Overconfidence and carelessness always lead to some sort of trouble or destruction. And, unfortunately, I had to learn this lesson the hard way.

A couple of months ago, my teammates and I had an upcoming football match, where we were going to play against a rival school. Our team’s captain was Sara. We had a week to practice, from morning till noon.

On the first day of the practice week, Sara and our coach, Ms Hina, told us which positions and formations we will be playing. I was good at defending, so I was placed in front of Minaahil, our goalkeeper, at a central defence position. Sara was a striker and played at a centres-forward position. The rest of my teammates positions were decided according to the formation and their overall skill level. We spent the entire first day deciding positions and discussing tactics, so there wasn’t any actual practice or drills.

On the second day, we were supposed to do some drills, but Sara was late. When she finally came, I said, “Be quick! We need to practice!”

Sara replied casually, “We still have five more days to practice. Let’s relax today and have some fun. We’re already a strong team. It doesn’t matter if we skip one day of practice.”

At first, I thought that this was a very careless attitude, but after everyone decided to skip practice, I started to believe that it was okay to have some fun too. We weren’t supposed to tell Ms Hina about this or else she would have scolded us.

We stayed inside the games enclosure all day. Whenever Ms Hina used to come to check up on us, we pretended that we were playing.

It was Thursday and it started to rain heavily for three hours straight, so the entire team and I had to go home. On Friday morning, it started to rain again and we couldn’t practice playing football.

“The ground will be flooded with rainwater until the match. There’s no point in practicing now. We need to accept this. But, we don’t need to worry because we are already amazing players and we will easily win the match,” said Sara overconfidently.

We went to our homes back thinking of ourselves as champions already.

The match day arrived, I and my teammates were very overconfident. Sara even made a bet with the opposing team that if they win, we will pay for their snacks. Just before the start of the match, Sara told me to play with her at midfield and that Bisma would be defending in my place. We won the toss and decided to kick off first. Sara and I went for it.

The whistle was blown and the first half started. The midfielder of the other team tackled me so fast that I didn’t see her coming and I fell to the ground. By the time I got up, the midfielder passed the ball to her striker and they scored a goal.

After a couple of more minutes, it was half-time. I tried to explain to Sara that we should play in the places we belong to so that we can somehow manage to score a goal. However, she didn’t listen to me because of her arrogance.

“They never win and cannot win! We always win, we will win. Stay at the midfield position!” she replied. I wanted to tell Ms Hina about this, but we were running out of time, so we ran to the pitch and started playing according to Sara’s plan.

Sara and I played well, but we didn’t have good coordination. We managed to get to our centre forward. I kicked the ball towards the goal, but their goalkeeper was able to stop the ball easily. The referee blew the final whistle. The match was over and we were defeated.

We paid for their snacks. Some of us started crying and told Ms Hina about our carelessness and overconfidence. She was upset at us at first, but forgave us because we had realised our mistake.

That day, I learned that overconfidence can lead to carelessness, which in turn leads to failure. It doesn’t matter how capable you are. It is foolish to believe you will always succeed. Overconfidence will always drown you in the sea of reality.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 7th, 2023