Childhood today is very different from when I was growing up. I’m sure the Mums & Dads reading this will agree. Kids today are hardly allowed out to play now. They don’t climb trees, ride bikes and build dens like they used to.
Sue Palmer, child expert and writer puts it a little more succinctly; ‘Play-unstructured, free range, loosely supervised play – is the birthright of every child. For the next generation to grow up healthy, balanced and able to benefit from their education, we must ensure that children once again go out to play.’
If we are always going to tell children what to do and treat them like mini adult professionals at eight and nine, when are they ever going to think for themselves?
Fear is everywhere in football in this country, fear of losing, fear of change, fear that the next coach knows more than you and the fear of giving control on the pitch to the kids.
Paul Cooper, Give Us Back Our Game
Street Football
The true measure of a nation's standing is how well it attends to its children - their health & safety, their material security, their education & socialisation, & their sense of being loved, valued, & included in the families & societies into which they are born.
UNICEF
In February 2007 a UNICEF report on the well-being of children in the 21 richest countries, shocked the nation. The UK finished rock bottom of the child well-being league table, while in first place, just over the North Sea was the Netherlands.
The report looked at 6 key areas & out of 21 nations the UK finished in the following positions;
'Unicef's report is a wakeup call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children & young people in a number of crucial ways.'
THE CHILDREN'S GAME
The problems faced by the nation's children are mirrored in kid's football with a deterioration of standards, despite the best efforts of the FA & others with the introduction of CRB's, Child Protection courses, the FA Level 1 course & Charter Standard Clubs.
One of the main problems is that the children's game no longer exists as street football has declined with the growing number of cars on our roads & the perceived increase in 'stranger danger'.
Children can no longer 'play out' as they used to & are increasingly kept indoors. The children's game no longer exists as adults now make the decisions for them that have led to a game with adult values & expectations.
For thousands of children football is still a positive experience, but equally for many children it is a negative one as they leave the game frustrated, confused & sad.
The State of the Game
It is recommended that children engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous daily physical activity. Government statistics claim 6 & 7 year olds are active for 146 minutes daily. But in a recent study it shows most girls manage just 22 minutes & boys 26 - an average of 24.
Experts have already predicted that by next year half of all kids will be overweight unless they get moving. Activity not only stops weight gain but cuts the risk of heart disease later in life.
As a parent myself I am shocked by this report. Although I shouldn't be surprised with stranger danger, traffic, more 'No Ball Games' signs going up & the short days in the winter, where can children play?
One of my first answers would be the playground. But due to health & safety my son is not allowed to bring a football to school! Skipping ropes have been banned as has running in the play ground due to the dangers they may cause!
Children may then head to their local football club for their chance to receive some exercise & a chance to have some fun & express themselves. But with the amount of adult interference the children's game no longer exists at a number of clubs. The result is that children don't play with a smile on their face & many from as young as U10 play the adults game. Many will drift away from the sport.
Experts also predict that over 1 million children will face mental health problems. This is due to children not being able to make their own decisions, being able to express themselves, growing up to quickly & not having some freedom.
But it is not all doom & gloom there is some great clubs & organisations available to children but do they get the recognition they deserve?
DutchSoccer4s.Org operates a community programme throughout Northern Ireland for all boys & girls to attend & play for fun.
Where we play there is no interference, we allow children to play with a ball & we don't shout & scream from the touch line. We also believe it is safe enough to allow children to run & shout with joy to express themselves. We are crazy....we also allow them to make their own decisions.
The Previous Generation
I have fond memories of growing up and playing football in my street many years ago! It is such a shame that we don’t see kids out playing street football as much. I believe this has lead to a drop in the natural technical ability in many children & to the obesity time bomb that this Government is facing.
Our Rules
We picked our own teams. We transferred players to make the teams fair or we offered the other team a couple of goals head start if we couldn’t agree. We, as children, played our own game without any adult involvement.
The worst incident we occurred was when my mate Philip went home in a huff and took the ball. The problem was he had a Mitre Delta – the King of footballs. Our replacement? One of those air balls that if the wind catches them they fly away quicker than a Stuart Pearce free kick!
