Can conflict improve team performance?
ESPNcricinfo staff
12-Oct-2014
The revelations in Kevin Pietersen's book about the friction within England's dressing room cause Simon Kuper, writing in Financial Times, to wonder whether conflict is necessarily a bad thing in sporting teams.
British sports teams have traditionally modelled themselves on the army, with its core virtues of camaraderie and obedience. However, conflictual models may work better. Football's most significant thinker of the past half-century is probably the Dutchman Johan Cruyff. In the 1960s he and his coach at Ajax Amsterdam, Rinus Michels, created the cerebral, flowing style known as "total football". In the 1970s Cruyff became the world's best player. Later he brought "total football" to Barcelona, where it eventually morphed into the "tiki-taka" game that made Spain European and world champions in recent years.
Cruyff was always quarrelling (often with Michels). He thought quarrels drove creativity, because they made everyone think harder about how to play, and gave each warring party something to prove. If your teammates dislike you, you have to prove your quality. The "conflict model", as Cruyff called it, acknowledges the reality that most players in a team are motivated chiefly by their individual careers.