WHEN WILL FOOTBALL LEAVE BULLYING CULTURE IN THE PAST?
CRAIG Bellamy knows how it feels to be on the wrong end of bullying in football. Life as a junior player at Norwich City became such a bruising daily experience at the hands of the club’s veteran defender John Polston, whose boots he cleaned, that he would weep at his parents’ house in Cardiff when it was time to go back.
Every time he returned, Polston would order Bellamy to reintroduce himself and if the young Welshman had not made the tea to the defender’s satisfaction, he would throw it in the sink and demand another. ‘I think the rest of the players saw it as character-building,’ Bellamy reflected in his autobiography. ‘I agreed with certain aspects of it but it felt like bullying really. It felt like they were trying to break you.’
The old ways of hammering young players to prepare them for the physical battles of British football seem out of date. The game has awakened to the notion of nurturing, respecting and protecting children and considering their mental health. ‘Young players often learn more from honey than vinegar,’ says Simon Jordan, the former Crystal Palace owner who helped build a thriving academy at the club.
David White, the former Manchester City player, became a club legend after making it through Tony Book’s unremittingly tough management, but he does not believe that is the way. ‘If your youngsters are going in scared, you are not creating good footballers,’ he says.
‘There has to be a totally different attitude. There is also the consideration that some of them will not make it. We are not just trying to develop them as footballers but as human beings.’
White’s father was so determined that his son should make it, that the City starlet felt unable to tell him that he had been abused by Barry Bennell, the convicted paedophile. Now White works to safeguard children in the game, through the SAVE Association he co-founded.
Old habits die hard, of course. Try telling coaches brought up in a school of hard knocks that more sensitivity is required with academy players who are already earning 10 times what they did.
Bellamy has denied bullying in his Under-18s coaching role at Cardiff City after the parents of two trainees provided Sportsmail with detailed testimony to the contrary, though his observations on the academy culture suggest that he does believe it should be tougher.
‘My biggest concern with most kids now is that they don’t have that edge to want to be better than their mate,’ he said a few years back.
‘Football takes such good care of you now at every age group that some of the hunger’s gone.’
Peter Beardsley, suspended by Newcastle United since last January accused of bullying, endured an even bleaker learning environment under Bob Stokoe at Carlisle.
‘The tough ways are what he knows,’ says a source. But where does the line between toughness and bullying actually lie? The welcome removal of football’s worst excesses is accompanied by an unease among some inside football that the game is becoming too soft and that coaches find themselves the target of parents whose children are not good enough to make the grade.
‘I wanted our scholars to understand the vigour and rigour it was going to take,’ says Jordan.
HE added: ‘You build discipline and strength of character by subjecting people to environments that build character in them. That’s not changed. But the parents are a problem. They’re desperate for their sons to make it. They tell them what they want to hear rather than what they need to know. Parents’ expectations need to be managed. Agents play a part in this, too. They are influencing parents.’
Some coaches feel the same. ‘A parent challenged me because I let his son have it during an Under 18 game,’ says one. ‘By Under 18, players need to know the score.’ Several parents have told
Sportsmail that there is a sense of entitlement and self-importance among their own contingent on the touchline. ‘The parents are the worst,’ says the mother of a Premier League academy player. ‘Some give out dogs’ abuse to anyone who challenges their sons.’
Jordan sees the problem as a cultural one. ‘There’s a culture of liberalism in our society, far too much political correctness and mamby-pamby,’ he says. ‘We’re living in an age of entitlement.’
Sources in Cardiff feel uneasy that the complaints about Bellamy entered the public domain almost as soon as they were made to the club. Yet the parents concerned speak with despair and frustration about what they claim became a toxic and destructive environment under Bellamy.
The code of silence within some clubs has not helped. When
Sportsmail investigated allegations of serial bullying by Aston Villa coach Kevin MacDonald last year, three parents told us they could not discuss it. ‘There’s a career at stake,’ said one. A former colleague of MacDonald could not allow his views to be published, even anonymously, for fear that he would be in breach of a non-disclosure agreement. Eventually, a video clip was shared with us. It captures a Villa coach screaming: ‘ **** off kid. Just **** off.’ The recipient of the abuse — which went on for months according to his father — looks inconsolable. After former player Gareth Farrelly came forward with more allegations last month, MacDonald was suspended pending an investigation. The uncomfortable truth for the old drill-sergeant coaches is that their time has passed and that effing and blinding is no longer good enough. Martin Allen, who has managed 10 clubs in the past decade, says he has learned this the hard way. He was coached by the unremittingly tough Jim Smith, who became so angry with his young charges that a blue vein on his forehead, known to them as the M1, would bulge. But when Allen tried one of the jokes which would have worked in the past to get a player into the gym, he was tripped up. He felt that a Greek youth team keeper at Gillingham was overweight and made a reference to a kebab shop. This was brought up with him when he left the club.
‘The world has changed and coaches have had to change with it,’ Allen says. ‘Adapt or die. The League Managers’ Association courses have helped us to get to grips with that.’
The winning coaches know where the line lies. Alex Ferguson began his career by injecting what he called ‘Glaswegian ferocity and discipline’ at Aberdeen.
‘I didn’t spare the horses and it turned them into men,’ he reflected years later. But he learned to pick his moments.
‘For the youngsters who were hoping to make the squad, I could set their heads spinning simply by refusing to let them travel with the first team,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to mete out punishment very often for everyone to get the message.’
If the kids are scared, you’re not creating good players Some coaches feel the game is too soft and blame parents