The Eyebrow's Daily Musing

I agree to a certain extent. However, school pupils must go to school to learn; they have no choice.Whereas, football is an optional activity. There has to be an element of fun in every session or most players will quickly lose interest.

I agree that hard work, dedication and practice will bring on a player, but this doesn't have to be "drudgery". I also agree that their is a lot of satisfaction and joy to be taken from the fruits of labour, both collectively and individually. But as I've already said, the journey itself should be joyful, or what's the point?

Don't get me wrong, I don't confuse "fun" for messing around. During my sessions, there is no chatting or ball bouncing while coaches are talking. Full attention is given to the session. While players are on their water break, that's the time to have a joke and chat to team mates, but once they step back on the pitch they should be focused. When the drills, rondos, SSGs, conditioned games, game related practices, phys prep starts, the players should have joy and fun in playing the game.

If the session is boring, slow moving and a drag.... that's the fault of the coach. It should still be fun.

 

Was watching a game at the weekend, u10s, regional level stuff with some good football on show. Coaches were delivering concise, clear and relevant information to their players, who were by and large playing some clever attacking football.

A tight first twenty minutes was encouraging to watch. The second period though, things changed.... the goals started to flow. Some very well worked, some great strikes and demonstrations of individual skill. But one element of the play left a horrible taste in my mouth: the goal celebrations.

Children walking to the touchline, arms outstretched like Jesus Christ on the cross. Spotty faces beaming with smug pride as they walked into the open arms of their coach.... it was a f***ing sickening sight (pardon my French). No humility, no class nor respect for the opposition. The worst part, the coaches were condoning this buffoonery. The "soccer moms" almost wetting their knickers in delight as their snot nosed offspring pointed to the name on the back of their shirt after scoring a goal. Half of the "celebrations" mimicked from FIFA video games, it was so disheartening. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, some lad starts doing some awful "loser dance", which I've since been informed is some other video game move from Fortnite. His coach beaming with pride. At that point, had he been my player, I'd have whipped him off the pitch and we'd have played a man down.

What is this delight in rubbing the opposition's nose in defeat. Or this over inflated sense of self-worth that is being bred through a lot of grassroots football. It culminates in the goal celebration.

I'm a big believer in instilling core values within my players and squad as a whole. One of which is dignity. This falls into one of my wider football philosophies: you can be an animal on the pitch; a gentleman off of it. However, I'd caveat that with being gracious in victory. It's so important.

For me, there's nothing wrong with passionately celebrating a goal, but individualistic, smug, idiotic nonsense will never earn you respect within an Eyebrow squad.