Having sat down to watch the much-talked-about documentary ‘No Hunger in Paradise’, I felt it was worth looking at what parents, coaches and anyone involved in youth sport could take from it.
The programme focused on the professional game and academy pathways, but the issues underneath it and the attitudes of the adults around it apply just as much at grassroots level.
At WWPIS we have a lot of sympathy for well-intentioned parents who set their children out in sport with no real understanding of the system they’re stepping into. Most are decent, sensible people who get swept along and, without really noticing, become a product of the environment placed in front of them.
They want what’s best for their child. Everything they do comes from love. Our job is to help channel that love and emotion somewhere more productive, rather than let it curdle into the criticism and ‘parent-bashing’ that too often gets aimed their way by coaches and organisations.
What’s needed is a genuine culture shift and every part of the system has a role to play in it, organisations, coaches and parents alike. Parents need better education and support from the organisations they’re part of, without fear that asking a question or admitting uncertainty will somehow count against their child.
Coach education needs to go beyond cones and drills. Coaches need the personal and social skills to develop character and life traits in young athletes, not just their game. If a young or inexperienced volunteer finds that daunting, or genuinely believes their job stops at the technical side, clubs should have someone in place to mentor and support them in that wider role.
Children are playing soccer
My good friend Reed Maltbie, who coaches in the US, put it well: plenty of coaches now have the technical know-how, but far fewer have worked out how to put it into practice day to day.
Here’s what I personally took from the documentary as a sporting parent myself.
Protect unstructured play. The reference to “cage” football stuck with me. As organised sport has grown, it’s replaced a lot of the park football and pick-up games that used to happen naturally a generation ago. We need to encourage creativity and resist turning the back garden into another coaching session. Let play be play.
Build a genuine love of the sport and of hard work. Steven Gerrard spoke in the documentary about loving the game, working hard, and learning something every day. Criticise a child too young, replay every mistake on the drive home, or live your own ambitions through them, and that love has little chance of taking root. Praise the effort and the graft, not the goals scored or whether they won at the weekend.
Don’t adultify the process too soon. What we watch on TV is the finished product. Getting a seven-year-old to play like a professional isn’t a success if everything else falls away in the process. Plenty of sports are already reshaping their formats to be more child-friendly, moving away from older versions of the game that were really built for adults. That work needs to continue, and our environments need to stay as child centred as possible.
Beware the scout. It’s only human to tell a parent something nice about their child, and their guard drops. Telling a parent their child is talented is the easiest job in football.
However, you must ask questions, find out more and make sure whatever you’re signing up to is genuinely in your child’s best interests.
Ask for help. If you’re unsure about the system you’re stepping into, ask. That’s exactly why we built an independent space for parents on our site, somewhere to get support without worrying it will come back on your child.
Keep it in perspective. Family events matter. Missing one training session or match is not a lack of commitment, and it won’t be the end of a selection dream. I’ll admit we once missed a major family event for a game of football. We regret it, and we wouldn’t do it again.
Have a plan B. The odds of reaching the very top are slim, that doesn’t mean the dream isn’t worth chasing, and children should be allowed to have it. But as parents, we need to manage the expectation around it. Make sure there’s plenty else going on in your child’s life. If it all ended tomorrow, have you given them other things to sink their teeth into?
Don’t fuel the ego. We’ve touched on this before. Give a child too much too soon and you risk feeding a dream that isn’t really theirs and quietly reducing their ability to weather things when it gets hard. Do they need the most expensive boots, a social media following, or a pedestal? Or do they need to build their own reasons to keep going?
Keep the outside noise down. Make sure the people advising your child are doing so for the right reasons and are properly qualified to do it. Too many competing voices can do real damage to a young athlete.
Keep them working at school. Arsène Wenger made the point that a generation ago, parents would tell their kids: no schoolwork, no football. That threat still has value. Never let the dream override education. Plenty of footballers now leave school with strong GCSE and A-Level results while training professionally, it’s entirely down to attitude and time management, and there’s no reason it can’t work that way for any sport.
I hope this gives you a useful summary of the documentary, and a few things worth holding onto as parents including letting your children dream big, while quietly having a plan in place if things don’t go quite the way any of us hope.
