T is for Touchline.

Most grassroots games have the coaches and substitutes on one touchline, with the supporters (from both teams) on the opposite one. I’ve spent a lot of time on each side of that divide, variously as a parent or as a coach, and in both cases the atmosphere can vary widely.

There are coaches who maintain a constant flow of instructions to their players, micro-managing the game and seeking to ensure that their tactical masterplan is carried out to the last detail. Similarly, there are parents who are constantly telling their child to ‘get rid of it’, or to ‘run with it’ or whatever (or, worse, yelling at other people’s children to pass to their child). One of the problems with this is that often the parent is telling the player to do the exact opposite of what the coach has asked, putting the child in the impossible position of having to disobey and disappoint either their parent or their coach. That kind of dilemma can’t be good for their emotional wellbeing. Personally, whenever I’m on the touchline as a parent, I tend to keep my mouth shut most of the time, restricting myself to the occasional ‘great pass’, ‘well played’ or similar.

In a deleted scene from an earlier draft of Foul and Fair, James and Joao are talking tactics in the pub and Joao explains that everything the coach says on the touchline can be placed into one of four categories: encouragement (e.g. ‘great tackle’), information (‘man on’), instruction (‘get rid of it’) or criticism (‘that was rubbish!’). The easy thing for coaches (and parents) to do is to spend all of the game in the latter two categories, playing the game vicariously and never allowing the children to relax, enjoy and make their own decisions. It’s far better for the players if coaches give their instructions before the game, then restrict themselves to mostly encouragement and information. I was fairly vocal on the touchline as a coach, but I tried to keep to encouragement and information as much as possible. Football fans and coaches alike tend to agree that a key attribute of top players is the ability to make good on-pitch decisions. If that’s what we want our players to develop, we have to start by letting them actually make decisions for themselves. If – when – they get it wrong, that’s an inevitable part of the learning process, and it’s something we have to be tolerant of. More importantly, who enjoys being shouted at for an hour or more while they’re meant to be having fun? The biggest factor in determining how much your child enjoys their football might just be how willing you are to shut up and let them get on with it.