A few weeks ago, at the league cup final at Wembley, Kai Havertz and Trent Alexander-Arnold ended up in a tussle on the side-line during what was a frenetic 0-0 game.
(I understand the irony of this because I’m paying to watch that with my son because football is his thing. I am contributing to this problem massively).
They both got up from the grass and ended up pressing their foreheads against each other in what the commentator described as ‘handbags’.
That should be a red card.
If you find yourself in a football match head-to-head with someone else, pressing foreheads against each other and posturing, it should be a sending off because the next step on from that is a headbutt or a punch or something worse.
Of course, in the football culture it’s no big deal and people like it as entertainment but sadly at that point there are millions and millions of young footballers watching that game and as those actions go unpunished, so they become further normalised.
Then fast forwards to an under 14’s YEL league game on a Sunday afterwards which I’m coaching.
The game has been a bit frantic because myself and my co-coach, Tim, who helps out on a Sunday but otherwise coaches another team so can’t attend training on Thursdays had turned up to find that there were no parents on the side-lines because they’d dropped their boys off and left.
We had no one to run the line and the referee didn’t turn up so, Tim is rereferring the game and I start by being the linesman and therefore I couldn’t coach.
After about 5 or 10 minutes one of the parents arrived with a coffee in hand so then they ran the line and then I was able to coach a little bit but throughout the game there was a parent shouting at Tim, who remember is a volunteer coach and a volunteer, volunteer referee.
Let’s get this straight, it’s division 2 of the YEL under 14’s boys league (and there is a premier league so it’s effectively division 3).
None of these boys are ever going to be professional footballers.
There is a guy standing down the line a bit further behind the fence but still quite close to the pitch with a CP Company hat on.
I didn’t know what these hats were but apparently all the boys tell me that it denotes a ‘roadman’.
All the way through the game he shouted at the referee until we were 2-0 up amazingly and about 10 minutes to go. The referee (Tim) gives a freekick to the opposition team who CP riverside is supporting just outside the box.
The next things CP Company shouts “ref is that 10 yards?”.
Now let’s be absolutely clear about this. The FA promotes that the parents are not supposed to shout at referees under any circumstances, certainly not through the whole of the game and we’re all there to make it better for the boys so they have fun and enjoy playing football for which they will never be paid and learn skills about life and about how to deal with a team and how to deal with adversity.
So, I’m quite close in proximity to CP Company at this point and I say to him (and this is a rehearsed line on my part for all this stuff that continues to happen) “please would you not shout at the referee as it sets a bad example for the boys on the pitch”.
He goes ballistic.
The conversation between us ends with me suggesting that he might be a safeguarding risk on the side-lines and him suggesting that he might punch me in the face.
While the two incidences are not inextricably linked, the normalisation of aggressive behaviour, in football particularly, is absolutely normalised throughout society and if you’re not part of the solution your part of the problem.
I’ve reported his conduct to the league, but nothing will happen because it just goes on a form and gets filed and there is no sanction so there’s no reason for him not to do it again.
Two weeks later, I’m running the line on the Saturday team that Callum plays for and I don’t coach and at the end of the game I’ve got parents shouting at me as the linesman because they think the referee is a cheat.
The referee is a grown man who usually referees senior games but is helping out refereeing an under 14’s game. He doesn’t give a sh*t about who wins the game.
The truth is that the team that we were playing against was the dirtiest team I’ve ever seen, and they don’t usually get called out by the usually 17-year-old referees (if they turn up).
And so, the grown man gives the fouls and therefore he’s biased.
And we’re complaining that we can’t get referees for games.
Where else in life is it acceptable for middle class grown-ups whose children are close by to scream at somebody, they don’t know about them being a cheat at a boy’s football match?
We’re entering a part of history where the world is going to change and where we might not be able to get energy as cheaply and food as cheaply and plastic for our children’s birthday parties from china as cheaply (or even at all).
The tendency to want to shout at other people is not going to go down, it’s going to go up.
I think it’s time we started to learn to take a breath about football.
Blog Post Number - 3025