ning dog would be called.

De­spite this glum im­agery, there are some in­ter­est­ing ad­van­tages to be­ing the un­der­dog in a com­pe­ti­tion like the World Cup, that can lead to an as­ton­ish­ing up­set as in the Spain/Nether­lands, Spain/Chile and Uruguay/Cos­ta Ri­ca match­es.

First­ly, there are no ex­pec­ta­tions made of an un­der­dog team, ex­cept that they should lose. There­fore, the un­der­dog has noth­ing to lose. Be­cause there are no ex­pec­ta­tions, there is lit­tle pres­sure on the team to win and play­ers can fo­cus more on the process, rather than on the out­come.

It can be quite a lib­er­at­ing and free­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, as the ath­lete can just en­joy play­ing the game with­out the weight of world ex­pec­ta­tions.

I bet that this rea­son was part­ly re­spon­si­ble for Cos­ta Ri­ca's vic­to­ry over Uruguay. Al­though Uruguay scored first and ini­tial­ly pres­sured the Cos­ta Ri­can goal, Cos­ta Ri­ca's play showed ease and en­joy­ment. Spain al­so felt the pres­sure of be­ing the "top dog" and crum­bled against the Nether­lands and Chile un­der the world's ex­pec­ta­tions, much to the dis­dain of mil­lions of foot­ball-fren­zied fans.

How­ev­er, Spain and Uruguay al­so fell vic­tim to what I like to call "ad­verse top dog psy­chol­o­gy" and un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the Nether­lands and Cos­ta Ri­ca. Un­der­es­ti­mat­ing caus­es play­ers to un­con­scious­ly cut cor­ners in their men­tal prepa­ra­tion and be­come lazy in the first part of the game, un­til it is too late. I am no foot­ball an­a­lyst, but I al­most want­ed to reach through the tele­vi­sion and tap Ger­ard Pique on the head for what even I could see was some lack­adaisi­cal de­fend­ing. This un­der­es­ti­mat­ing by the top dog team opens up av­enues for the un­der­dogs to sneak through to score.

Then, pan­ic-strick­en, the top dog at­tempts a hap­haz­ard scram­ble to re­gain con­trol. Of­ten times, it is in vain and detri­men­tal to the team, re­sult­ing in red cards and sus­pen­sions as it did when a frus­trat­ed Maxi Pereira was sent march­ing to the lock­er room. Spain, in a des­per­ate at­tempt to de­feat Chile, seemed to fall vic­tim to the pres­sure that re­sult­ed from the hole in­to which they had dug them­selves against the Nether­lands.

An­oth­er ad­van­tage to be­ing the un­der­dog is an in­creased lev­el of mo­ti­va­tion that comes with the po­si­tion. Un­der­dogs tend to want to prove their worth to both them­selves and to those who ex­pect them to lose, and of­ten will work longer and hard­er than the top dogs, pre­pared to fight for as long as it takes. There is great sat­is­fac­tion that comes with beat­ing a su­pe­ri­or team, and this can pro­vide high lev­els of mo­ti­va­tion to un­der­dog teams...and it does not get more mo­ti­vat­ing than beat­ing a su­pe­ri­or team on a glob­al stage like the World Cup!

The typ­i­cal over­whelm­ing crowd sup­port for the un­der­dog can al­so in­crease mo­ti­va­tion for such teams. Fans love an un­ex­pect­ed vic­to­ry, and the dra­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with it. Re­search stud­ies have shown that there is usu­al­ly over­whelm­ing sup­port for the un­der­dog. Their per­sis­tence of spir­it makes for a charm­ing at­tribute and draws in the fan, who de­vel­ops an emo­tion­al at­tach­ment to the un­der­dog. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the fan would like to see per­sis­tence, fight and hard work win the bat­tle against all odds. Al­so, as one per­son put it, a close game is far more ex­cit­ing than a lop­sided one, and fans will there­fore root for the un­der­dog so that the game can be more close­ly con­test­ed and there­fore more ex­cit­ing.

It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how the Brazil­ian team re­sponds in this World Cup. Will the team ral­ly un­der the en­cour­age­ment of their fans? Or will they crum­ble un­der their ex­pec­ta­tions and suc­cumb to "ad­verse top dog psy­chol­o­gy?" On­ly time will tell in this World Cup of up­sets and un­der­dogs.

Car­la Rauseo, DPT, CSCS is a Doc­tor of Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py and a cer­ti­fied Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Spe­cial­ist at To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San Juan.