The truth is, I do not watch football for loyalty. I watch football for leadership. I watch because football teaches me things that boardrooms, strategy documents, and leadership books cannot.

I watch because patterns reveal themselves in real time; patterns of winning, patterns of collapse, patterns of pressure, patterns of behaviour.

I watch because football is a mirror of a leadership lab. It exposes the truth about systems, psychology, and decision-making under pressure. It shows me how leaders behave or ought to behave when the world is watching and when the world is collapsing. It is like watching a live case study in leadership, exposing cognitive fatigue, emotional overload, tactical indiscipline, and behaviour under pressure.

The Fifa World Cup matches remind me of former Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson’s book “Leading”, where he says that “the last minutes of a match are won not by muscles, but by mentality.”

I also watch to see how coaches behave: who panics, who stays calm, who argues with referees, who anticipates danger, who loses emotional control.

Just as Sir Alex said, just like many organisations, a leader’s behaviour becomes the team’s behaviour. And in this World Cup, African teams mirrored their leaders in the final stretch. From this World Cup, I have picked patterns on why some teams rise in the last 15 minutes and why others collapse.

I watched Côte d’Ivoire dominate Norway, then lose concentration for one second as striker Erling Haaland punished them at 86 minutes. I watched DR Congo hold out against England for 80 minutes until metabolic fatigue broke them. I watched South Africa protect the lead against Canada in the round of 32 stage, stop pressing, lose verticality and concede in the second minute of time added on in the second half. I watched Egypt survive the group stage through discipline, then collapse mentally when Argentina increased intensity.

These collapses are not football collapses; they are leadership collapses. Because football is not played only by 22 players. It is played by the emotional climate around them.

Think Morocco; their win is the result of European football culture embedded inside an African team.

In 2018, Morocco returned to the World Cup after 20 years. They played well but lacked finishing power and tactical maturity. They exited at the group stage. They already had a team with exposure in European football. In 2022, Morocco shocked the world with its historic run to the World Cup semi-finals.

First African and Arab team to reach the semifinals. Beat Spain (round of 16). Beat Portugal (quarterfinals). Finished fourth overall. That was the birth of Morocco’s mental system. And today, in 2026, they are back in the quarterfinals. Morocco proved 2022 was not a miracle; it was a system. Morocco’s squad is almost entirely Europe-based.

But teams like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, DR Congo, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Angola have far fewer players in top European leagues. But think of giants like Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, they have Europe-based players, some of them not necessarily in the elite tactical environments such as the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, or Italian Serie A “where mental systems are built.”

Most African teams often walk into stadiums carrying a heavier emotional load than their opponents. The issue is “mental exposure versus mental isolation.”  

Frank Molla is the managing director at MDP Africa, a fintech company