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Parents and parenting

‘I hope you know this was
never about football’:
coaching my daughter’s team
When we started training, I thought it was for
her sake. So why do I dread the day my
daughter hangs up her boots?

Fredrik Backman
Sat 8 May 2021 10.00 BST

39 56
One day you’ll understand that this was never
about football. It could have been anything. I just
wanted to be where you were, as much as
possible, for as long as you let me.

When you were five we had an argument in the

car on the way to a training session. I don’t know
exactly what it was about. As I mentioned, you
were five, so it could have been anything: how I’d
packed the wrong sort of corn crackers, or how
after you’d bitten into one of them it had corners
on it and you hated corners, or how I didn’t
understand how much you hated corners because
I obviously never cared about your feelings
because I probably wouldn’t even care if you like
died! If I really loved you, I would have bought the
right corn crackers, the corner-less kind. It was
one of those arguments. It ended as we stopped at
a red light and you said something and I said
something back, and you said something kind of
mean and I lost my temper and said: “If you’re
going to fight this much with me every time we go
to train, I really don’t have to put this much time
into being the coach!”

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There was silence. Your eyes met mine in the rear-

view mirror. Cold as ice. Then you said: “You’re
really not the coach. You just inflate the footballs.”

That hurt me more than I was prepared for, it

really did. I kept silent the rest of the way; you
did, too. We joke about it now but right then and
there we probably both noticed that, well, we
crossed a line here. You had to walk more
carefully around my self-esteem after that. When
we got back home that evening you mumbled:
“You also put on the plasters when someone gets
hurt.” That was like a piece of gaffer tape around
my chest, that mumble. It kept me in one piece
for the whole next day.

W
as I a bit easily offended there, in
the car? Sure. But in my own
defence, I had spent a fair amount
of my spare time over the past
several months being a coach. Or maybe not a
coach, by definition, but at least the assistant
coach. Or at least an assisting assistant coach. Or,
at the very least, I was the guy who at long last
raised his hand during that first parents’ meeting
when they said they had a couple of experienced
coaches confirmed, but an extra adult would be
useful. So I’m an extra adult. Sure, if we’re going
to be totally honest, one of the coaches and I
walked across the parking area after the parents’
meeting and he asked, “Is that your estate?” and I
said, “Mmm” and he said, “Perfect!” and so most
of all I’m just the guy who’s kept all the team’s
equipment in the back of my car for the past two
years. But the rain comes down just as hard on the
head coach on a nasty October day as it does on
the guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, let me
tell you.

At training with you, I found out I

know very little about football. It was a
brutal awakening

Because unfortunately that’s what I found out at

football training with you: I know very little about
football. I’ve been obsessed with the game my
whole life and spent a good part of it yelling at
strangers on television about what they ought to
have done rather than what the hell they just tried
to do. But, as it turned out, I know practically
nothing. It was a fairly brutal awakening for me
because it was a reasonably substantial part of my
identity, up until that point, that I was the sort of
person who “got” football. But then I met your
coaches, and it was like that old joke about
boxing: “I used to want to be a boxer until I met a
guy who really wanted to be a boxer.” When I
watch a match, I watch the football, but your
coaches watch everything. After one of your first
training sessions, one of them explained how
Jürgen Klopp organised counter-pressing football,
and for the first time in my life I understood that I
really didn’t understand what counter-pressing
was. The other coach looked at you and the other
five-year-olds and teased, “All of you understood
all that immediately, didn’t you?” None of the
other girls answered, but you looked up, stared
him straight in the eyes and said: “Hey, I’m only
here because my dad promised me burgers
afterwards!”

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I respected your honesty. And honestly? The only

thing I remember about counter-pressing now is
how your coach said: “It’s not about what you do
when you’re in control but what you do as soon as
you’ve lost it.” I thought to myself, that’s just
what it’s like trying to be a human being on a
normal Wednesday. It was about that time that I
realised football with you wouldn’t be all that
much about football for me.

And then we went for burgers.

S
ometimes I’ve worried that you started
playing football only for my sake. Then I
remind myself that it was probably the
other way around. I played for too many
years myself; I knew too much about gravel
pitches in November in icy winds and sideways
rain to encourage this. I took great care to inform
you of many pleasant activities that take place at
room temperature. Come to think of it, I talked so
little about football with you that maybe you
actually chose it to annoy me? One can never
know for sure, as a parent. We always convince
ourselves that all your best and worst decisions
have something to do with us.

But you’re seven now, and deep down I know I

have less and less of an effect on you. This is the
age when the waves break: we struggle to get
across them towards deeper water; I can probably
still see the shore but I can feel the currents
pulling. Soon you’ll let go of me and head out. I
volunteered at that parents’ meeting only because
I wanted to be allowed to stay around for a little
longer. I raised my hand like a drowning man.

It’s a simple game: 22 people chase a

ball around for 90 minutes, and
afterwards you get yelled at by your
daughter

You probably know that. All the activities we go

to, everything that’s ours, will evolve for us just as
for all other children and parents: in the
beginning we do all this for you, in the end you do
it for us.

