Thread by @DoubleEph

I want to rant about football. No, not the beautiful game we all watch on TV. Something else I find increasingly disturbing as my kids get older. I wonder if the way the sport is structured is worsening whatever racial/class divides we have in this country.

Someone’s probably done some research on this but I’m too lazy to find it so I’ll just use anecdotes. Both my boys played in tournaments this weekend (loads of them now over the summer). Now we are getting text messages about signing up to some premier league clubs’ academies

Now, my views have been shaped by reading this some years ago so I’m not falling for that. In a competition between football and education; I will do everything within my power to ensure football loses for my kids. And it IS a competition. Constantly

It feels to me like this is a gaping regulatory hole that football exploits to sell dreams to kids and their parents. And something that can be fixed by reining the sport in to ensure parents are not taking excessive risks with their kids’ futures in the pursuit of ephemera

Was having a chat with a friend yesterday and we were talking about Bukayo Saka’s parents and the amount of sacrifice his father made (they go to my former church). It’s paid off handsomely for Bukayo, obviously, but not quite for his brother. But failures are so invisible

Couple of weeks ago, took my younger son to a football tournament. We came up against a team from east London and got absolutely pasted 8-0. Those kids were GOOD. Passing and movement, proper juego de posicion stuff. Now bear in mind - these were under 8s. Clearly well drilled

But all I could think about was - how much time are these kids dedicating to football (at the cost of so many other things) to get them to play like this where they instinctively run into space and pass cleverly? It surely has to be a lot

We turn down half the invitations we get (my wife and I both work 9-5) but some of the invites are just disturbing. How are people allowed to have a football tournament for Under-8s that starts at 5pm on a Tuesday in Newmarket? It just feels so wrong

My older son plays rugby and it’s a world apart. There has only ever been once where the sport came close to clashing with school - Jamie George was coming to the local club and they wanted the kids to meet him. It could only happen on a weekday at 5.30. And they were apologetic

Other than that, everything happens on Sunday or when it has to happen during the week, much later in the evening under floodlights. There has never been a time when I felt rugby was competing with school work, ever

Two stories. First one - a guy I used to work with. Proper Essex lad with bright shirts and ties and a bit too much (in my opinion, anyway) gel in his hair. But underneath all of that was a real go-getter of a guy with a lot of fierce determination

His son was a really good footballer. Got scouted by Chelsea and joined their academy. He was so good, his dad (my colleague) was offered a coaching role with the club. When the boy was 15, he got tackled during a game and long story short, he got an injury that ended his career

At that point, my colleague decided to pick up AAT and become an accountant. Which was how he ended up in the city. But it could all have gone *really* badly. I don’t think his son ever got over the disappointment and I’m not sure what he’s doing now.

And second. One of my closest friends here just got promoted to MD at the bank where he works. He was in a football academy from when he was 7 till he was about 14 when he said he got totally burned out. He’s still a technically gifted player - you can tell if you kick him a ball

But he never fails to tell me how lucky he is. He says he got as far as he did in his career with 90% emotional intelligence and 10% academic prowess he’s probably self deprecating but his point is that football took away any chance of education he had

These 2 stories have ended well and tbh, you can still have a decent life here even if you are not academically inclined and you don’t go to university. But still; I just wonder. Because this is something that I think can/should be fixed to stop football displacing education

And while I don’t have data, the effects look to be worse for ethnic minority kids and the white working class - two groups that everyone seems to be talking a lot about lately…

Anyway; rant over.