Having sat down to watch the widely acclaimed documentary State of Play, I felt it was worth looking at what parents, coaches, players, sporting organisations, and any adult involved in sport could take from it.
As a big fan of Michael Calvin’s work, this follows a similar piece we wrote after his first documentary, No Hunger in Paradise.
The documentary interviewed numerous players, ex-players, managers and ex-managers, several of whom delivered genuinely poignant messages worth taking away to support the key people in a young athlete’s sporting experience.
The first part featured Frank Lampard, Sam Allardyce, Jadon Sancho, Emma Hayes, Sean Dyche, Marvin Sordell, Lewin Nyatanga and Drewe Broughton. Some more recognisable than others, but each had an important story to tell.
Jadon Sancho opened with his own experience as a young player, and the story of leaving Manchester City for Borussia Dortmund in Germany becoming, within eighteen months, one of the hottest properties in Europe and an England international.
He encouraged young players to have the courage to test themselves, move to new environments where needed, and be more proactive about seeking fresh challenges. There’s plenty of criticism aimed at U23 football in the UK for failing to bridge the gap between academy and professional football. It’s encouraging that more top clubs are now loaning players further down the football pyramid, giving them a genuine taste of professional sport in an unfamiliar, often less comfortable environment. That can only benefit a young player, both as a footballer and, more importantly, as a person.
It was refreshing, too, to see him still enjoying the process itself , still wanting to play and be creative in training every single day. As coaches, particularly at grassroots level, it’s worth remembering to leave room for play and creativity in our sessions. It was interesting to note that Germany’s national programme is now dealing with the fallout of an earlier focus on building winning teams and tactics at very young ages.
There are valuable lessons here for clubs and coaches, in the kind of environment we build to support younger players. Are we too results-driven? Do we sometimes focus on the wrong things entirely?
His closing advice landed hardest for me, and could genuinely help sports parents supporting their young athletes: stay focused, keep working hard, and control what you can control. There’s little to add to that.
Next came the Welsh duo of Gareth Bale and Lewin Nyatanga, who played together but whose careers took very different paths.
Gareth spoke about the shift from children’s sport, the fun of playing with friends, having a laugh to the pressures and downsides of the professional game, and how he’d lost that “childlike feeling” along the way.
That backs up what we already know about why children play sport in the first place. A child’s motivation is often very different from an adult’s. Based on the work of Amanda Visek, winning and playing in tournaments sit well down a child’s own list of priorities at a young age.
For any child in an academy or performance environment, we owe it to them to shield them from these pressures for as long as we possibly can, and to make sure the whole process stays genuinely fun.
Gareth also spoke about being seen as “the player, not the person” — part and parcel, I suppose, of being in the limelight. It got me thinking about how important it is for every club and culture to work on the holistic development of young athletes, and how clubs and parents at home can support that together.
It’s something we work hard on with a number of National Governing Bodies, and it’s encouraging to see growing awareness and good practice across a range of sporting environments. It matters that we develop rounded, multi-faceted athletes so that if sport doesn’t work out, they can go into whatever field they choose and thrive there too.
For parents, it’s genuinely important that we don’t define our children by their sporting ability. We all love our children and want them to succeed, but they should be special to us because of their character and the positive impact they have on our lives, not because of how they perform on a pitch. Those lines can blur easily, and it’s worth taking a moment, as sporting parents, to reflect on that.
Drewe Broughton and Marvin Sordell have both done outstanding work raising awareness of mental health, and it’s genuinely encouraging to see more people speaking openly about it. Both stressed the importance of staying true to who you are as a person acknowledging that’s rarely easy, but that it’s a genuinely critical part of healthy development.
Do we check in with our children to ensure that they have someone that they can go and talk to? Do we create environments within our sporting contexts where parents also feel safe in approaching the relevant people?
Many parents and children keep feelings bottled up as they worry about the implications of being honest or potentially rocking the boat within their environment. Many live in fear that if they even speak to someone in a position of authority in their child’s life, that it may have negative ramifications for their child involved in the process.
Do we, as clubs, do enough to support parents and children through these moments? Would it be worth clubs having someone independent that players and parents can speak to openly?
Next came three prominent managers, Frank Lampard, Sean Dyche and Emma Hayes each offering a genuinely valuable insight. Frank spoke about understanding social media, something that should be a core part of any young player’s education, and about “controlling the controllables.”
We lean heavily on that idea in our own parent workshops, since so many parents pour time and energy into things they ultimately have no control over at all.
Sean Dyche spoke about a society shifting toward instant gratification. Patience is a genuine virtue, and one growing harder to find in both parents and children.
We already know sporting development is a long-term journey, so what happens to that process as the world around it keeps demanding things faster? Both parents and children need to understand this, and to build a genuine love of the process behind the sporting experience. That, ultimately, is what tends to lead to higher performance in the end. Should coaches and organisations in youth sport be setting longer-term goals, with smaller moments of instant gratification built into the journey along the way?
Emma Hayes spoke about the rise of the women’s game, and what struck me most was her point on physiology — the difference in jump range between male and female goalkeepers. It sounds obvious once said aloud, but the real message is in the thinking behind how we set games up in the first place.
Goals in the women’s game are the same size as in the men’s game, which leaves goalkeepers exposed rather than celebrated for genuinely great goalkeeping. Does it have to stay that way? Surely there’s no real case for a one-size-fits-all model here.
The goals in the women’s game are the same size as in the mens game, leading to goalkeepers being exposed rather than perhaps being celebrated as great goalkeepers. Does this need to be the case, surely there is not a ‘one size fits all’ model?
It is great to finally see some sports recognising that the children’s game is very different to that of the adult game and making positive changes to ensure that sports are a user friendly experience for the consumer. For parents and coaches, will it necessarily look like what we see on the TV? Of course not, but it does not need to. Our games, coaching sessions and everything around the youth sporting experience need to be engaging for young players or unfortunately the declining numbers across a number of sports will continue. Changing pitch sizes, changing the rules, reducing numbers in a team, changing scoring systems are just some of the positive steps been taken by NGB’s all around the world, but there are still many yet to follow suit both on match day and in the format of coaching sessions and in the coach education piece.
The final part of the documentary looked at the impact of society on football and vice versa. How we are still faced with issues of racism and homophobia. There is no doubting that we have made some progress but there is still a long way to go.
It was refreshing to hear from Ryan Atkins, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Les Ferdinand, Chris Ramsey, Troy Townsend and Danny Rose speak so openly about their stories and highlighting some of the issues that are still faced.
Sport and football can play such a key part in influencing society change but it requires brave leadership and people’s behaviours consistently reflecting what they may say. It is far easier to say the right things but modelling that behaviour on a regular basis is far more difficult.
Parents we have a key role to play here in building society from the bottom up. Our children take the lead from us, they are watching us, and we are their biggest role models. Everything that we say or do will be mimicked by them in some form or another.
How is it possible that we can have children as young as the age of 7 being racially abused on a football field? Take a moment as a parent to think how you would feel if it was your child in the same position?
I plead with you as parents to play a positive role in this in helping to tackle some of the issues and lets try to make society and sport as healthy and positive as it can be.
We hope that you will all get a chance to enjoy the documentary and would love to hear your thoughts. It is currently being aired on BT Sport and if you want to find out more information about the book and buy a copy then please click here.
