Pressure to win endangering development?
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Imagine you are eight and a half years old. You love football. Your favourite team is Shamrock Rovers and your favourite player is Ronan Finn. You enjoy nothing more than playing football with your friends after school. In fact you love almost everything about football. You love everything about it except for one thing. You hate when you are playing for your team on a Saturday morning and your Dad turns into a Danny Dyer style football lout. When you see your Dad shouting at the referee it makes you feel nervous. You worry that if you make a mistake your Dad will shout at you too.
Worryingly, your Dad is becoming the norm on sidelines up and down the country. A recent schoolboy game between two prominent Dublin clubs was abandoned when an overzealous parent threatened the referee with physical attack. The spark for the unsavoury scenes was the referee’s failure to spot a foul on the aggrieved father’s son. The referee was left with little choice but to abandon the game as he feared for his own safety.
This is an extreme case but pushy parents are now having a detrimental effect on their children’s enjoyment of the beautiful game. Schoolboy football is built on the generosity of volunteers but there is a thin line between encouragement and being pushy. The young players in this situation were left in the ridiculous situation of being unable to complete their weekly fixture because of the unacceptable actions of a parent.
The behaviour of parents places unwelcome pressure on coaches. This in turn effects the development of players. In any park across Dublin on a Saturday morning you are likely to hear parents utter gems such as ‘get rid of it’ or ‘get stuck into him’ as they attempt to roar their eight year old on to success. When a parent places such emphasis on victory, a defeat can be a crushing blow to an aspiring young footballer. Parents, blinded by the glitz of the Premier League, forget that for the vast majority football is a hobby. Their pushy nature forces weaker children into their shell for fear of making a mistake.
Johan Cryuff summed it up perfectly when he said "it is more important at a young age to learn to play the game properly than to learn to win". Cryuff is well qualified to comment having spent most of his career at Ajax and Barcelona, two of the most successful centers for developing world class players. The FAI is attempting to improve matters by employing a team of Development Officers across the country. One of these officers, Denis Hyland who is responsible for the North County Dublin area, has some interesting views on the relationship between players, coaches and parents.
Hyland says that sometimes “there is an over emphasis on competition to the detriment of opportunities for young players to practice. If players are to develop their skills and decision making, they need to be exposed to more fun, guide of discovery style coaching sessions as opposed to some of the must win pressure situation they find themselves in.”
In Ireland competitive football begins at seven years of age. From a young age results are of paramount importance. This in turn forces coaches to play their strongest and biggest players. Tall and strong players are chosen to play in the most important positions. The smaller, more skilful players are pushed to the fringes and sometimes on to the substitute’s bench. The Spain squad, reigning World Cup and European Championship champions, has an average height of just over 5ft 10in. There is an argument that if many of these players had been coached in Ireland they would have struggled to get a game at crucial stages of their development.
Across Europe results are demoted in importance until players have reached their teens. Two of the most successful models are the ‘TIPS’ (Technique, Insight, Personality and Speed) model in Holland and the ‘Tikka Tikka’ possession based model of the Spanish. Coaching on the continent is focused on the development of technique and style. It is no coincidence that Holland and Spain were the two nations who contested the World Cup Final in 2010. It also goes some way to explaining why Ireland are now looking at a ten year gap since we last qualified for a major tournament.
The ‘jumpers for goalposts’ era is well and truly over. No longer can the street be relied on as a place where young players will hone their skills with hour after hour of practice. Children today do not play football together for hours on end; most of their football is conducted in organised circumstances. If the two hours a week of contact time are not enjoyable there is a risk of losing players to the game at an early age.
This is a world apart from when our great players learned their skills on streets and housing estates across the country. Players like John Giles, George Best, Liam Brady and Damien Duff learned the game on the streets. They needed to be able to dribble, shield the ball and tackle because if they were unable to, time on the ball was hard to come by in 15 a side games. Football then was a lifestyle and there was much less competition from television and games consoles.
The short answer to many of these problems is fun. Children need to be coaxed away from the console and back out onto the football park. This is unlikely to happen if they associate football with rigid coaching and fear. Small sided games where contact with the ball is maximised must be implemented across the board. If there is not a shift in emphasis we could be left waiting a long time before we see players of the ability of Brady or Giles again in a green shirt.
