Win at all cost and we all lose.

The FA are spending huge amounts of money and have invested some considerable time and effort investigating, researching, developing and publishing details of how youth football will be promoted in the coming years.

At present we are years behind other nations such as Holland and Spain in the way we capture the attention of young people and then nurture their development as footballers.

But more than that in England we also do shockingly little to develop kids not only as good footballers but also as good people.

It may seem over-simplistic to some for me to suggest that allowing kids to develop as players without also providing them with a moral compass is lumping society’s ills on the sport of football and at the doorstep of the FA.

But the problems that we see in the professional game cannot be easily brushed aside and ignored.

If we look at the achievements of the Spanish in generating great players and a great team it cannot also be a coincidence that those same players are some of the most well balanced and polite footballers in the game as well. 

There are very few examples of the current generation of Spanish internationals making the the front pages of newspapers unlike their English counterparts and if you were to get sight of the injunctions and super injunctions there is even more to this parallel than many would even guess.

But its not just about the players that make it to the very top of course its about the kids who get involved in football for social reasons.

The Dutch philosophy allows for every young person to remain engaged in the sport, feeling part of it irrespective of the result of the team.

Developing young people is not about producing teams that win its more about creating young people who don’t worry about losing.

If the result of an under nines match matters so much that a kid is scared of making a mistake and feels stressed enough to cry before a game then there is something very wrong with the way young people are being coached.

We should of course be promoting an environment that allows for kids of all abilities to participate without fear or concern.

But at present we are stripping the enjoyment out of playing orgainsed football simply by having leagues and points to play for.

Of course anyone with even a modicum of common sense knows that before the age of fourteen the most physical team has a massive advantage and will often steamroll other teams, winning easily.

In my experience what we see too many players with a good shot told to shoot on sight or players who can physically dominate a game doing just that. But at what cost?

Many talented but physically slight players lose interest in football because they are not protected from the physical aspects of the game.

These talented players do not need to ‘man up’ at the age of seven, eight or nine they need to be given the opportunity to try new things and express themselves without fear of failure or indeed without worrying about goal difference, points or league positions. Those worries will come later in life, why burden them as kids?

But making football about winning at every age also helps explain why so many girls opt not to play the game and why there are far too few young people with disability who feel that football is for them.

If teams were no longer encouraged to aim for league success then the ugly side of competitive youth football would be diminished.

Only last weekend I was at my sons under nines game and was staggered to see a parent discussing the teams league position with the details and the table on his smart phone to prove how ‘we needed to win’.

The FA are trying to change things to make youth football more about the kids, removing competition and adding fun.

I fully support what they are doing but there are some that don’t.

My sons team is part of a club which has been around for a number of years but whose chairman and board have promised to resign with immediate effect if the new youth structure - http://www.thefa.com/TheFA/NewsAndFeatures/2011/YPD - is implemented.

They seem to believe the only way of measuring success is with trophies.

I measure success in the numbers of kids who engage and remain engaged with a club. 

On how inclusive a club is and not just how many sessions they offer within the community, it pointless offering coaching sessions if they only people who attend are the same kids who attend the club, where is the outreach there?

I see too few young girls playing the sport yet far more spectating so there is a disconnect there that a good club would try to solve.

And disabled kids should be encouraged to get involved wherever possible.

Yet the club who are so adamant  that these new ideas are wrong cannot field a girls team at any age group but have four or five teams full of lads across U8, U9 and U10.

And there has never even been an enquiry from a family with a disabled child about participating let alone a kid actually getting involved.

Clubs such as that are failing their kids in so many ways its almost tragic.

And of course if we fail to support young people and make playing football a chore and not fun we cannot complain when their behaviour both on and off the pitch is less than desirable can we?

Football has enough good clubs and coaches that do a fantastic job working not only with but for young people but there are also far too many who don’t see that the work done in the early years is far more important than a few points and the occasional shield or trophy.

The silver plate will, over time tarnish but the young people clubs develop will continue to shine even if they don’t make a living as footballers.