After a disciplinary meeting (Philip getting to pick the teams) the game re-started.
Little Brothers
Were frowned upon at first, but to continue the conveyor belt of talent in street football we thought it was important to allow little brothers to take part.
To be honest we made the decision due to the fact that they couldn’t run as fast and were not street wise, unlike us. Therefore if any window or car was hit my mates & I could scarper leaving the unsuspecting little brothers to take the blame!!
It also solved our goalkeeping crisis of 1985 when no one would do nets. Simon and Neil were introduced to street football as the little brothers who had to do ‘buckets’ (nets).
Cars
We always frowned upon any car disturbing our game. My street was in the shape of a horse shoe so neighbours should have been more considerate & driven in from the bottom end of the street to get to their house. There were a few minor delays but nothing like the problem children of today have to put up with.
My sister drove a Vauxhall Chevette. She was very proud of her one seated car that was given a silver spray job! On this particular Saturday afternoon the banned little brothers were going to be re-introduced to our game for different reasons!
After taking a turn in goals my mate hit a wicked volley that I saved with my knees, only for the ball to rebound & hit the wing mirror of my sister’s car. You have never seen a mirror come off so cleanly in your life & after a couple minutes of laughing we had a very important decision to make.
We could go in and tell my sister the truth but that may mean a ban imposed from my parents and our game finishing early. My mate then would also suffer the ban as it was his shot that played a part in it and he wouldn’t have anyone to play with if my ban was made official.
We did the right thing and quickly placed the mirror back on the car & asked his little brother out to play. His youthful excitement and lack of knowledge of our devious plot went unnoticed. We continued playing but it took at least an hour to reconstruct the 'broken mirror' incident. Although this time little Simon sliced the ball only for it to bounce about four times behind him and lightly touch my sister’s car. The outcome was the mirror falling off the car to our shock and pointing at poor little Simon. The plan couldn’t have worked any better with my sister walking out at the time of it happening!!
Of course she couldn’t shout at poor little Simon!
On that day as kids we learnt the importance of decision making and taking responsibility, or rather not!
Our Pitch
I lived facing my mate. We used our gates for goals. The width of the footpath was the box area which left the road open for some serious 1 v 1 play and skills. This was the main focus for years until my next door neighbour put a thorn bush beside the upright of my gate.
This gave us serious problems to worry about. Now, on top of his dog there was a thorn bush & two dangers of our ball bursting. It meant our pitch had to change angles and we used our other neighbours’ gates as goals. I found these neighbours to be very accommodating for our games as you will read in the multi sports section! By changing the angle of our pitch it showed the importance of width and to switch play when we played 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 matches!
We soon were thanking the workmen who kindly put up a new street light beside my mates house. This introduced our new flood lighting system and increased game time to a new record of 9pm (bed time). It also offered a new post offering larger goals with an extension from the end of the gate. So we enjoyed improvements to our 'passy shooty' in game & tested the agility of the keeper!
As we got to the age of 9 and 10 our mates from school were allowed to walk further so we then were able to introduce the European Cup format of home & away legs. The trust and increased freedom we received from our parents created a problem. We now found that our games jumped from 3 v 3 and 4 v 4 to 7 v 7 and 8 v 8 due to more of our mates being able to attend away matches. We were ready for progression to the larger scaled games but our pitch and stadium wasn’t.
We studied the infrastructure and stadium improvements to Old Trafford, Anfield and Highbury on Match of the Day over a number of Saturday nights. This led to improved facilities and changing the direction of our pitch. We decided instead of playing from left to right we would play up and down.
Our street was very steep so it always meant we had the benefit at ‘home games’ as we played down the hill. I remember I scored a wonder volley and my mate Christopher was still running to retrieve the ball after we were all called in for dinner!
As we become bolder we put our pocket money together to buy chalk from the sweetie shop. We proceeded to mark out a full football pitch with the chalk on the road; nets, box, half way line – even the corner arcs. We even got an extra box of chalk after guaranteeing a sponsorship board for the sweetie shop owner behind the goal! This was our Wembley! Much to the disgust of our neighbours!
