‘One father threatened to stab the referee': why does kids' football bring out the worst in parents?

The Guardian

24-04-2025

A chilly Saturday morning on the Astroturf pitches at Coram's Fields in central London and several youth football matches are under way. I'm watching an under-11s game. The sound is the thud of boot on ball, the shrill interruption of the referee's whistle, and a whole lot of shouting. From the players ('Mine!', 'Here!', 'Pass!', 'Ref!', etc). From the two coaches ('Press!', 'Stay wide!', 'Push up!', 'Ref!', etc). And from the touchline dads. There is one mum here today, but she's less vocal.
To varying degrees, the dads are part fan, part coach, part personal trainer to their progeny. There is one dad (there's always one) who's taking it a bit further, who's a bit shoutier than the others. 'Get rid of it!' he screams at the defence, meaning hoof it upfield, which is the opposite of the coach's instructions to play it out from the back. 'Ref! Seriously?' he shouts at the referee (who's only about 17 himself).
Most of Shouty Dad's shouting is aimed at his own son, who, because of his position on the wing, has his father's wisdom bellowed in his lughole throughout. 'Stay wide!'; 'Go on, son, skin him!'; and, intriguingly, 'You've got a mouth – use it!' (I think he means call for the ball, rather than do a Luis Suárez and sink his teeth into an opponent.) The poor boy looks utterly miserable, as if he wants the ground to open up and swallow him. Or – better – swallow his dad.
At half-time, when the coach gathers the players around for a chat, Shouty Dad joins them, to offer his own thoughts on the first half and what they could do better in the second.
To be honest, it's not the worst parental behaviour you'll see at a youth football match. It can get a lot more serious than this. For example, it was reported that at a recent under-10s game in Kent an altercation between a couple of players led to a parental pitch invasion, punches being thrown, and one kid getting steamrolled by an out-of-control dad (presumably not his own).
This is not a new issue. Over a decade ago, Gary Lineker wrote about parents screaming abuse from the sidelines, and how it is killing their kids' love of the beautiful game. Speaking to me from 300 or so miles north of Coram's Fields, Ian Coates, general manager of the Northumberland Football League, agrees that it's problem: 'A kid will make a pass and then look at the parents for approval or disapproval. When I'm coaching, I say to the kids: 'The only person you take notice of when you're on the pitch is me. If your mum or dad shouts anything to you, you've got my permission to turn round and tell them to shut up. And if they give you a bollocking, tell me and I'll give them a bollocking.''
That's easier said than done, perhaps. 'Some parents give their kids the lickings of a dog,' he says. 'When you approach them and say, 'Fella, just calm down a little bit, man', they say, 'That's my son – I can say what I want.' 'Actually, you can't, because what you're doing is child abuse and you could be reported for it.' That's when you get – excuse my French – 'Don't be fucking ridiculous! Who the fuck are you to talk to me?' And I'm quite an imposing figure, 6ft 4in and built like a brick shithouse.'
Figures published by the Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in England, show there were 2,561 charges issued for allegations of serious misconduct in grassroots football in 2023/24, up 13% on the previous season. But this refers to behaviour on the pitch, rather than parents' conduct. A spokesperson for the FA told me that it can take action against clubs for the behaviour of their spectators, including parents, under FA Rule E21. The FA said that, in the 2023-24 season, 349 E21 charges were issued against clubs for the behaviour of their spectators, 60% of which related to the youth game.
County football associations break down disciplinary issues further. I spoke to Jon Pike, CEO of Somerset FA, about how his association records the number of reported misconduct offences – which include parents and coaches shouting and screaming from the touchlines. The rate of misconduct incidents at Somerset FA has been rising steadily since about 2018, when the number recorded each season was in the low 200s. In 2023/2024, according to its 2024 annual report, 273 cases of misconduct were recorded.
The association also noticed a spike in incidents when football restarted after the pandemic. Pike says: 'No one had played for six months – it was like someone had shaken up a bottle of Coke and taken the lid off and everything just spurted out. We put it down to the fact that people had been repressed in lockdown.'
But things haven't improved since the end of the pandemic. After the opening of last season, the worst for discipline in Somerset FA's history, Pike posted a 'CEO discipline statement' on the association's website. It said the following about youth football: 'The main offenders in youth football are adults, be they coaches, managers, club assistant referees, spectators or parents. This may not come as a surprise to some of you who regularly watch youth football, but now is the time for everyone to take responsibility and protect the game that we all love. Young people in football, regardless of their role, deserve to enjoy the game free from abuse and negativity, and should expect adults to behave in a manner that sets a positive example.'
Pike tells me about an exercise carried out at a young leaders' day, where members of Somerset's youth council (aged 16 to 24) had to write down, anonymously, on Post-it notes, what they liked and didn't like about football. 'We had this collage, all these Post-its, and the number who said that being shouted at from the side, 'my parents going off on one', that kind of thing, to me that's one of the most powerful things I've seen. This was young people saying that what they didn't like about the game was mouthy adults on the touchline.'
Pike thinks touchline behaviour has deteriorated since the pandemic because so many other areas of life have, too. Coates agrees: 'It's got worse because society's got worse. It's the whole breakdown in discipline.' But he also thinks it trickles down from the higher echelons of the game. He cites the example of a match at St James' Park in Newcastle, where the referee gave a free kick against a player, who responded with: 'You're having a fucking laugh.' The Gallowgate End immediately and inevitably broke into a tuneful rendition of: 'The referee's a wanker.'
Well, that's just part and parcel of the game, isn't it (as inevitable as using cliches such as part and parcel)? It's just a bit of fun, a display of passion? 'OK, but there's a 13-year-old boy in the stand with his dad,' Coates says. 'They see that nothing happens to anybody. The player gets away with it, isn't carded. And in the stands the stewards and police officers stand by letting everybody do these abusive chants without challenging them.'
