This past weekend witnessed a whole lot of tension for all of our favorite sides. Despite hours and hours of training, preparing, and strategizing everything that you want to go right may yet go horribly, horribly wrong, and there’s not much you can do about it.

In the same way, after a bit of over-confidence in 2016 led to a crippling four years of permanent anxiety, I’m constantly looking over news feeds for evidence of everything going wrong again. Again I’ve prepared. People I care about have prepared. But we know it might yet go wrong.

At times like this I think of a phrase from the great Scottish manager Sir Alex Ferguson (which I think I first heard from a Canadian colleague, Neeraj Prakash). He called it “squeaky bum time”, which I took to be that time when the end is nigh, and excitement has built to a fever pitch, but you can’t do anything about it.

My advice for you boys isn’t just to know that phrase, it’s a bit about what to do at times like that.

When you’re worried it will all go wrong, just try to do what you know to do.

Think of Freiburg. An early goal, and a quick concession and then ferocious pressure from Werder Bremen. At the core of all of it was Phillip Leinhart, who not only scored the Griffins’ goal, but anchored the defense to the bitter end.

Or there’s Rosenborg’s Kvinner. This team of tremendous attacking prowess, with all their threats and various ways to beat you finally faced the reality of a defeat, and responded by turning to the attack with even greater certainty until Sarah Kanutte Foldes won the day.

Even in America, we see it with Presidential Candidate and walking grandpa joke, Joe Biden. He’s never been the most eloquent, the most inspiring, or the most flashy. What he has been is reliable, dependable, charming, and genuine. So as the biggest campaign of his life (and indeed almost all of our lives) winds down, he is being that. Not being sucked into silly squabbles or crowd comparisons, just being himself.

All too often it gets hardest right before the end. Always remember that while you can’t control any outcomes, you can control your inputs. Rather than trying to do something new or staggering or amazing, do what you know.

Be Phillip Leinhart with his lockdown defense. Be Sarah Kanutte Foldes with her opportunistic attacks. Be Joe Biden with responsible, folksy, charm.

Or, if you boys end up like me, write about it.