About ten years ago, when my oldest son had just turned six, I decided to wear the rather expensive football boots I had bought for backyard kicks and took him out for a fun Saturday morning session. I had heard about some other dads with children of similar ages.
I walked away incredibly impressed. With one significant exception, the parents and helpers in the session seemed completely devoted to one thing: the enjoyment of the game. I was issued a code of conduct that spelled out the desire to instill a love of soccer in the hearts of influential youth and that winning was not the “end and end” of providing organized soccer for a six-year-old.
Soon enough, I was encouraged to help out, and finally I had the privilege of leading a team of under 7s made up of boys and girls who wanted to experience the game at a team level. We worked on the principle of trying to provide organized soccer for as many children as possible and we had a team of over 35 players with different abilities who had a game on a Sunday morning.
I loved every moment of running that side and managed to build lasting friendships with a group of eager young players who continue to stop in the street for a quick chat about their progress to this day. Unfortunately, work commitments led me to walk away for several years and I passed the mantle of team manager to another parent who continued to care for most of these young players until they turned 16.
A few years later, I came home and managed to find another team to train at the Under 13 level. We started from scratch and faced guys who, in all honesty, didn’t have the ability to win regular spots on teams that were already focused on win titles, tournaments and cup competitions. We still laughed a lot in that first season even though we were getting beaten up most weekends, and it was great to see the steady improvement in several of the kids who had never played at a competitive level before.
The following season, a new group of guys showed up for preseason training and the bar went up a bit. We put the new guys on the side, but we continue to give each registered player as much playing time as possible. Although the results improved, we still lost most of our games. It did not matter. We were still having fun.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that some of the new parents on the sidelines didn’t quite understand what we were trying to accomplish and eventually we had a group of parents at each game who felt compelled to yell out a variety of different instructions for a game. Confused gang of kids over the voice of a coach who had completely different ideas about what youth soccer should be.
I survived several heated arguments, a misdirected bottle of sports drink, and a weekly shaking head diet. By the end of the season, I had already decided to move on and the club finally appointed a friend of the hardy parents as my replacement. Interestingly, he was the same gentleman who had been the significant exception in a meaningless funny session many years before.
The new coach managed to finish third in the table the following season, but the boys’ team he had raised had already been shattered at this stage and had been replaced by local boys who arrived with good soccer reputations. Due to their lack of natural ability, many of my former teammates did not find another team to play.
It’s a sad situation when pressures from megalomaniacal parents pull willing volunteers out of the game, but they tend to have a tendency to yell louder than most people. Worse, they take away a source of pleasure from willing children who simply want to go about their business and have fun. Coaching kids is a labor of love and it still seems that most adults involved in youth play consider themselves a few steps ahead of management greats like Ferguson, Mourinho and BenÃtez.
Children no longer have much time to enjoy football from the perspective of the game. The pressures built up on them to win at all costs from a very young age still prevail. The FA has done a lot to make the right noises that participation is the most important aspect of youth play, but it seems that they rarely venture out onto the park grounds on Sunday mornings to see the continuous howling. of the bloodthirsty fathers who won. Don’t take second best as an option.
