On Saturday, February 12, 2022, Chelsea won the club world cup. To qualify for the club world cup, every participant (excluding the hosts) had to become champions of their continents.
For Chelsea, that meant winning the toughest club competition in the world; the UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE last season. Being a lifelong Chelsea fan, you can understand how elated I've been in the last months- sharing memes, banting rival fans & just generally feeling better than everyone else😎.
Today's piece isn't about football, instead, I will try to draw a very telling lesson from last year's UCL campaign.
For getting to the UEFA champions league(UCL) final, both Chelsea & Manchester City made over £60M. Chelsea, further added multiple millions in Pounds for winning the final match against Manchester City. In contrast their English rivals, Manchester United made only £8M for going from the Europa league(EL) Knockout stages till the final. The Europa league is the second biggest club football competition in Europe after the UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE. Manchester United were initially in the UCL but dropped down to the EL after finishing third in their UCL group. Shockingly, Manchester United made £23M from their UCL group stage campaign- almost 3X their entire EL payout.
There's no joy in playing small. If you can build a $20M a year business, there's no honour aiming for $20K. If you can change the world, there's no reason to hold back. If you can be the best in world, give yourself the chance. Be calculated but go all in. You owe it to yourself and the whole world.
STOP PLAYING SMALL.