Hate the player development not the game

My enthusiasm for the new season has been tempered already. After just one practice. Nothing to do with the players complaining when I made them run 25 laps of the field as a warm-up before working on some box-to-box sprints for half an hour. It’s not even the Botoxed weatherman parent annoying me about worrisome cloud formations. No, it’s the president of the club. Up to his old tricks. He sent an email to all coaches this morning reminding us our first priorities are player development, character building and skills enhancement. Yup, it’s a regular losers’ manifesto where the word “winning” is notable for its absence.

Suitably appalled by this defeatism, I decide to put a new section in my coaching manuscript. It’ll be a translation guide at the back of the book, an appendix designed to help newcomers to the game understand the true meaning of buzz words and phrases. First on the litany is “player development”.

Player development is a word you will hear a lot in travel team soccer, mostly used by higher-ups to convey the impression that they don’t care about winning or trophies as long as the players are improving year on year. In reality player development is a phrase that is the last refuge of every bad coach, an excuse for not winning, and a way of placating dumb parents into thinking the coach is doing a good job. Essentially, player development is code for failing to win and learning to lose, two things you never want your kids exposed to. It is usually deployed by the type of coaches who like to give equal playing time to all squad members regardless of ability and who waste hours of practice time working on improving their players’ technical ability. Regularly used also to explain losing seasons. Sample: “We lost more games than we won but in terms of player development we learned a lot in this campaign.”

Decide this section of the book will be dedicated to El Presidente, the lover of losing.