Don’t compare yourself in children’s football

Had a chat a while ago with a Dad about the Beckham documentary.

Main thing was about how hard his dad seemed to be on him when he was a junior player.

Now, this wasn’t him saying he felt it was too much or a bad thing.

It was more him thinking ‘do I need to be harder on my child to help their football’.

And this is something that so many get wrong.

What was clear from the doc was Beckham had ‘it’.

He was born with something that gave him the edge in football.

Not only that, he also had the obsession. He wanted to be out playing all the time and absolutely loved football.

This is the perfect combo – a kid with talent and the obsession.

They don’t need to be dragged to training.

They always want to play and they continuously improve as a result.

His Dad’s approach wouldn’t work for a lot of kids but it worked for Becks because he was happy to be out all the time kicking a football.

It falls down when you have an obsessive parent with a child who just isn’t that into it.

We all want our kids to have that passion for a sport; especially football

But passion builds in kids at different rates.

For some, it can take a few years but then they get the ‘bug’ and absolutely love it.

Many parents at Foot-Tech have had the hands-off approach and it has worked wonders for long-term participation in football.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many others who become too obsessive and their child soon wants to quit and never play again.

We can’t control if our kids are born with that football talent and obsession.

But we can control our actions that might make the difference between them staying in football or quitting.