AIBU to think parents like these are an utter disgrace and ruin youth football?

[user47]

AIBU to think parents like this are the reason so few volunteers come forward to run grassroots football clubs?

https://x.com/any_spare/status/1832789074437894624?utm_source=www.upshot.email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=i-ll-give-them-a-slap&_bhlid=bd8309d26d9ebd36aa96921b4ba3d32c07709d2f

I didn't follow your link but as someone whose DH ran youth football teams for years, I can honestly say that people put in huge amounts of time and effort for sometimes very little reward and a lot of abuse/pisstaking.

@sorrynotathome Here is a BBC link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ge1zl7vkro

Appalling. DH refereed for years after an injury stopped him playing. He reckons kid's football is the worst for behaviour on the sidelines. He's abandoned matches because of it and had some awful abuse. Needs nipping in the bud. Apart from anything else, what is it teaching the kids?

This mild. My DS is 16 and a qualified FA Referee. He refuses to referee matches for over 11s but whilst doing at 8 year olds match last season, he had a Dad try and square up to him and started pushing him around, calling him a cunt because he sent his child off for two illegal tackles.

DS raised an official complaint with the football team and so did other parents and he ended up being banned for 1 season from attending games

The incident you've linked is DS old team ground and this was a regular occurance

Never fails to amaze me how angry the Dads get at children's football matches. You fucking dickhead, you little twat and fucking idiot are just some of the pleasantries they shout at their own children.

Ironic given looking at them, the last time they took part in sports themselves was at school.

So much aggression from some parents.

We had one team whose parents used to let their huge dogs run around the pitch; eventually we refused to play there.

And absolutely no aggression when my kids played cricket or hockey.

I love football as a game but the culture around it can be vile.

It's always been a game for yobs

Thankfully I coach girl's football, and there's a lot less bad behaviour in general, when it does happen it's always the bloody dads/dad coaches that are idiots.

Sure. all those 100s of millions of women, kids, men playing and they're all yobs... right-o

Pleased DGS has taken up rugby! The parents are far more civilised.

Well they're not all yobs, but I agree the ethos around the "game" encourages them - the tribalism is very strong and unfortunately some are more susceptible to that than others, which too often enables brutish behaviour

My headteacher ex refused to have it in his school; rugby and cricket yes, but football no. Needless to say this caused angst with a few knuckledraggers who believed he was thwarting a certain premiership career, but it also avoided a lot of trouble

Speak for yourself

Well if they behaved like that at a Premiership game they would be arrested and receive a fine and a life ban from the match - not the pathetic slip on the wrist @YellowphantGrey shows is common in kids football!

One child in a red top hit a woman wearing a black coat, I had to watch the footage three times, just goes to show that the kids are picking up on the adults behaviour

There's so much money to be made in professional league football, these badly behaved parents think their DC is the one whose going to make it big ( and keep them in luxury) so they resent anybody who tells them different. Look at the number of professional footballers who end up in trouble with the law, the sense of entitlement starts pretty early with some of them. @Seymour5 , it's ironic, Rugby is much more physically brutal and yet far more civilized

I coach U8 football and DS also players rugby. They’re incredibly different- football is proper teams, organised matches and very formal. The party line is it’s non competitive but in reality you’re grouped in divisions and everyone including the kids know which is the top/bottom division.

Rugby is much more relaxed, lots of rolling subs, no keeping score and a coach referees it. Personally I think the over formalising of football does no favours as it’s taken too seriously.

The parents are the biggest source of hassle for all coaches. I’m a parent who’s volunteering and I constantly think about quitting to escape the abuse and hassle.

@Gogosmarty

I saw some appalling behaviour of parents (yes mums as well) at girls football, one team we actually put a formal complaint in about and refused to play the return match (at their ground) due to the threatening and completely racist behaviour of the parents. (DDs team was half Asian, something to be celebrated for opportunity and diversity!)

What were they fighting about?
I mean the assumption is that they were arguing over the kids' match...but we don't know that. There are no details.

Agree. I refer to it as the sport for morons to watch.

There is a big age gap between my eldest and youngest BILs and my eldest BIL had his first child fairly young. This means that FIL, at one point, had an 18 year old son (who was a senior international at a sport that isn’t football) and a 6 year old grandson (who played youth football).

FIL reckoned that the parents of the 6 year old youth football were terrifying whilst the parents of the “teens who were on team GB in a sport that isn’t football” were far more relaxed!

It's too uncivilised. They should let the girls play because they don't act like that.

YANBU. I took ds out of a football club he'd started going to, because it was full of typical football lads, egged on by their typical football dads. Bunch of yobs. Ues I know that plenty of fans and some players are not like that, but it's enough of them to spoil the reputation of the game.

When ds was at primary school, the Head was constantly having to impose temporary bans on the boys playing football at lunch time because it caused so much trouble.

The couple that ran my DS’s team were very dogdy, a fight broke out at one match caused by them. People thought they were scamming people too.

They should get a warning first, then if they repeat this behaviour they and their children are banned for a designated amount of time?

This is the very reason my DD won't allow my football mad DGS to join a boys' football team. Such a shame

It always makes me laugh on a Saturday when driving to my daughters athletics. Drive passed the local rec and it's loads of dads/male relatives standing on the sidelines shouting at the kids. Get to athletics (and swimming on a different day come to mention it) and it's 98% mums who take the kids to these other clubs. It's only football that seems to attract the dads to take them and watch. I have heard of abuse at the local rec but have never witnessed it as my daughter hates football.