The Spotlight Effect: What Balogun’s 2026 World Cup Challenge Teaches About Performing Under Pressure

Have you ever just collapsed from the stresses and pressures of competition when you were in the spotlight and, feeling totally flummoxed, you did not know what to do?

This effect may have occurred in your life when you fumbled the ball in the last few minutes of a football game, or you failed an exam when you knew all the answers, or you got taken down in a wrestling match in the last few seconds and lost. How devastating, right?

During his performance in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the talented center-forward (striker),  Folarin Balogun may now know what it feels like first-hand to be “In the Spotlight” when he felt all eyes on him because it’s likely to have contributed to what we observed during the elimination Round of 16 against Belgium.

What is the Spotlight Effect?

It’s described as a cognitive bias where you misinterpret or overestimate the degree to which others notice and scrutinize your actions or your errors. This misplaced focus can trigger anxiety and panic attacks. It is an automatic reaction to fear built into humans from prehistoric times, known today in neuroscientific terms as the Fight-or-Flight response.

How Anxiety Changes the Brain

This panic reaction of Fight-or-Flight begins in the brain within the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPA Axis) that negatively impacts performance and spreads rapidly if you do not know how to handle it. To understand the HPA Axis and how it works, see Figure 10 in my book: Wrestling Through Adversity (page 187) with an explanation or visit drchristinesilverstein.com/Book-Figures.

The Pressure Was on Balogun

After being reinstated to play in the 2026 FIFA World Cup Round of 16, the pressure was on Balogun. What put him at a disadvantage was that the Belgium team figured out a strategy to prevent him from scoring.

At that point Balogun had little time to develop a plan of action on such short notice or on how he would score or even imagine it with mental rehearsal, backed up with physical practice on the field with his teammates.

Balogun’s Past and its Impact on Mindset

Based on my experience as a peak performance coach for three decades and historian, the Spotlight Effect and the Fight-or-Flight response that likely followed in Balogun’s case, are common scenarios in life situations and are not “mysteries to solve” as some US coaches, sportswriters, and disappointed fans suggested in their Round of 16 post-game reviews.

However, they can have serious repercussions beyond just losing if we don’t understand why and how it happened and what we can learn from it, so history doesn’t repeat itself.

With this in mind, let’s look back and dive deeper here at what occurred at the FIFA 2026 World Cup Round of 16 that can now serve as a solid platform upon which to build resilience for the future of soccer in the US, for fans, and for next generation players.

Champions Face Adversity Before Becoming One

We may all have had a moment like Balogun in our lives, but the key to success is to continue our “wins” and keep up our high-level performances for this is the mindset of champions before they become one.

It is where Balogun faltered when he lost focus and made the error of stepping on his opponent’s leg and ankle and the issuance of a red card in Round of 32, after he scored previous crucial goals in FIFA’s World Cup.

We all know now the facts of what happened and how it spiraled out of Balogun’s control and onto the team from there, preventing them from scoring, especially after the US President intervened for him to be reinstated a day prior to the game because he did not believe it was a foul or intentional.

Balogun’s Early Roots

Balogun honors his US citizenship and values it so much that he chose to become a proud member of the US team at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. He was born on American soil by default because his mom, who had immigrated to the UK from Nigeria, was deemed too far gone in her pregnancy to return safely home to London 25 years ago.

Balogun lived in the US for only two weeks in Brooklyn as an infant/citizen and grew up in London. His early education on how to play football was learned there.

It is widely known that his mother, Florence, strongly wanted her son to play for the USMNT and that her mind was made up long before his senior international decision that he was destined to represent his native country.

Ironically, the opposite policy is occurring at this time in America when the same group of expectant foreign mothers are targeted by the US government to be denied entry to prevent “birth tourism,” when offspring born here automatically become US citizens by law.

What Coaches Can Learn

Tom Burrows from The Athletic UK reported that one of Balogun’s former coaches, Ian Foster, commented that he always felt that he was “really humble” and that he “brought a lot of character into the environment.” As he reflected on Balogun’s past, he recalled how brave he was when he missed a penalty in a tournament.

It was telling that Balogun sought out Belgium’s head coach, Rudi Garcia, after the final whistle to open the pressure relief valve in response to the controversial red card saga.

The empathetic sentiment of this kind gesture when Garcia embraced Balogun and told him that it [the challenge debacle] was not his fault and later commented that he really appreciated the intention that he came to see him reflected in Adam Crafton’s piece in the New York Times/Athletic and in Getty Images captured by David Ramos.

Belgium against the US & Us Against the World

Goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois noted that Belgium felt ‘disrespected’ by the US prediction that they would win, which fueled their aggressive mentality and motivated dominance.

From the Belgians’ perspective, they saw themselves as defending soccer’s “integrity and ethics,” as reported by Crafton. Conversely, the Americans defended their right to protest because of an “unfair call,” deemed by them as unintentional.

This action by the US led to an open animosity between us and the world as evidenced by the headline of sportswriter, Ian O’Connor, titled: “Hate us for it if you want, but the US did what was necessary for Folarin Balogun’s return.”

In the meantime, during the game, Courtois tenaciously reacted with elite reflexes and made an important diving stop against Balogun to maintain his team’s two-goal lead.

