You beat me to it, few remember Uday’s torture of Iraqi soccer players after past World Cup or Asian Cup failures. I was just reviewing some of the news articles, his pastimes included urinating on them and whipping them, and then dunking them in raw sewage to insure their wounds would become infected.
Undoubtedly, they played much better without the stress of worrying what their fate would be if they lost.
Soccer defeat would lead to mandatory sole beating with an iron rod while hung upside down. The bones would splinter into pieces, paralyzing them for life.