As I noted in last week’s blog, I will focus on the transition into an Academy Scholarship (the Professional Development Phase) for the next few weeks due to the number of players who will be transitioning into that environment over the next few months or so. This week is about developing your awareness of how a coach is likely to behave. That is not to say it is like this everywhere, but I have researched 21 professional clubs and spent time in many more. There remains a largely authoritarian approach to coaching. Some may find words (quite a few, in fact) in this week's blog disturbing.
"It’s just football, isn’t it? That’s the way it goes"
It remains the case that, to lead younger players, many coaches choose to adopt a fear-based approach. This may be a small amount of fear or it may be quite a significant amount of fear, but the evidence is overwhelming that coaches control players by instilling elements of fear in their relationships with them. On some occasions, this is demonstrated by physical and verbal acts of intimidation. For example, the following group of players said:
1. Ah, he does love kicking a bottle to be fair.
