Day 2057. 15,915.38 kilometres run barefoot-style. 24,159.62 kilometres still to go.

This morning I stood on the touchline as assistant coach for my son's Under 15s football team. A cup quarter final against a Division 1 side. We play in Division 3. We lost heavily. The score matters less to me than what I watched happening in that match, and the question I have been sitting with all day: is the will to win something you teach, or is it simply part of a person's wiring?

I have been coaching this group for roughly ten years, since they were six years old. After all of that time, my honest view is that competitive hunger is not something you build into someone through training sessions on a pitch. A person either has the fire or they do not. I know this view is uncomfortable for coaches to hold. I am going to explain why I hold it regardless.

What I saw on the pitch this morning

The opposition were the away team. They arrived nearly as early as our own coaching staff, while we were still setting up the home ground. They ran a structured warm-up. Before kick-off they formed a huddle with chanting and rituals that, from our side of the pitch, felt almost intimidating. I suspect they intended it to feel that way.

When the match started, every contested ball went their way. Not always because of better positioning. Not because their technique was noticeably sharper in those moments. They wanted those tackles more than our players did. Watching from outside the play, the desire was visible as a physical thing.

In the closing stages, with the result long settled, they were still managing the clock at corner kicks with a focus unusual at Under 15 level in local football. Part of me had genuine admiration for what they were doing. They did whatever was needed to protect the result.

Our lads are good human beings. Kind, generous, nearly grown men I am proud to have spent ten years coaching. But in a match against a team of players who want to win at almost any cost, being pleasant is not enough. The result this morning made that clear.

Ten years of watching the same question

A decade working with the same group gives me a long view. Their technical ability has improved. Positioning, passing, physical development, all of those things have grown. What has not grown in proportion is the competitive fire. The hunger to win a tackle regardless of the consequence, to stay composed under pressure and keep pushing when the game has turned against them.

I have had to ask myself why.

My conclusion is that the will to win is a trait rather than a skill. Skills respond to practice, coaching, instruction and repetition. Traits are more fixed. You shape them at the margins through environment, preparation, expectation and culture. But the core of the trait was already present before the coaching started, or it was not.

When I was growing up, I had this inside me. I was not gifted at every sport or activity I tried. There were things I was not particularly good at. But I had a desire to give everything regardless of the outcome. My parents did not coach me into this. A teacher did not install it. The desire was already there.

That experience shapes everything I think about this question now.

The best teams find it, they do not manufacture it

Looking at the opposition this morning, what struck me was not that their coach had manufactured their desire. What he had done was gather players who already had it. The rituals, the early arrival, the structured warm-up, those are habits that amplify something already present. They express the hunger. They do not create it.

The best teams I have observed, across sport and business, tend to work the same way. They recruit people who already carry that drive. They build culture around something already alive in those individuals before they arrived. That is a different thing entirely from trying to install the will to win in someone wired differently.

Preparation is teachable. Positioning is teachable. Communication is teachable. Whether someone genuinely cares about the result more than the discomfort of chasing it, I am not persuaded a coaching session changes that.

Why the streak connects to this

Day 2057. A barefoot-style running streak, every single day, logging distance toward 40,075 kilometres and raising £1 million for children's causes including Great Ormond Street Hospital and BBC Children in Need. 15,915.38 kilometres run. 24,159.62 kilometres remaining.

Nobody enforces this streak but me. No contract, no wage, no formal obligation to anyone. The only thing getting me out on each of those 2,057 mornings is something internal. Some version of what I am describing as the will to win, turned inward and applied to a long-term mission I believe in.

I have never been fully able to explain where that comes from. I am certain I did not learn it from a coaching manual. Without it, this streak would not have reached Day 2057.

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Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/8qKb2CsMMZY