Neighbours
Most of our neighbours weren’t bad. They soon become accomplished with the children’s psychology. By letting us play and retrieve our footballs with little problems they gained a lot of respect.
The few neighbours that made an issue of us retrieving our ball got a few water balloons lobbed over at them!! They also became part of a new scoring system in our game of cricket...
I remember fondly one of our neighbours who later became my football manager and inspired me to get into coaching in my teenage years.
Multi Sports
What I always found very funny was the effect of a major sporting event on TV had on kids playing it in the street! Football was always my favourite but for 2 weeks every summer when Wimbledon was on everyone went searching for their Mums old tennis racket.
As soon as my neighbours went out we found that we had a great grass court to play doubles. The dodgy looking green wire fence splitting the two gardens up made it our No. 1 court! We enjoyed some terrific games...when we tired from tennis we would introduce a football & continue a game of head tennis or football tennis. This is something that really improves your touch & technical ability; I often use it in my training sessions now!
We always knew the return time of our neighbours so always made sure we were out of their garden in time. I think the funniest thing was seeing them baffled as to why their grass was baldy in parts. The sight of seeing them put down grass seed only helped improve our surface!
Another summer sport big in our street was cricket. I’m not a big fan of cricket so felt we needed to change the rules of the scoring. It came to us on one of the hottest days in the summer. Instead of running after every shot we devised a new scoring system. It goes back to our neighbours!
In keeping with the confidentiality act & not wanting to give them written evidence we will speak in code...If you managed to hit the ball into the garden of Mr H you would score a six. This was down to him taking so much time & effort into his garden. A shot into the garden of Mr C would also score you six due to his dog always bursting our footballs. This at times created a problem for the fielders as they felt it should have been a lower score as they had to retrieve the ball before the dog. The garden of Mr R only received a single run due to him being so nice about us getting the ball. There were only ever single runs scored for any ball hit into our own houses due to the safe return of the ball.
We did however offer bonus runs if you managed to hit any windows. An extra run for downstairs windows and two runs for upstairs windows but this normally meant stop for tea as we all raced away from the scene!
I am a big fan of kids trying out different sports & activities due to many sports developing speed, agility and quickness while other sports help develop balance, coordination and reactions.
So let’s get our children playing like we once did!
The New Generation
In a world where children can no longer play outside without supervision, parents and coaches have taken over. And the competitive drive adults bring in the game means youngsters no longer have time to fall in love with football, to play for fun and thus truly to develop their skills.
A quick question to youth coaches & parents. As a coach do you allow your players to play? Or, as a parent does your child get the freedom to express themselves in a match?
It has been clear to me for a number of years that youth football is full of bad commentators stopping our children from having fun, learning, trying new skills...basically these poor coaches are stopping children from being creative & expressing themselves.
A child learns to develop through trial & error. The coach should encourage them to try skills & turns to beat opponents. Offering snippets of guidance but always positive encouragement.
If a 'coach' shouts at a child or tells them that they made a mistake by trying to beat an opponent it will strike a negative with them. The outcome? The child won't try it again. They will only play within their comfort zone & therefore not develop or be confident to try new things.
A child, especially a young child, looks upon their coach as a father type figure. It is essential that Club's appoint suitable individuals.
The poor youth standards is stopping the great British players of George Best, Stanley Matthews & more recently the Paul Gascoigne's come through. Will the current structure ever produce a Messi or Ronaldo?
The problem needs to be addressed by the FA's, let's have more specialised youth coaching courses & specialised youth coaches. We are a football nation that doesn't like to support each other or share ideas in case we give an opponent the upper hand. Although the truth of the matter is that many youth set ups have a poor development programme in place already.
Maybe, if the 4 v 4 message can spread, we can rear a generation of footballers who play with creativity and without fear, who solve their own problems on the pitch, and who enjoy the game. Footballers who play to win, instead of losing through fear.
