When Teamates Have Your Back Cristiano Ronaldo missed a penalty against Slovenia, which meant the match went into extra time. Ronaldo said he was upset because: “I felt sad because of the pressure I put on myself since I was 11-years-old. ‘Cristiano Ronaldo you are the best player in the world’, I’m always thinking that in my mind. And I put a lot of pressure on myself [because of that]. It’s great to see how his team mates supported him, which represents a cohesive team. 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗠 𝗖𝗢𝗛𝗘𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡? “a dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs’ (Carron et al. 1998, p. 213). 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗜𝗠𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗠 𝗖𝗢𝗛𝗘𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡: Team cohesion has been associated with a variety of desirable outcomes such as: 1️⃣Enhanced Team Performance A meta-analysis containing 46 studies, by Carron et al. (2002), revealed that there was an effect size of .66 for the relationship between team cohesiveness and team performance. 2️⃣Increased Peer Efficacy Peer efficacy was conceptualised as each athlete’s belief about their teammates’ abilities to be successful in completing a task. Athletes who reported higher levels of cohesion also reported higher levels of peer efficacy (Marcos et al., 2010). 3️⃣ Decreased jealousy Research has suggested that team cohesion is negatively associated with(Kamphoff et al. 2005). 4️⃣ Increased collective efficacy With a sample of female and male professional football players, Leo et al. (2015) found that team cohesion was associated with team beliefs in their ability to operate as a team and be successful.