The fight for the soul of football isn’t just happening in the offices of Uefa and Fifa, it’s taking place on pitches much closer to home. At the weekend games of football for 750 children aged five to six in Scotland were cancelled because of severe behavioural issues within the ironically named “Fun 4s” programme. Seventy-two red cards were handed out in the first week of the season. Accounts describe adults displaying aggression, intimidation and head-butting as if it’s the “wild west”.
This isn’t just a Scottish problem. Contacts I speak to in different roles around football confirm and almost accept that “youth football is atrocious”. This should be sounding major alarm bells, for the consequences go way beyond the pitch. The existing disciplinary systems and PR campaigns are not nearly enough to address and change the situation.
It’s incredibly selfish and socially corrosive for an adult to intervene and spoil the experience of kids playing football. There are no good outcomes. For the children, they learn to associate football, and potentially life more broadly, with violence and aggression. They are robbed of a space to be free, to play and develop and have fun alongside their friends. They see adults role-modelling a dog-eat-dog, win-at-all-costs mentality that is not laying the foundations for them to become good team players, school pupils or later civic-minded citizens. It also prevents young people from developing a love of being active and working positively in a team, perhaps one of the most powerful elements for a healthy life. It’s not a great way to develop parenting skills, either.
There is no shortage of evidence about how important it is – whether you are trying to develop skilful football players or healthy young people – that children need space to play, try stuff out and thrive. We also know that it’s what children want from sport. Research by Amanda Visek at the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University, confirms that when it comes to organised sport, kids just want to have fun. What counts for girls and boys are things such as trying your best, working hard, playing well together as a team. When mapping 81 determinants of fun, “winning” ranked 40th in importance.
The Campaign for Children’s Rights in Football is an independent and impartial organisation. It’s preparing to launch and trying to create a greater platform for its work in the sport internationally. It’s needed more than ever.
The Centre for Young Lives set up the Raising the Nation Play Commission that published its report last year as part of a campaign for a national strategy to put play back into children’s lives. Last year the Scottish government published Scotland’s Play Vision Statement and Action Plan 2025-2030 to ensure that “every child is able to play across all stages and aspects of their life to support their social development, resilience, language and communication development, health, physical and mental wellbeing”. The Scottish FA had a “Let Them Play” campaign. But events playing out in Scotland show just how gaping the void is between government strategies, research and reality. This is going to take more than a communications campaign and a swathe of disciplinary proceedings. But investing in what is required for a deeper cultural change could create many positive ripples across our communities if the governing bodies get serious about making this their priority.
Creating thriving environments, ethics and focusing on the experience of those around you must become the first lesson in coaching training courses whether beginner or advanced. This needs to be the first part of training to be an official, or the conversation when your offer to volunteer is accepted by a local club. For any parents bringing their children to a club, clear standards, expectations and clarity on behaviours on and off the pitch should be integrated from the very first moment.
There is a bigger issue here. Sport is cited rightly as a great space to develop character, resilience, confidence. But that only happens in sports environments set up to develop those things. That wasn’t what was on offer on these Scottish youth football pitches. More sport may not help young people. Better experiences and environments will. That’s a crucial difference that has been missed when metrics have simply focused on growing participation and levels of activity.
Leadership is needed at the highest level. There’s a gap for our prime minister to call for sport to change itself in order to offer more to children and adults across the UK. When Andy Burnham called for “care to be at the heart of everything we do” that should include youth football and other sports experiences.
Elite football clubs have a responsibility, too, as key role models for how to play football. If there are things that happen in the Premier League that we wouldn’t want our children to emulate, we have to stop and ask why these things are happening at all. This question opens up a greater space for football to be a force for good. From their own talent-scouting interests, it’s also vital that future players are able to build on strong foundations of creativity, connection and strong intrinsic motivation – ie the love of the game, not just a love of winning.
Football and sport more widely have the power to unite a nation, to connect communities, to build positive solidarity. But we must also acknowledge, admit and understand that done poorly, without care, without strong leadership and clear cultural principles based on the experiences of all involved, it can pull apart the civic fabric we so desperately need to strengthen.
