How to break a losing streak

NOT EVERY team can be like the Los Angeles Lakers of 1971-72, who won 33 consecutive basketball games. Not every tennis player will enjoy a spell like Martina Navratilova, who won 74 singles matches in a row in the mid-1980s. Some teams have to endure. The Cleveland Browns, an American-football team, were defeated 17 times in succession in both 2015-16 and 2016-17. Some athletes must suffer. Vince Spadea lost 21 tennis matches in a row after breaking into the sport’s top 20 in 1999. And, in football, there’s American Samoa.

The footballers representing the American overseas territory lost the first 38 games they played after their affiliation to FIFA, football’s governing body, in 1998. A 31-0 loss to Australia—the biggest defeat in the history of international football—provided a particular low point.

But the streak ended. That is the subject of a new film by Taika Waititi, a director from New Zealand. “Next Goal Wins” tells the story of Thomas Rongen, a Dutch-American coach appointed in 2011 to reverse the American Samoans’ fortunes. He guided them to a 2-1 victory over Tonga that same year. By Mr Waititi’s telling, Mr Rongen does so largely thanks to a sudden change in mentality. At half-time in the Tonga match, with the team heading towards another defeat, Mr Rongen realises the error of his previously draconian ways. Just “be happy”, he implores his troops, who then march on to victory.

A documentary about Mr Rongen’s exploits, released in 2014, painted a less sentimental picture. The real Mr Rongen set out to find “off-island” players—American-based athletes who could represent the team by dint of their ancestry—to bolster his ranks. He enticed disenchanted but talented islanders out of retirement. He introduced some stress-relieving techniques, such as meditation and yoga, but did not compromise on his coaching methods.

What can other downright losers learn from American Samoa’s footballers? The ways to improve terrible form can be obvious. Get a new, more experienced manager. Seek out better players. Source greater investment. (American Samoa struggled to secure sufficient funding before the United States Soccer Federation backed Mr Rongen’s arrival.) Just being happy is probably not enough.

Spelling out the obvious is worthwhile because discussion of sporting streaks, be they winning or losing, often draws on fallacies. One popular theory is that individuals or teams can alter their “momentum” through effort and positivity. The idea holds that the outcome of one match affects that of the next. So poor performances bring frustration and uncertainty, making further misery more likely. And success begets success. Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s then manager, echoed the idea in 2011. “Momentum is the key,” he averred. “I think when you get that momentum you become difficult to knock off your stride.”

Scientists are largely unconvinced, though. A study published in 2021 investigated whether momentum could explain the development of losing and winning streaks in the National Hockey League (NHL), a North American ice-hockey tournament. The researchers could not categorically rule out that success or failure in one performance directly affected the outcome of the next. But they concluded that, in general, streaks were statistically random.

In sport the role of luck should never be underestimated. Players can suffer injuries or fall out with coaches; teams can play a run of tricky fixtures. When these factors affect a side simultaneously, losing can begin to seem like fate—or conspiracy. But misfortune is the probable culprit. That poses a dilemma for no-hopers. If the conditions that lead to a terrible streak can occur by chance, sometimes little can be done. No tweak to mindset, personnel or tactics is guaranteed to change outcomes.

No hope? No problem

For fans, at least, the best response may be to try to enjoy the ride. After a season in which their team lost 16 matches and won none, some 3,000 Cleveland Browns fans enjoyed a self-deprecating parade around the ground to raise money for charity. Nick Hornby, a British novelist, described the surprising joy of watching a team in free fall in his memoir, “Fever Pitch”. The book is mainly about Mr Hornby’s love of Arsenal, a famous London club. But it also details his affection for Cambridge United, a lower-league team. In the 1983-84 season they went 31 games without a win, but Mr Hornby’s allegiance never weakened. In fact, he writes, a new drama began to “replace the satisfaction of winning”. Small incidents—a goal or an act of bravery from a player—became reasons for “quiet, if occasionally self-mocking, celebration”.

And remember: streaks do end, eventually. The Browns squeezed out a tie with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Cambridge secured a win against Newcastle United. Mr Hornby describes how the players hung on for victory as if they were about to claim the European Cup. They had, of course, already been relegated, but that was far from the point.■