The Youth Football Guide – No. 13: Winning at all Costs

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of a small series of serialisations of my book “A Guide to Surviving Youth Football” If you like what you see and want to read more please do go and purchase a copy of the book by going to amazon.

Winning at all Costs

If you watch football on TV you will have heard the phrase “It’s a results business!” probably more times than you have had hot dinners. The problem with them saying this all the time about football on TV is it breeds that atmosphere and approach to youth football. Yes, in the Premiership there is a lot of money riding on where a team finishes in the league and the cups so it is a results business. Youth football shouldn’t be like that and this is where I think this country is going wrong. If we as a country want to develop better players we have to give them the chance to learn, develop and play good football. Not just play football which wins football matches, forgetting about playing with style, forgetting about playing just basic good football. Nobody learns from playing football which is focused on lumping the ball up the field at every chance you get.

For some children, parents, and coaches winning in youth football can become everything. The whole week before the game they will be thinking of what they need to do to win and then their whole weekend is centred around the match with their mood for the week after being decided by whether they win or lose. The pressure some coaches and parents put teams under to win games is phenomenal; instead of going to enjoy a football game they are going to a game to win with their long term goal to win the league or cup they are in. In the build up to the game there will be no talk of enjoying yourself and doing your best, it will all be about winning and nothing else.

If you are involved in a club like this and your team loses a game then post match talks from the coach can be brutal. Not only are the players down because they lost, they feel they have let the parents and the coach down. This is all compounded when a coach will go off on one ripping into everything the team did wrong instead of praising what they did right. This talk will normally end with the coach saying that if they want to win the league they better play a lot better than they did today.

Some parents and coaches will offer incentives to their players to win with that being anything from a McDonalds to a five pound note. In professional football I agree with bonus incentives for performance but when kids need to be bribed in order to play their best or to have their good play rewarded by cash or a free meal it shows the game is in a sad state of affairs. Kids should just be able to go out, try their best, and enjoy playing football without all these rewards. If they can’t just enjoy playing football without having to be rewarded then they are in the wrong sport. As a coach I always hated coaching against teams that offered rewards, because if your players got wind of it they would be asking you if they could have the same things that the opposition get. Yes by all means treat your team from time to time but don’t make it the norm as if you are doing it every week it isn’t special any more and the players will remember those treats even more if they don’t get them every week.

www.theyouthfootballguide.com

(Image courtesy of Orkun Ozbatur)

Related Posts:

• The Youth Football Guide – No. 11: Parents
• The Youth Football Guide – No. 7: Away Games
• The Youth Football Guide – No. 10: Opposing Managers
• Amateur Refereeing, A Problem Worth Solving?
• The Youth Football Guide – No. 9: Referees