«We played with character, passion, and willingness to go beyond our capabilities»: our former MBA student Johnny Velasquez told us his experience at the Italy MBA Football Cup, the competition between business schools in which the LUISS MBA team participated on June 11-12, 2016

A very good friend once told me: “You can tell a lot about how people face life based on how they play football”. Surprised by the uncanny truth in this remark, I started to observe people’s behaviour when playing football. Those with a more rational approach to life tend to prefer being playmakers; others live life by putting their heart and soul onto every challenge and prefer to play as defenders or defensive midfielders; others enjoy taking risks and choose to play as forwards or full backs; some are built to be team leaders and sacrifice to keep the team together in adverse situations. This year, our team had the right blend of styles complementing each other to make our team highly competitive.

One game after another, we played with character, passion, and willingness to go beyond our capabilities. We built momentum and worked together as a team to keep ourselves motivated. We adapted to each other even if we hadn’t all met at the beginning of the tournament; after all, we spoke the same language: a shared passion for football! As a result, I learned our University has an exceptional group of Alumni with a winning mentality. Our team established a solid reputation among all the competing universities in the 2016 MBA Cup edition. After this year’s participation, any team competing in the MBA Cup will know that within the DNA of every LUISS Alumni there is thirst for victory; to beat us you will have to compete fino alla fine. Certainly I can state that you can tell a lot about LUISS Business School based on how the School plays football.

Gallery

Pictures by Simone Ianni, former MBA