They f*** you up, your mum and dad. So said Philip Larkin, and he might have been passing judgment on youth football, that wasteland of regurgitated shortcomings. Now the Football Association wants to revive pre-teen spirit, but the idea of scrapping all leagues until secondary school age shows that you can be self-defeating even when the result doesn’t count.
The FA has a 25-point plan that Nick Levett, the national development manager, is trying to sell around the country. The most contentious area is likely to be axing leagues until the under-12 age group. The theory is they stifle progress because coaches obsess about results, eradicate risk-taking and place too much pressure on fragile minds. They also make parents go nuts.
A year following an under-nine team in Dorset means that I am well aware of the horrors of league football. Sad dads and rum mums shout abuse; referees cheat; there are tales of touchline fights and grown-ups exhorting little Tommy to “take him out”. This is Thomas Hardy country, too.
However, blaming all this on leagues is like blaming subways for glue-sniffing. Leagues are actually great. In an era when children are prohibited from winning at school sports day, they provide a chance for them to win and lose with purpose. Not a bad thing, that. Take leagues away and children keep score in their heads anyway, just as the girl who wins the sports day sprint knows it, even if told to keep quiet lest second place tears the head off her Barbie doll.
Last Sunday my son’s team lost the league title with five minutes to go. Most of the players cried. They would not have done that if it had been a friendly, but they were over it by the time they had had a fairy cake. None has fallen out of love with football, and I do not regard myself as psychotic whip-cracker for thinking that the experience might be good for them, in terms of friendships more than sport.
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A league can only really be a bad thing if a coach is. If enjoyment is sacrificed for a wannabe’s tilt at a title, that is selfishness run amok, but it may have its roots in the weakness of messages delivered on FA coaching courses. Having fun and leagues are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible to turn too far from the truth that sport is not all about winning, but it is about winning.
Simon Clifford prizes skill more than most. He founded Brazilian Soccer Schools and once sent a child for a trial at Newcastle United. “He brought the ball down with the outside of his boot and the coach went mad,” he recalled.
Professional clubs scout players on their ability to beat a man and then drum that out of them. So advocate skill, by all means, but what is the point if the over-12s coaches remain inherently suspicious of a backheel?
The Dutch youth system is often cited as the best model and it has manifold merits, not least small-sided games and a bloke with a clipboard who ensures that all players get the same minutes on the pitch. That matters a whole lot more than the notion that the only structure that will produce another Jack Wilshere is an unstructured one, in which competition is sort of bad unless it is in a cup.
Youth football in Britain is for adults. That’s the problem. The mums, dads and coaches f***ing it up. The kids are actually all right and can cope with winning medals and losing 10-0. In fact, they are in a league of their own and should stay there.