The Youth Football Guide – No. 10: Opposing Managers

Welcome to the tenth 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.

Opposing Managers

In your league you will come up against a wide range of opposing managers. Some that will be doing it just to give kids a game every week, some that are in it to win everything, some that want to coach good football, some that just want something to take their aggression out on and some that are doing it because nobody else would and want to keep the club going.

Some opposing managers you will get on with and some you won’t, just like being back at school. Normally coaches will be nice as pie to each other in the run up to the game and before the game but during the game and after the game it’s another story. In some games instead of the game being about the children and the competition between two sets of players, the game turns into a war between the two coaches.

You will get two main breeds of coach. The first one being the coach that likes to get all the accolades for being a great coach and wants all the headlines. The second one is the coach that wants to be a good coach but lets their players get all the credit and is happy to hide away in the background. Coaching is not something you can be in for yourself, it’s not about you winning or getting respect. It’s about developing your players and making them the best they can be whilst still enjoying playing the game of football.

Some coaches like to wind each other up and if a coach can see that they can easily wind another coach up they will. Sometimes rivalry between teams can be just down to the coaches not the players on the pitch. There are some coaches that other coaches would like to get the upper hand on. Some coaches who have successful teams will be smug and get under the skin of other coaches and coaches will always have rival coaches they don’t want to lose to.

You can never trust what another coach tells you. Cynical I know but it’s true. A coach may tell you that they are struggling for numbers or their best players are out before the game but when you get there all of their best players are playing, it happens in the Premiership so I’m not surprised it happens in youth football. If their team loses some coaches will not admit the best team won instead they will say their team played the worst they had ever played or come up with some excuse for the loss blaming the ref, the weather or claiming players weren’t fully fit, saying anything not to accept that they were beaten fairly and squarely.

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(Image courtesy of Skippy)

Related Posts:

• The Youth Football Guide – No. 9: Referees
• The Youth Football Guide – No. 13: Winning at all Costs
• The Youth Football Guide – No. 7: Away Games
• The Youth Football Guide – No. 6: Home Games
• Weathering the footy storms…