Paco Lobato

Who has won? Have you fun? Two very different questions. With the second it should start something as simple and easy as it is interested in the fun of our children in the sport. But today, you are forgetting; on the other hand, the first question are tired listening to it continuously. In an indirect manner, we are already pressing encouraging results and competitiveness at a time of negative emotions be facilitating.

"Here is where I want to name the"fear”, that enemy of thousands of athletesspecifically of players with whom I work, a ballast that carry many of them regardless of the age.

Their relationship to both parents and coaches and managers directly or indirectly with children is fundamental to generate enthusiasm and motivation for sports, but quite the opposite when the tool used is the pressure, which makes it easy to display fear, anxiety and the abandonment of the same.

The pressure that athletes of base categories are today you want to seem more and more to that of a first Division team; pressed with the results, with winning sole objective, the crowd responds with the same anxiety that if saw a professional party, with his son is better than the other, that if it is necessary to put a kick to succeed the move is allowed and we have parents and coaches that also motivates them.

I wonder and effort? Anyone remember him? So beautiful and so enriching value that goes unnoticed in many football clubs, when it should be the main aim today.

Why not them we have grow? No sense speed and endangering the process of formation of their children. Life as we grow, everything is just becoming a competition: getting good grades to choose the University career, jobs, money... They already have time to compete.

The best thing for these stages is that they can enjoy the tranquility of the sport that they have chosen and without pressure of any kindleaving little by little make them decide. There are also parents and coaches who encourage them, support them and who don't give importance to the results. They are only interested to be happy, to acquire healthy habits that respect teammates, rivals, with the referee and a coach. Although they are less, I encourage them to continue supporting or their children, always being near them, choose the sport they choose. The important thing is that you enjoy playing sport and something as beautiful as football and not forget that values also play!

Short-termism. A new concept that defines our way of acting and which goes far beyond a football field. Think of the immediacy, in the compulsive consumption, today and now... Ideas all of them daughters of our time and, obviously, not beyond football. Short-termism is malicious and common among the elite, but it is still more damaging when it comes to football. It may be understandable that a football club's first level, where in game can have many millions, interests or feelings intertwined, lulled in making decisions and prioritize the immediacy. But that way of acting never can be extrapolated to grassroots football.

The important thing at young ages is not the result or the degree obtained, but the process and the capacity that have children to absorb knowledge, understand the game and soak up a correct ethic. That conditions us when making decisions and leadeth us into a virtuous circle in which the coach and their interests are in the middle of the process. How a technician can think long-term if you only will be a year with those players? How a coach can put in game victory giving priority to training?The coach must make an ethical effort, swim on occasions to countercurrent but be full. We will try to show some small reflections to succeed and not be carried away by the trend of short-termism.

1. The teaching of the school: We will not put today's education as the paradigm of teaching, but that there may be parallels that we can take advantage. In the same way that when we went to school there was a process of learning or a program to be followed (more or less successful), it should be in your football club. Coach, as did the teacher, must apply concepts that touch that year, giving priority to that whole group learn them, adapting course is each player, leaving aside if the results go as you expect or not. The important thing is to get to June and that the greater numbers of children have learned and understood what was playing.

2. The character of the child: Appraise all in children to build their character from well small. It is necessary to have an ethical and consistent attitude with them because at a very young age can understand as our daily attitudes lack integrity. What do we mean? Very simple. Coach can be throughout the week or all workouts insisting on a series of guidelines and concepts which then, in the middle of the match, changes them to win it. It is the largest of the contradictions. We are, as one would say and forgive the expression, selling our soul to the devil. We have sold us again to the short-termism.

3. Other sports: A swimmer or athlete is passed half career learning the technique of their sport and the other enhancing qualities and improving year after year with the goal of swimming or running a hundredths faster. In no time they bring into play its technology or abilities for a victory. There can be no sports so academic and a clearer example. There is a goal that cannot be moved or advance, and there is a process by which we all have to go. The goal is important and to reach it must follow the entire process, without interference, without cortoplacismos. Bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.

4. Reward in the future: When all desire is wonderful. You think you the best trainer, a kind of estagirita that has made miracles with those players. It is very likely that, to get that Cup, you've buried your integrity values, you've submitted your team in a harmful short-termism which, years later, will blink both humanly and football: players not that do not accept the defeat, others when rushing the result is not favourable or, worse yet, left football because they have not grown up with that integrity and have not forged a proper sporting character. Cases like these there are many. How many players that you've trained have a proper sports attitude and have developed all its capabilities? Get a day this reflection.

We could continue listing ideas and reflections, but we believe that the idea is clear. You decide whether to remain a short-termist or not. It will be your way of understanding this sport and life.