The not-so-silent killer of British football

In this blog I look to examine an issue which is becoming reported more and more frequently in football, the pressure being put on young players. I will discuss the two main issues, why this is occurring and what the alternative is.

I would imagine most people who have been to watch youth football across the UK will be very familiar with the sight of parents and coaches berating children for making a mistake, ‘not trying hard enough’ or simply being shown up by a better opponent.

A few months ago I witnessed a young boy playing under 11’s football attempt a Marseille turn during a match. This is where you stand on the ball with one foot, spin ~360 degrees and flick the ball away with the other foot. For a 10-11 year old this is quite a complex skill and the fact that he even attempted it was admirable. As it happens he beat the opposition player but the ball ended up rolling out of play. Now at this point, a coach/parent should be greatly encouraged by the technical ability on show and the confidence of this young player to try it during a game. However what I saw was a grown man scream obscenities at a 10 year old boy from 5 yards away, before walking away uttering “what a useless ****”. I didn’t see this player touch the ball again in the next 20 minutes and I am quite confident he won’t be trying that trick again in a match anytime soon. What a horrendous reaction to not only a piece of creativity from a young player, but toward another human being, let alone a child. While this example is a bit extreme, it is all too common to see parents and coaches react very negatively to these types of events in games. Imagine seeing a parent or teacher react like this to a kid trying to learn maths, it simply wouldn’t happen. The likes of Gary Lineker and Matt Whitehouse have both discussed the problem and have even described it as “killing English football”.  But why do people suddenly decide that in this one aspect of a child’s life, they should either be perfect at everything or that verbal abuse is the best way to encourage learning? And more importantly, how is this affecting kids learning and development as players?

The first major problem is that kids are not going to enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be screaming and swearing either, it can simply be telling the kid not to try attempt certain things because they are not good enough or reacting negatively to a situation. If young players associate football with the negativity being hurled at them from the side-lines, then it is fair to say that the enjoyment from the game is lost. A group of players aged 14-16 across the UK were asked why they love football, with fun, confidence, entertainment, support, enjoyment and encouragements all nearing top of the list. The scenario of the child mentioned above pretty much rules out any of those factors for the young player. If the aforementioned reasons for loving the game were topping his list, I wouldn’t imagine he was keen to turn up the next week, nor were a few of his teammates. If a child loses his love for the game at this age, there isn’t much chance of them progressing professionally or simply keeping up the sport recreationally through their adult life.

The second problem we get is that players fear mistakes. As with every aspect of life, a mistake is an opportunity to reflect, to assess and ultimately learn from the experience. If a player fears making mistakes, then their learning will be significantly stunted. Imagine a player was praised for attempting a skill for the first time, the confidence grows, they try it again, they eventually master it and associate that creative mind-set with positivity. All of a sudden they want to experiment and learn. What a player you could start to grow. This is the sort of environment we should be creating as coaches, a positive learning environment. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. How many times have we seen England go into high pressure events and suddenly revert to safe passes or long balls away from danger? Where has the creativity they display at club level gone? If we ingrain this fear of failure from an early age, it will almost certainly come back to haunt us. Also, in the meantime we massively stifle player’s growth and restrict our capacity to pass on information to our players. In effect, it not only constitutes bad coaching, but makes the player less coachable.

The next question is why do coaches and parents act in this way. Often the problem is that the focus is placed solely on winning games, not developing players. Many might ask why it can’t be both, so I shall explain. Often in youth football, the situation arises that you can either instruct players to act in a way that will favour their development or their chances of winning the match. For example, if you play against a physically inferior team, playing long balls into the box and scoring headers will likely result in success. Meanwhile your opposition are trying to pass the ball use their game intelligence to negate your physical advantage. Fast forward a year or two, suddenly you are matched physically and your advantage is lost. Not only that, but they are now an astute passing team who have no difficulty in keeping the ball for most of the match. They have surpassed your team technically and have a much greater chance of succeeding in football, while those earlier wins serve only to reinforce a philosophy that is unlikely to breed success in the modern game. There are many other examples I could have used, but I feel this is especially important as early developers will often be perceived to be the better players, simply because their performance is aided by a physical advantage. Scenarios will arise whereby the best thing for the teams’ development is also the best thing for achieving success; however the key difference is that in the situations whereby the two conflict, how does the coach behave?

So what is the alternative? It is important that to understand that I am not suggesting we praise every error and ignore the mistakes. It is all about how we approach them and use them as teaching opportunities. I recently observed an U11 player attempt to curl a pass around a defender to play in a striker during training. It hit the defender and a team mate threw his hands up in the air, making some comment too. I called him over and before I said a word I heard “I know, play the simple pass, my mistake”. The fact that I thought it was a good idea seemed alien. We had a quick chat about the technique and he went back out to try it again. After a few attempts and some perhaps over-exaggerated feedback, he pulled one off. Now obviously we will have to assess when this is appropriate technique to use because I encouraged him to try it a few times, but I have no doubt that had I reacted negatively to this situation that the player would not have developed this skill, at least not that quickly. Conversely, I have had players give up on sessions simply because they were not achieving success.  The idea that each mistake could be learnt from was again, completely alien. If you can instill that idea that winning is not the only success available to them, the enjoyment and learning are propelled emphatically. Situations like these only serve to reinforce my belief young players need to be taught how to learn from “failure” and use it accelerate their development, not thwart it.

I have no doubt that there are also coaches and parents who are focused on player development, but use fear as the tool for achieving it. I cannot categorically say that this does not work, but you will struggle to find an account from the worlds’ top players who either hated football as a child or thrived off a verbal barrage from their coaches and parents. From what I have observed, the situation does appear to be changing slowly. Many academies now have fenced off areas to at least prevent parents from shouting at players and in some cases, doing so will see their son or daughter expelled from the academy. However this is far more difficult to achieve at the grassroots level and all too often I hear other coaches talking about the problems they have with the environment being created by those on the side-lines.