The trouble is, Coates says, what happens the next time the boy is playing football himself. 'He goes in for a tackle, the ref gives a free kick, he shouts: 'Ref, you're having a fucking laugh', and he gets sent off, as he should be under the laws of the game.'
And suddenly the referee is getting it from the sidelines, mainly from the child's dad. 'You get dads who go and watch football on a Saturday and can virtually say and do what they want, then on a Sunday morning they go and watch their sons and daughters play, and they think they're in the same environment and say and do what they like.'
Ant Canavan is a steward at Anfield and a referee in the lower leagues; he also runs the Referee Forum Group on Facebook. 'Parental behaviour has been an issue the whole 20 years I've been refereeing, but it's certainly got worse since Covid,' he tells me. 'A lot of people you talk to say people's behaviour in the public domain has got worse, but it's particularly noticeable in youth football.'
Canavan says dads are the main culprits, but you do get the odd mum misbehaving. 'You expect that kind of emotional outburst from a man – that's what they do at football games, the man's arena. When you get it from a woman, it's not as expected.'
Where does it come from? 'There's the old trope we go to: it's the dad who had trials at Arsenal or whatever but never made it as a footballer, so they're doing everything they can to make their kid stand out, be better, so they can have that professional career. They're kind of vicariously living their failed and broken dreams through their children. But a lot of the time they just don't know how to conduct themselves … No, they do know; they're not bothered. You'll see them in the terraces in the same afternoon as they've watched their kids in the morning and they're doing the same thing, shouting at these millionaires and professional referees.'
You don't get this kind of behaviour at cricket, rugby or, say, volleyball matches, Canavan says. 'You wouldn't have parents coming on to fight each other. It's only football. And I think it's because of this hooliganism culture that may stem from the 80s that got suppressed. It's still knocking about, still there. I think football has this culture of toxic abuse, like it's all part of the game.'
Canavan has had to abandon matches due to bad behaviour. 'I've had parents interrupt games because they weren't happy with my decisions, and they've felt entitled to shout abuse from the sidelines or walk on the pitch and have a go at me. And I'm 6ft 4in, broad as you like, not easily intimidated.'
Canavan continues to referee in the lower leagues, but he has stopped doing youth football and walked away from the angry dads. 'Other referees will still go out for their 30, 40, 50 quid, take the abuse and at the end of it say: 'Well, I'm getting paid for it. I'll take it; the money is more important than my dignity or my pride.''
Not every referee is 6ft 4in and broad as you like. Back in Northumberland, Coates tells me about a 16-year-old referee who was chased out of the ground by parents and players. 'He had to lock himself in the changing room, fearing for his life. We've had a referee threatened to be stabbed by a parent; he said if he gave another foul against his son he would stab him in the car park.'
Those incidents were reported to the police. But, usually, parents don't get punished for their bad behaviour on the sidelines. Coates tells me about a recent under-16s game where, like the Kent match, 'the parents all decided to start kicking the shit out of each other. The referee abandons the game, reports it to the county; the club gets charged with an [FA Rule] E3, which means failure to control players, managers or spectators. The club says yeah, we're guilty, but how can we control the parents when they're 70 yards away on the other side of the pitch? So the county FA or the FA fine them £150 and warn them about their behaviour – because the FA can't take action against an individual parent.'
And that's the problem: while the kids who are playing can get lengthy bans for misdemeanors, their parents aren't classed as participants by the FA, so they're not covered by its rules and regulations. So whose responsibility is it to intervene? 'The police could, but if you've stood at the side of the pitch, which I have, waiting for the police to come, you'll be there till next Tuesday,' Coates says.
To remove problematic parents from matches, a banning order would have to be issued. Coates says Northumberland has successfully managed to do this for pitches on private land, but it's difficult to when the match is played on public land.
A couple of leagues have been trialling body cams, similar to the ones worn by police, for referees. The Northumberland Football League doesn't have permission from the FA for its referees to wear them, but for the last couple of years it has been issuing them to stewards and volunteers at matches. Coates has used them and finds them very effective. 'When I go to the side of the pitch and speak to a parent about their behaviour, I switch my body camera on with the remote control in my pocket. And when the parents can see that red light on, suddenly their tone is totally different.'
Sometimes, if a young referee is getting abuse from a parent on the sidelines, he'll go in undercover. 'I'll take my league coat off, and go and mingle with the crowd, stand with him. It's easy to find out which is his son and I'll say: 'See that number seven there? He's shit, isn't he? He's never trapped the ball, he cannot pass the ball, he needs to get his head up …' And he'll turn round and say: 'Oi, man, that's my son!' And I say: 'It's not nice, is it? That's what you've been doing to my referee for the past 10 minutes.' That makes the penny drop.'
Ah, the beautiful game, eh? Where children are screamed at by adults and officials are abused and scared. 'You look at it,' says Canavan, 'and you think: at what point did football become this?'
Back to the second half at Coram's Fields, and it hasn't quite descended into call-the-police chaos, but Shouty Dad is still at it. He's having a go at the centre mid now, for being out of position: 'Who's in the middle?'
Oi, man, that's my son! So I punch Shouty Dad in the face, and then kick him when he's down … No, of course I don't. Nor could I. But I do tell him that it's my son, and he says sorry and tones it down. To be fair, he was right about him being out of position – I might have shouted something myself, but I am only allowed on the touchline on the condition that I keep my mouth shut. It's a lifetime condition, issued not by the league, or the FA, or the coach … but by my son, of course.