Choosing an academy
What we looked for, what we actually got, and the two-academies-one-boy tension between Vicky FA and Sporthood. What mattered turned out to be different from what we thought would.
Most of parenting a young player is a series of decisions with no clear answer — which academy, which tournaments, which invitations to accept and which to turn down. Here are the ones we've made, and what we'd tell ourselves before making them again.
What we looked for, what we actually got, and the two-academies-one-boy tension between Vicky FA and Sporthood. What mattered turned out to be different from what we thought would.
Too many burns them out; too few and they don't grow. Playing up an age, sitting one out, picking the ones that teach something. We've got it right and wrong both ways.
A good coach at nine isn't the one with the most badges — it's the one the kid runs to training for. Knowing when a relationship is working, and when it quietly isn't.
Turning down a Germany invitation at U-8 because he said it was too early — and trusting that call. Preparing for Poland and then walking away from it for reasons bigger than football. The no's have taught us more than the yes's.
What a young player actually needs versus what's being sold to us. The short answer: less than you think, and comfort beats branding every time.
The unglamorous engine under all of it — showing up, the early starts, the training on the days he'd rather not. What we've tried to model rather than enforce, and how often we get that balance wrong.
Choosing football again and again over the easier thing, and the small sacrifices that ride along with it. Working out how much of that drive is his to own and how much is ours to protect.
Staying with a team, a coach and a plan through a rough patch instead of chopping and changing at the first setback — the hardest thing to hold when a season goes sideways.
Still being writtenThese are starting points, not conclusions — the specifics, the stories and the numbers get filled in as we live them.