I coach our under-14s and I am also a parent standing on that touchline, which has given me two separate ways to get this wrong.
The one I am least proud of is the drive home.
My daughter plays on a Saturday and again on a Sunday, so there are two of those journeys most weekends. For the first season I used the travel time to go over the game with her.
Were you tired? Looked like you could have put a bit more effort in today. You were ball watching at times. You could have moved after that pass. You could have got your shot off sooner.
To me I was just trying to help. I had watched the whole game, I had seen things, and it seemed daft not to mention them while they were fresh.
It is worth thinking about where she was sitting while I said them. Thirteen years old. Twenty minutes off the pitch, boots still on, sweating, hungry, and already going back over the bits she was not happy with, because she had been doing that since it happened. And then the person whose opinion mattered to her more than anyone else's turned out to have a list.
Whatever I thought I was saying, what she heard was much simpler. I was watching you closely. I was keeping count. Today was not quite good enough and the person who should have her back was disappointed.
The effort one was the worst of them, and it is the one I would take back first. A kid can hear that their touch was off. Being told they did not try is different, because it is not about their football any more, it is about them. She would sit there feeling accused of something she knew was not true, and she had no way of proving otherwise.
None of it stayed in the car, either. It came back the following weekend as nerves. She would be quiet on the way to the game, and then she would play like someone trying not to give me anything to bring up on the way home. Safe pass. Safe touch. Stay out of trouble.
So that is what I had really built. Not a better footballer. A kid who was quietly dreading both ends of the day, twice a weekend.
It took me most of that season to notice, because I was busy looking for the problem in her attitude, in her effort levels, in whether she wanted it enough. It was in my car.
They already know
And she already knew. They all do.
A thirteen-year-old knows what went wrong before their boots are off. They have been replaying it since it happened, usually in more detail and with a lot more feeling than you managed from the side of the pitch. Telling them is not information. It is confirmation that you saw it too, and that it mattered enough for you to bring it up.
They are also working out something bigger than football at this age, which is whether a mistake is a thing they did or a thing they are. That question is genuinely still open at thirteen, and the adults standing nearest to them get more of a vote than they realise.
The drive there, which I had not even noticed
Sorting out the way home made me look at the way there, and I found I had been doing a version of the same thing at the other end of the day.
I used to use that journey to squeeze some coaching in. Reminders. Watch out for their number nine. Remember what happened last week. By the time we parked she was tense, and she had not kicked a ball yet.
Now I do the opposite, deliberately. Are you excited? Enjoy it today. I am looking forward to watching the team play. And I make sure she has had a proper breakfast, which sounds like the least important item on the list and absolutely is not.
That is the whole conversation. A kid who gets out of the car relaxed plays relaxed. Braver on the ball, quicker to try something, quicker to chase it down when it does not come off. Pressure from the passenger seat does not sharpen them up. It just hands them something to carry onto the pitch.
The hour in the middle
Then there is the game itself, where they can hear you.
They can. All of them, all of the time. Kids this age have radar for their own parent's voice and will pick you out of a crowd of forty while the ball is still in play. A few things follow from that.
If you are shouting instructions while the coach is shouting instructions, your kid stops playing and starts looking over. Encouragement carries fine from the side. Tactics do not.
They are also watching your face at the exact moment they lose the ball. Those few seconds decide whether they go and win it back or drop their head, and your reaction is part of what they are reacting to. A kid who loses possession and immediately goes and gets it back has cancelled out their own mistake, and that is nearly always the best thing they will do all afternoon. It is a lot easier to do with a parent clapping than with one holding their head in their hands.
And they are watching how you handle the referee, who is frequently about seventeen and having a rough morning. They are watching how you talk about their coach, and about the teammate who has just made a mess of something. We ask these kids for determination, for positivity towards each other, and to actually enjoy it. A parent laying into a teenage official on the touchline undoes all three in about four seconds.
What the drive home looks like now
Nothing, mostly. Nothing for the first ten minutes at least.
She gets time to process it. Quiet in the car is fine, better than fine. Anything that genuinely needs pointing out is my job as a coach for an hour in the week, not my job as her dad for twenty minutes on a Saturday and another twenty on a Sunday. Those two hats should not both be worn in the front of a moving car.
Let them start the conversation. They usually will, that evening or on Monday or sometimes not about that game at all. There is nothing wrong with talking about the match. There is nothing wrong with watching it back together if that is what they want. Just let them open the door.
If you need something to say, "I loved watching you play" is the whole of it. It is not a technique. It happens to be true, and it does not ask them to defend anything.
When there is something worth praising, praise the reaction rather than the result. "You lost it and you sprinted back and won it" is worth ten times more than "great goal", because one of those they can do every single week, whatever their touch is doing.
And let them be gutted if they are gutted. A bad defeat should feel bad for a while. Rushing in to cheer them up teaches them that uncomfortable feelings are something another person is supposed to come and fix.
The bit that lasts
I still get this wrong now and then, usually after a game that annoyed me more than it annoyed her. The difference is that I notice, and I stop talking.
What changed for my daughter was not coaching. I did not teach her anything new. I took the pressure off both ends of the day, and the player who turned up once I did was braver than the one I had spent a season trying to improve.
Almost none of these kids will play professionally. Every one of them will eventually have a terrible week at work, or something go wrong that they did not deserve, and what they will reach for is a habit formed at about thirteen in front of the adults whose opinion mattered most to them.
That habit is being built in the car. It is worth being careful with.