mark@liverpool wrote:tennisman wrote:Dr David Starkey wrote:Problem is, there's big money in football now - even if you are not that good. Even League Two players get £50k a year.
Say you are a parent on benefits and your kid is the best footballer in your district. They could become your meal ticket. No wonder they put pressure on them.
That is true, Doc.
But I don't think we are talking about a few selected examples of the benefit family /meal ticket star kid syndrome.
We're talking about an ignorant approach to developing kids in sport which has been well documented across the domain of junior football for some time.
At the Ajax academy, parents aren't allowed anywhere near the kids and if they start screaming and shouting, their kid is removed. A brutal but necessary policy.
The problem with football is that everyone thinks they know the game and they apply this 'adult / pro' model into their kids matches.
Would these same parents walk into their kids' schools and start teaching them?
Watching years of football on the terraces and the TV has nothing to do with how you coach kids in youth sports. The problem is that many parents and coaches, it seems, thinks that it does.
For me, it's quite simple; unless this changes, then the results of what is produced won't change.
The FA can pontificate about small sided games; the Premier League clubs can invest millions in their academies and at grassroots, we can start up as many teams and leagues as we want. But if we can't relate properly to the kids, we are not only doing them a massive dis-service but as far as how all that activity translates through to the professional game for a better end result with our players, we stand no hope.
I'll be interested to observe as my daughter has just signed up with a local team. They're a really well established club with men's, women's boy's and girl's teams but at my daughter's age they are struggling due to low player numbers, mainly due to both Liverpool and Everton signing up so many players and then not letting them play for other teams. As for parents chasing the dream it is out there and even quite prevelant beyond the benefit claimants too. I know several lads who have been signed to mostly Liverpool (but a few others too) since the age of 7. Some of them are extremely good players for their age but others are not much better than average and are never going to make it at that level.
The worst example is a neighbour whose son was rejected by Liverpool at 8 years old, then signed for Everton weeks later. Everton released him after a season and he went to Tranmere for 2 seasons. They let him go at 11 and he then went and signed up with Accrington Stanley and has just started his second season there, his dad driving there and back 3 or 4 times a week for traning and matches. To be honest he would be much better placed with a solid local playing for fun club where he has a good chance of getting noticed if he is good enough. But for some people that is like giving up the dream.
Mark, I think the above and especially that last example sums up how we've completely lost the plot with what we're doing with our kids.
The pro clubs want them there for one reason and one reason only, to sift through them and hopefully find the pros of the future.
For all the talk by people like Saggers about clubs being 'Community organisations', this sort of process is not what I'd call a Community one.
Kids are dumped when it suits the clubs and usually with NO exit pathways into local lower level clubs.
It smacks of the worst form of youth sport crime for me; the exploitation of hope.
What we need is loads of places locally where kids can go and learn skills and play matches too but in a structured but fun environment where they are being encouraged with smiles not constantly judged by adults using what I call the 'pro model'.
This is not to say that you can't coach them as if they are young pros (as far as attitude and effort are concerned) but when they perform like the small kids they are, you have to be able to smile, say hard luck and or well done and get them to have another go. Set high standards but praise them for the smallest 'win'.
It works - trust me.
I absolutely agree with the creation of opportunities for the very best as they may well get held back if they aren't allowed to train and play at a higher level.
But I believe from all I've read, heard and been told that clubs are signing up large numbers of very young kids who are average at best, still learning (of course, at that age) in a sort of blanket approach to ensuring that they don't miss anyone.
Kids should be playing as much as possible, having as much fun as possible and learning in the process (as per my Free Play website article above).
I am not against competitive matches either as kids love competition. The problem with it is usually how the adults involved, parents and coaches, position the winning and the losing; kids, in my experience handle it very well usually with a pragmatic acceptance and a resilience which many adults would do well to learn from.
I'm not that great a fan of leagues and tables and loads of medals etc as I'm really not sure these are necessary.
Just get them playing - that's what's important.
All this training 3 times a week with hours in the car and not necessarily any match play at the weekends and restrictions in place so they can't play for anyone else is all nonsense.
The only saving grace might be if in the academies, the youngsters really were receiving the best coaching and based on an e-mail I received yesterday from a friend, this is evidently not the case.
I can't mention names for sensitivity reasons (my friend did) but my friend has a friend who is involved with Coach Education at a senior level and talked about the poor level of coaching going on in the academies of a number of pro teams in one region of the country (from PL to League 2).
Chris Green's book, Every Boy's Dream, about the academies, talks often about how while you'd expect the best youth coaches up to speed with all the best methods for developing kids would be in place, this is not the case and many are only there to do some time before rising up the coaching tree and too many Club Chairmen and Chief Executives talking in the board rooms about results and trophies as opposed to skill development and player development.
Mark, I hope your daughter has FUN and enjoys whatever she does and comes home looking forward to going back next time - these are the indicators to look for in whatever activity she is involved with, I'd suggest. If those conditions exist, she will have the best likelihood of developing (without realising it) while she has fun, the best way to do it.
