The ups and downs of mini/junior football

Your child will be hugely enthusiastic about their football. It matters and they'll care about it. For mini footballers, it may well be their first genuinely competitive experience. How they deal with the emotional ups and downs will be influenced by their own personality of course. Enjoy the highs with them and console then through the lows (a missed penalty in a shootout is about as bad as it gets). Ultimately however, they will bounce back from short term set backs very quickly.

You'll instinctively know whether your child is enjoying their football or not. If the latter is the case, do talk to them about it. The most common cause for children not enjoying playing is adult pressure – this could be a parent (and that might include an over zealous parent of another child) or the manager/coach.