By Jim White
In six years coaching my son's football team I have come to the following conclusion: short of excess intake of alcohol, there is nothing that alters the behaviour of adults for the worse as much as youth football.
Every weekend I stand on the touchline and watch allegedly mature adults screaming at their children, abusing match officials, carrying on as if they were eight years old and had just been denied the present of their choice by Santa. And the team coaches are among the principal offenders. In Britain, almost uniquely, youth football works like this: the dad of one of the team players becomes the coach. In the overwhelming majority of cases he does so without any training, experience or scrutiny. Sometimes, the result is little short of child abuse.
Once, in a game my lads were playing, the rather dopey opposition full back gave away a penalty through a somewhat avoidable handball. Instead of explaining what he had done wrong and advising him on how he might avoid such problems in the future, the boy's coach chose instead to bawl profanities in his face. The attack was personal and sustained. The boy was, the coach informed him, useless, fat and stupid. After what seemed like minutes, standing there with his bottom lip quivering and his eyes filling, the boy could take no more. He ran from the pitch in tears and headed into a copse, where he climbed a tree and sat on a branch for the rest of the match. "Good riddance," the coach shouted after him. "We're better off without you, you useless t++++r."
It is worth adding that the game did not involve two teams from the grimy inner city. This took place in leafy Oxfordshire. And the lad concerned was seven years old.
Nor was it an isolated example. Such attitudes are everywhere, smothering our national game in an atmosphere than can be as poisonous as it is claustrophobic. For far too many, winning is all that matters. And everything that facilitates victory – cheating, bullying, poaching players from other teams – is not just tolerated, it is encouraged.
Oddly, the desperate urge for vicarious victory seems only to obtain in boys' football. The other day I refereed a game between two sets of 12-year-old girls and suddenly I felt as if I could breathe more easily. The girls played with smiles rather than snarls. On the touchline parents laughed and encouraged, their coaches were paragons of good cheer.
In its training courses, the FA preaches an enlightened doctrine of sportsmanship and relaxation. Professional clubs enforce strict codes of parental conduct. But that is at the top of the tree. For too many small boys their experience of the beautiful game will be limited to red-faced coaches and snarling parents. No wonder once they reach adulthood, they are giving up football in droves.
Our generation should be ashamed.