In addition, the Belgian backline and central midfielders maintained a highly compact shape on crosses and long balls, tracking Balogun to cut off his passing lanes and limit his space to turn, which worked out well for the Belgium team.

Flaws in the US Pre-Game Plan

After reinstatement, the USMNT saw Balogun as the best option up top prior to the match. “His counter pressing has been a major aid to the way the team plays, and Balogun’s ability to run in behind the lines and cause havoc in the box opens space and makes things easier for the attacking players around him,” wrote Paul Tenorio, sportswriter at The Atlantic.

His teammate, Pulisic, commented that “Balo is always available…When others have the ball, he’s making runs, he’s so strong.” From hindsight post match, we can now see that this approach didn’t work out so well for the US.

A Shock Wave That We Saw Coming

After the game loss sunk in, neither Balogun nor his teammates could explain what occurred. The team members could find no words to describe their feelings.

Players expressed total shock and admittedly felt terrible that they had let each other and their fans down in their efforts to become the FIFA 2026 World Cup Champions. Surely, observers noted that the US was thoroughly beaten during a game that was marred by sloppy mistakes and a surprising lack of intensity in the match. No doubt about it!

Coach Mauricio Pochettino of the USMNT commented that “We were not good enough today,” and that we did not show real quality as a team. Although he took responsibility for the loss, he commented that he thought they needed to learn.

The coach commented “It’s a process to learn. We need to assess that game, and we need to see why we didn’t approach the game in the same way as the rest of the World Cup.”

Searching for an Easy Explanation and Emotional Underpinnings

“Maybe the explanation [for US failure at the World Cup] is so easy—it wasn’t our day, in the quality or individuals,” Coach Pochettino purported, as reported by Tom Bogert. He did not believe US interference was a distraction or an excuse for the loss.

Pochettino insisted that the protest over the challenge was not a surprise to him because in Argentina “feeling” grows quickly because soccer is like a religion there.

Yet, the seeming lack of recognition from his coach that Balogun had feelings relating to the challenges could have served to block his success rather than to promote his strengths.

With this being said, as a peak performance coach, I do not believe that there is an easy explanation for the USMNT’s loss. Instead, I think more exploration on a deeper level beneath the surface will give us clues as to what occurred and what needs repair.

Eight Mindful Toughness ® Takeaways, Based on Soccer Psychology

Until now, perhaps you have never heard about “Soccer Psychology” and how it can help us while in the spotlight. It focuses on training the mind to match physical skills. Key principles include resilience to bounce back, attentional fitness to make quick decisions under pressure, and emotional control by keeping calm during critical moments.

All of the above tools and more are embodied in the Eight Mindful Toughness skill sets presented here, all of which are natural, easy to use, and portable from one situation to another in sports, during surgery, getting a job, or winning at anything.

The bonus is that they are free as the air you breathe, once learned and are listed here:

• Getting in the Zone with Self-Hypnosis to gain access to your subconscious mind
• Breathing Easy by taking deep controlled breaths to get muscle ready
• Using Mental Rehearsal to imagine yourself shooting or passing to score with ease
• Staying in the Present Moment while calling yourself back into focus to score
• Learning self-control to empower yourself and to overpower your opponents
• Positive Self-Talk to love yourself, even if you make a mistake
• Developing a Plan of Action such as Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C
• Creating a Feedback Loop to improve your skill sets and emotional regulation

You can find Figure 12 – Feedback Loop Analysis at drchristinesilverstein.com/Book-Figures and in my book on page197 with an explanation.

Lessons Beyond Soccer

Here is an example of how Mindful Toughness ® helped me to ace my music recital. My pre-recital performance with my teacher was a disaster. Afterwards, she commented that even more practice would hot make my performance better. I cried on my way home and believed there was no hope, until I called a cellist friend to help me.

We practiced together until late into the night. I listened to a CD of my recital music to play along with and used Mindful Toughness skill sets, such as Breathing Easy and Mental Rehearsal. The result was that my instructor was in awe of my recital performance and how well I did, and she even added that I performed better than the child prodigy in my class! This story is in Chapter 9 of my book titled “Accessing Inner Healing Power Through Music.”

What is the Most Important Lesson from Balogun’s 2026 World Cup Performance?

I think the biggest lesson is not only for soccer players or athletes alone, like Balogun. It applies to all of us in business, in politics, and in high school sports and classrooms.

Listen up now. Here it is: “Wanting to win is one thing, but playing to win is another.”

In other words, by merely wishing something does not make it come true magically. It requires training by parents, teachers, coaches, and experts in childhood and teen development to model empathy, build resilience, and to know what to do to succeed in life.

This life lesson is of paramount importance because it is our job as adults to teach our young people to win with integrity by obeying rules and laws set up for their protection and to take responsibility for their mistakes, such as Balogun courageously did with his challenge, as a sign of good sportsmanship.

It is important to consider that pressure doesn’t create champions—it reveals how well they’ve trained their minds.

What are your thoughts about these questions? I’d love to hear your comments.

• Have you ever experienced the Spotlight Effect or the Fight-or-Flight response in sports, school, business, or another high-pressure moment?
• What helped you recover?