What football teaches you

I've been playing Sunday league football for a few years now. We are not a good team. Last season we finished fifth out of eight, which sounds fine until you know there were only eight teams and one of them was genuinely terrible. We beat them twice.

I'm a decent enough player — I can pass, I'm reliable positionally, I don't lose the ball too often. I've scored four goals in three seasons, which tells you everything you need to know about my attacking contribution.

What I've come to understand, playing in a team like this, is that the players who make the biggest difference are almost never the most technically gifted. There's a guy we have, Marcus, who can do things with the ball that look genuinely impressive, but he drifts in and out of games and goes missing when it's difficult. We lose more games than we should when we're relying on him to be the difference.

The person who actually makes us functional is someone who's been playing left back for two years. He doesn't score, he rarely does anything especially visible, but he is always exactly where he should be, he communicates constantly, and I can't remember him losing his position in the whole time I've played with him. When he doesn't show up, the whole left side falls apart.

I think about this at work sometimes. The people who are most impressive in meetings are not always the most valuable to have around. The ones who are quietly dependable — who do what's needed, communicate well, don't make things harder for the people around them — those are the ones you notice when they're gone.

I don't know if football teaches you this or if it's just a particularly clear version of something that's true everywhere. Probably the latter. But it's easier to see on a pitch.