2025-12-20, 06:01 PM - Word count:
What is this bitter taste that George Shaheen senses, now 20 games into the season 23 campaign?
It’s something he hasn’t tasted a lot of during his SSL Majors career. It almost physically stings. It’s certainly not pleasant.
This is the taste of defeat.
Reykjavik United currently sits fifth in the Majors table standings, but they sit there with a losing record. Eight wins. Three draws. Nine – count them – NINE losses to their name.
For the first time in his SSL career, George Shaheen’s team is in danger of finishing their season with a record that’s underwater.
Winning is something one gets used to. When you have continued success in a sport, it builds upon itself. Becomes a part of your identify. A part of your organization’s culture.
That is mostly a positive thing. But when a club with such a recent winning tradition suddenly doesn’t win, that becomes a culture shock. Something that is hard to reconcile with, both at the team level and on the individual level.
Shaheen spends lots of his off-the-field time trying to reconcile with his own performance and that of his team. To diagnose what’s been going wrong and to dial up a prescription to fix what’s been ailing performance.
Reykjavik has a +11 goal differential, which one would think at a minimum would result in a winning record, and maybe one with a few style points mixed in. But they don’t. At least not right now.
That’s not to say the ship cannot be righted. There are two matches left to go – one against AC Romana (7-4-9) and one against Schwarzwalder FV (7-3-10) – and with two wins that would be just enough to put the lads in the positive with a final record of 10-3-9. It won’t win the club anything tangible. But at least staving off the mark of taking a losing record into the offseason could be something from which to build for season 24.
It’s something he hasn’t tasted a lot of during his SSL Majors career. It almost physically stings. It’s certainly not pleasant.
This is the taste of defeat.
Reykjavik United currently sits fifth in the Majors table standings, but they sit there with a losing record. Eight wins. Three draws. Nine – count them – NINE losses to their name.
For the first time in his SSL career, George Shaheen’s team is in danger of finishing their season with a record that’s underwater.
Winning is something one gets used to. When you have continued success in a sport, it builds upon itself. Becomes a part of your identify. A part of your organization’s culture.
That is mostly a positive thing. But when a club with such a recent winning tradition suddenly doesn’t win, that becomes a culture shock. Something that is hard to reconcile with, both at the team level and on the individual level.
Shaheen spends lots of his off-the-field time trying to reconcile with his own performance and that of his team. To diagnose what’s been going wrong and to dial up a prescription to fix what’s been ailing performance.
Reykjavik has a +11 goal differential, which one would think at a minimum would result in a winning record, and maybe one with a few style points mixed in. But they don’t. At least not right now.
That’s not to say the ship cannot be righted. There are two matches left to go – one against AC Romana (7-4-9) and one against Schwarzwalder FV (7-3-10) – and with two wins that would be just enough to put the lads in the positive with a final record of 10-3-9. It won’t win the club anything tangible. But at least staving off the mark of taking a losing record into the offseason could be something from which to build for season 24.
![[Image: gmSTbwI.png]](https://i.imgur.com/gmSTbwI.png)
