The Psychology of Nothing to Lose: Why the Outsider Sometimes Plays Better

World Cup 2026 · Mentality and Pressure

Cape Verde, making its debut, is the smallest nation ever to reach the round of 16 of a World Cup. Now it faces Messi's Argentina. Behind the fairytale lies a real—and reversible—psychological mechanism that affects all athletes, not just outsiders.

by Fabio Zarra · Sports Psychologist

There's one team at this World Cup that, on paper, shouldn't even be here. Cape Verde—an archipelago off the coast of West Africa, one of the smallest nations in the world—became the smallest nation ever to reach the round of 16 of a World Cup. And they did so in their debut at the competition. The "prize" for this feat? Facing defending champions Argentina and Lionel Messi. On paper, an unbridgeable gap.

Yet anyone who follows sports knows that feeling: every now and then, the team with "nothing to lose" plays the game of its life, while the big favorite is spellbound. It's not just commentary rhetoric. It's a phenomenon that sports psychology has studied for decades, and the results often go against common sense: under certain conditions, the label of favorite is a disadvantage, and the label of underdog is an asset.

1. The invisible weight of being favored

The technical gesture of the expert athlete is largely automatic: years of training have made it fluid, executed without thinking. Under pressure, however, something jams. Classic research on choking under pressure—the sudden collapse just when it counts—shows that high stakes shift attention inward: the athlete begins to consciously control a movement that should remain automatic, and thus ruins it (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001). It's the paradox of incentives: the more "worth" the performance, the more the mind interferes with the body.

The most surprising data comes from soccer. Analyzing all penalty kicks from shootouts at three major international tournaments, Geir Jordet (2009) discovered that players with the highest public status at the time of the shot—the champions who had already achieved world-class recognition—scored fewer than players who would only achieve that status later. The more recognized a star you are, the more you are expected to be, the more weighty the penalty. Fame, at that moment, doesn't help: it hinders.

The higher the public status of the kicker, the worse his performance under pressure tends to be.

Translation: the favorite carries a weight that the opponent doesn't have. It's called expectations. Cape Verde doesn't have them. Argentina does.

2. Challenge or threat? Same game, two different minds.

When faced with an important situation, the body activates: heart racing, adrenaline rushing, tension. That same activation, however, can be interpreted in two opposing ways. The challenge-threat theory (Jones, Meijen, McCarthy & Sheffield, 2009) distinguishes two responses: challenge ("I have the resources to deal with this situation"), associated with more efficient physiology and better performance; and threat ("the demands exceed my resources, and I have a lot to lose"), which worsens performance.

Here lies the reversal. The favorite often views the match as a threat: beating a small national team adds no glory, while losing would be a catastrophe. The outsider, on the other hand, sees it as pure opportunity: everything to gain, nothing to lose. Same stadium, same starting score, two opposing internal worlds—and two potentially different performances.

3. The “nobody believes it” impulse — and its dark side

Feeling like a failure can actually boost performance. Studying the underdog effect, Samir Nurmohamed (2020) showed that the perception that others believe we are doomed to fail can improve performance, fueled by the desire to prove those who don't believe in us wrong.

But be careful—and this is the point a professional cannot ignore: the effect depends on the credibility of the person making the judgment. When distrust comes from a source the athlete perceives as authoritative and well-founded, it risks being internalized: then the opposite effect is triggered (the so-called Golem effect, the self-fulfilling prophecy of a negative outcome) and performance declines. "Nobody believes it" is therefore a double-edged sword: fuel if the team rejects the verdict, poison if it accepts it. The difference is made by the internal narrative, not the bookmakers' predictions.

4. Believing together: collective effectiveness

In teams, another factor comes into play. Collective efficacy is a group's shared belief that they can succeed together (Bandura, 1997). This isn't just a motivational detail: a meta-analysis of 96 studies and over six thousand groups shows that collective efficacy positively predicts group performance (Stajkovic, Lee & Nyberg, 2009).

For a small national team, the belief that holds the locker room together—"We're here together, no one expects anything from us, let's enjoy it and give it our all"—can transform into a concrete performance resource. On one condition: it must be truly shared, and not the isolated courage of a few individuals.

5. Stealing the underdog's advantage (even if you're the favorite)

The interesting point isn't that underdogs sometimes win. It's something else, and it applies to anyone who plays sports: the favorite's disadvantage is self-inflicted (expectation → threat → choking), while the outsider's advantage is a mental state. And a mental state can be trained and built, regardless of the prediction.

In practice, this means working on four levers:

1. From outcome to process. Shift your focus to what you control (the action, the immediate task) rather than the score or the consequences.
2. Reframe the pressure. Read the activation as a signal of readiness and as a privilege (“challenge”), not as a danger (“threat”).
3. Protect automatism. Consolidated pre-race routines that protect the gesture from conscious control, the main cause of choking.
4. Defining your own “victory.” A personal criterion of success independent of the scoreboard, which restores the mental freedom of the outsider even to those who start as favorites.

Scientific references

• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.
• Baumeister, R. F. (1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(3), 610–620.
• Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4), 701–725.
• Jones, M., Meijen, C., McCarthy, P. J., & Sheffield, D. (2009). A theory of challenge and threat states in athletes. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2(2), 161–180.
• Jordet, G. (2009). When superstars flop: Public status and choking under pressure in international soccer penalty shootouts. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 21(2), 125–130.
• Jordet, G., & Hartman, E. (2008). Avoidance motivation and choking under pressure in soccer penalty shootouts. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 30(4), 452–459.
• Nurmohamed, S. (2020). The underdog effect: When low expectations increase performance. Academy of Management Journal, 63(4), 1106–1133.
• Stajkovic, A. D., Lee, D., & Nyberg, A. J. (2009). Collective efficacy, group potency, and group performance: Meta-analyses of their relationships and test of a mediation model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(3), 814–828.

News sources: ESPN and Al Jazeera (June 2026) for data on Cape Verde’s progress (the smallest nation ever in the round of 16, making their debut) and their pairing with Messi’s Argentina in the round of 16.