Touchline View: Why the journey home is so important
Touchline View is a weekly column exploring youth football, player development, coaching and sport, written by Damien Hillen. Damien is a UEFA A Licence Coach, former First Team Coach and current Academy Director at Newry City AFC, with extensive experience in coaching and developing young players. He examines how players learn, think, move and grow, while exploring how football and sport can build confidence, discipline, resilience, character and ambition, both on and off the pitch.
The new season is only a few weeks away and soon cars will be making their way to games across the country. Boots will be thrown into the boot, parents will discuss the opposition on the way there and children will be full of excitement about the game.
Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about what happens before kick-off and during the match. Coaches plan training sessions, players prepare for games and parents look forward to watching their kids play.
One area that is often overlooked, but is just as important, happens after the final whistle. It's during the journey home that many children begin to make sense of the game they have just played. The conversations they hear between parents and other adults can have a much bigger influence than we realise. Without meaning to, we begin shaping how children judge their own performance, what they believe is important in football and, ultimately, how they feel about the game itself.
Every child leaves the pitch with a different experience. Some will be delighted with how they played. Others will be disappointed with the result or annoyed by a mistake they made. Some will want to replay every moment of the match, while others won't want to talk about football at all.
As adults, we often feel we need to analyse the game immediately, but children don't all process experiences in the same way. Some need time before they're ready to talk and that's perfectly normal. The silence on the journey home doesn't always need to be filled.
When those conversations do happen, we need to be careful about what we choose or who we choose to talk about, for a couple of reasons.
I've watched hundreds of youth football matches where the best player on the pitch wasn't the one scoring goals, creating chances or making spectacular last ditch tackles. Their positioning prevented attacks before they developed. Their awareness allowed others to receive the ball in better positions, their passing controlled the tempo of the game, or their pressing forced mistakes by the opposition. It's what many call the unseen part of the game because there isn’t a highlight or standout moment that people remember.
Rodri is probably the best example of this in world football. He won Player of the Tournament at Euro 2024 and then won it again at the World Cup. Across those two tournaments he scored just one goal, didn't register a single assist and yet was recognised as the player who influenced games more than anyone else. He wasn't recognised because of headline statistics. He was recognised because of the quality of his decisions, his positioning, his awareness and how he made the players around him better.
That should make all of us stop and think. If the best player in the biggest tournaments in world football isn't measured simply by goals and assists, why do so many of our conversations with children revolve around exactly those things?
The journey home is where we can teach children what matters in football. If every conversation is about who scored, who made a mistake or whether the team won, children naturally begin to believe that's how they should judge themselves. If, instead, we notice intelligent runs, bravery in possession, good decisions, hard work and resilience, we help them understand that football is much more than the final score.
Another thing I've noticed over the years is that children hear far more than we realise. I remember a situation where a child repeated to one of their teammates some of the comments they had overheard adults making about them on the journey home from a match. The child was understandably upset and, before long, what had started as an offhand conversation between adults had become a complaint to the club. It was a reminder that children don't just hear our conversations, they remember them.
Many families choose to share lifts to matches, it means children often travel home with other players, parents and adults. Naturally, the conversation turns to the game. The referee, the coach, team selection, or another player's performance or mistake. Football creates debate. It's one of the reasons so many people love the game. What we forget is that children are sitting in the back of the car listening to every word, good and bad.
Research shows that our brains focus more on negative experiences than positive ones. Think about social media. If you receive one hundred positive comments but one negative comment, which one stays with you? Most of us remember the negative one. Children are no different. A passing criticism of the coach or another player can stay with a child long after the adults have forgotten the conversation.
That doesn't mean parents should never discuss football or the game - far from it. It just means that little ears are listening, and our audience is often much younger than we think.
Parents and coaches also have different roles. Coaches analyse performances, challenge players and they should be helping them to improve. Parents don't need to become another coach on the journey home.
Their role is every bit as important, but it's different. Together, coaches and parents create the environment that determines whether a child returns to training feeling confident and excited, ready to play again.
This is key because the players who fulfil their potential are the ones who enjoy playing the game, they work hard, listen and keep going when it’s tough.
As another season starts, thousands of conversations will take place on the journey home. Most of them will be forgotten, lets make sure they aren’t remembered for the wrong reason.