How do you feel about football development in Ireland? Do you think we should adopt a more skills based approach? Comments welcome below.
Worryingly, your Dad is becoming the norm on sidelines up and down the country. A recent schoolboy game between two prominent Dublin clubs was abandoned when an overzealous parent threatened the referee with physical attack. The spark for the unsavoury scenes was the referee’s failure to spot a foul on the aggrieved father’s son. The referee was left with little choice but to abandon the game as he feared for his own safety.
This is an extreme case but pushy parents are now having a detrimental effect on their children’s enjoyment of the beautiful game. Schoolboy football is built on the generosity of volunteers but there is a thin line between encouragement and being pushy. The young players in this situation were left in the ridiculous situation of being unable to complete their weekly fixture because of the unacceptable actions of a parent.
The behaviour of parents places unwelcome pressure on coaches. This in turn effects the development of players. In any park across Dublin on a Saturday morning you are likely to hear parents utter gems such as ‘get rid of it’ or ‘get stuck into him’ as they attempt to roar their eight year old on to success. When a parent places such emphasis on victory, a defeat can be a crushing blow to an aspiring young footballer. Parents, blinded by the glitz of the Premier League, forget that for the vast majority football is a hobby. Their pushy nature forces weaker children into their shell for fear of making a mistake.
Johan Cryuff summed it up perfectly when he said "it is more important at a young age to learn to play the game properly than to learn to win". Cryuff is well qualified to comment having spent most of his career at Ajax and Barcelona, two of the most successful centers for developing world class players. The FAI is attempting to improve matters by employing a team of Development Officers across the country. One of these officers, Denis Hyland who is responsible for the North County Dublin area, has some interesting views on the relationship between players, coaches and parents.
Hyland says that sometimes “there is an over emphasis on competition to the detriment of opportunities for young players to practice. If players are to develop their skills and decision making, they need to be exposed to more fun, guide of discovery style coaching sessions as opposed to some of the must win pressure situation they find themselves in.”
In Ireland competitive football begins at seven years of age. From a young age results are of paramount importance. This in turn forces coaches to play their strongest and biggest players. Tall and strong players are chosen to play in the most important positions. The smaller, more skilful players are pushed to the fringes and sometimes on to the substitute’s bench. The Spain squad, reigning World Cup and European Championship champions, has an average height of just over 5ft 10in. There is an argument that if many of these players had been coached in Ireland they would have struggled to get a game at crucial stages of their development.
Across Europe results are demoted in importance until players have reached their teens. Two of the most successful models are the ‘TIPS’ (Technique, Insight, Personality and Speed) model in Holland and the ‘Tikka Tikka’ possession based model of the Spanish. Coaching on the continent is focused on the development of technique and style. It is no coincidence that Holland and Spain were the two nations who contested the World Cup Final in 2010. It also goes some way to explaining why Ireland are now looking at a ten year gap since we last qualified for a major tournament.
The ‘jumpers for goalposts’ era is well and truly over. No longer can the street be relied on as a place where young players will hone their skills with hour after hour of practice. Children today do not play football together for hours on end; most of their football is conducted in organised circumstances. If the two hours a week of contact time are not enjoyable there is a risk of losing players to the game at an early age.
This is a world apart from when our great players learned their skills on streets and housing estates across the country. Players like John Giles, George Best, Liam Brady and Damien Duff learned the game on the streets. They needed to be able to dribble, shield the ball and tackle because if they were unable to, time on the ball was hard to come by in 15 a side games. Football then was a lifestyle and there was much less competition from television and games consoles.
The short answer to many of these problems is fun. Children need to be coaxed away from the console and back out onto the football park. This is unlikely to happen if they associate football with rigid coaching and fear. Small sided games where contact with the ball is maximised must be implemented across the board. If there is not a shift in emphasis we could be left waiting a long time before we see players of the ability of Brady or Giles again in a green shirt.
How do you feel about football development in Ireland? Do you think we should adopt a more skills based approach? Comments welcome below.
