Being a good loser is a choice people remember longer than the score.

Losing well does not mean pretending it does not sting. It means not making your disappointment into everybody else’s job: shaking hands, leaving the keeper alone, not hunting for the reason the result should not count. Scores blur together within a season. How somebody behaved in the ten minutes afterwards is what people can still describe years later.

Decide before the whistle what you will do when it goes, so you are not choosing while upset. Find one opponent and say something true about how they played. Be as annoyed as you like on the way home.