The beautiful game or so they say. Has anyone ever watched a football match and come away thinking it was anything but beautiful? Games where players where more likely to have banged on their chests King Kong style than to have attempted to pass the ball to a team mate. Players behaving like animals, puffing out their chests and strutting around like they have a television under each arm, whilst being encouraged to "Get stuck in" and "get rid of the ball". And this is a match between children, not a Sunday league pub team.
Many people have their theories on what is wrong with English football and why we don't produce elegant footballers. Get your self down to your local park and you might begin to understand where we are going wrong. There is nothing wrong with children being competitive and wanting to win but the focus needs to be on getting the ball on the floor and playing football not just hitting it 50 feet in the air. Until we learn to be patient with young players, allow them to make mistakes and praise them for their technique instead of encouraging them to rely on their physical attributes to win, then we will continue to fall behind countries like Spain.
Wednesday 17 July 2013
Wednesday 10 July 2013
Depression in football
I watched a documentary last night about depression in football and found it really sad and quite frightening.
As a mum of an academy footballer I am aware of the pressures placed on footballers from a very young age and can see how easy it would be for a footballer to slip into depression. Yes, you may argue, what have they got to be depressed about, they have money and the world at their feet, but I don't think it is as simple as that. From a young age talented footballers are forced to evaluate their worth based on how well they have performed. They are compared to their peers - ranked according to how tall they are, fast they are and how high they can jump, regardless of the countless research into adolescent growth patterns. They are signed to clubs from a young age and then when they are unhappy they are told they can leave as long as another club can pay the compensation, which they then set at a stupid amount. These children are a commodity in a huge industry and their self esteem and happiness means nothing.
And yes at the end of all of that a few, a small handful of children may make it. And then the real fun begins. Forced week in week out to prove their self worth in front of millions of fickle fans and press just waiting to knock them off their pedestal. Yes some footballers get paid a lot of money for what they do. But for how long a football career is very short lived and they then have to readjust to life without football when it is all they have ever done, every night, every weekend since they were 7 or 8. You may have little sympathy for footballers but it's time the FA did more to raise awareness of depression amongst footballers and made it less of a taboo subject or we may have many more Gary Speeds on our hands.
As a mum of an academy footballer I am aware of the pressures placed on footballers from a very young age and can see how easy it would be for a footballer to slip into depression. Yes, you may argue, what have they got to be depressed about, they have money and the world at their feet, but I don't think it is as simple as that. From a young age talented footballers are forced to evaluate their worth based on how well they have performed. They are compared to their peers - ranked according to how tall they are, fast they are and how high they can jump, regardless of the countless research into adolescent growth patterns. They are signed to clubs from a young age and then when they are unhappy they are told they can leave as long as another club can pay the compensation, which they then set at a stupid amount. These children are a commodity in a huge industry and their self esteem and happiness means nothing.
And yes at the end of all of that a few, a small handful of children may make it. And then the real fun begins. Forced week in week out to prove their self worth in front of millions of fickle fans and press just waiting to knock them off their pedestal. Yes some footballers get paid a lot of money for what they do. But for how long a football career is very short lived and they then have to readjust to life without football when it is all they have ever done, every night, every weekend since they were 7 or 8. You may have little sympathy for footballers but it's time the FA did more to raise awareness of depression amongst footballers and made it less of a taboo subject or we may have many more Gary Speeds on our hands.
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