That’s why I grip your hand more and more firmly

as we walk the last distance to the training ground
now, because you won’t tell me when it’s the last
time.

J
osé Mourinho said, “Football is about
winning,” but you made me realise that’s
not true for me. Alex Morgan said,
“Excuses are like losses: everyone has
them except champions,” and I’m sure she’s right
but, quite honestly, I don’t mind an excuse or two.
I wanted to be a part of this game as a kid only
because everything else in life was so full of social
codes I didn’t understand, but football said
exactly what it expected of me. It was the only
place where I didn’t feel there was something
wrong with me. I once wrote, “You love football
because it’s instinctual. If a ball comes rolling
down the street, you kick it, for the same reason
that you fall in love: because you don’t know how
to stop yourself.” I still feel that. It’s a simple
game, as Gary Lineker said: 22 people chase a ball
around for 90 minutes, and afterwards you get
yelled at by your daughter.

But in the midst of all that? One little moment of

something else.

L
ast week you injured your back on a
trampoline and couldn’t train at all, so
we went in only to hand over the vests
and balls, but as I turned and walked
back to the car, you said: “We’re not gonna stay
and help?” So we did. I taught you to use the
electric ball pump and, when one of your
teammates hurt herself, I put on a plaster and you
sat next to me and told her uplifting stories about
all the times I’d been clumsy and accidentally
hurt you. For instance, how one time at training
I’d forgotten to remove my watch, and
unfortunately you’d just grown to the level of my
wrist by then, so when you came running at full
speed to startle me and I turned around a little too
quickly, you cracked your forehead against the
watch and fell headlong on to the ground so that
everyone thought I’d hit you. It wasn’t exactly my
Dad of the Year moment, I’ll say that much.

Sometimes I’d prefer it if you forgot my worst

moments, or at least stopped retelling them to
everyone we meet. But you’re good at
remembering moments. That’s a good ability to
have if one loves sport, because that’s all sport is.
Life, too.

L
ast week one of the coaches reminded
me of the last time you made him burst
out laughing: he has a 13-year-old
daughter, a fantastic football player. You
went with him to one of her training sessions and
suddenly you asked: “Why do they run so much?”
He said they have to do lots of athletics training in
order to have the stamina to play matches, and
that when you reached their age you would also
have to do a lot of running. You looked at him,
very calmly, and answered: “Once I get to their
age I don’t think I’ll be playing football any more,
in that case, because that’s not for me.”
Sometimes you talk like a factory boss in an old
black-and-white movie, but I get what you meant.
Football is not always about football for you
either; we just like being wherever it is. Yesterday
you told your mother that it’s fun when she
comes to the training sessions to “watch me and
Dad”, as if she was coming for the two of us, not
just for you. I had to sit down for a long time
before I could stand up with all of that inside of
my ribs.

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I slept on the floor next to your bed last night,

each of us holding a paw of your soft toy dog. You
got it at a baseball game in Toronto and got so
happy, I don’t think you remember anything
about that game except for the dog. Now, when I
think about it, I’m not so sure I do either. Some
wise human being summarised baseball with the
words: “It’s a game of failure.” Even the best
batters in the world miss the ball seven times out
of 10; they miss so often that they’re almost
surprised when once in a while they don’t. That’s
how I see all of my parenting.

I tell you it doesn’t matter if you mess

up, as long as you do your best, because
that’s all I hope you’ll tell me one day

That time in the car when you were five and we

were fighting about corn crackers was the autumn
I was suffering from depression and exhaustion.
Those are difficult words, not to say but to
explain. All my life people have told me that my
brain doesn’t quite work the way it ought to.
Sometimes it’s good; I have a fairly lively
imagination which has resulted in my having a
fairly weird job, which in turn is pretty lucky
because I couldn’t hold down normal jobs. But
sometimes it’s bad, because my brain is so good at
making me believe things that aren’t true, that it
can make me believe things that are dangerous.

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I had been excessively stressed for a long time

that autumn, and when my brain is stressed it
tells me I can’t breathe. It’s a lie, obviously, but
my brain can be so convincing that my lungs
believe it. It’s called a panic attack, and it makes
me lie on the hallway floor in the middle of the
night, convinced that I’m not getting any air.
That’s how lively my imagination is. The first time
I had panic attacks I was your age. I remember
how the school nurse thought I had asthma, but
actually I was just sad most of the time, with no
reason for it. I still am, sometimes. It’s no one’s
fault and it doesn’t mean I’m unhappy. I’m
incredibly happy. Just fragile. Sometimes my
brain imagines a black hole and puts me at the
bottom of it, and it can take me a while before I
can imagine a rope to get myself out. It can get
scary and lonely for a bit, when it’s only me and
my worst ideas down there, and so while I was a
child and didn’t have words for all this, I found
two things that helped: books and sports. They
were the same kind of escape from reality for me,
and because I really, really did not like reality
when I was a kid, I grew obsessed with both.

I’m telling you this now only because until that

moment when you and I were sitting in the car,
arguing about corn crackers, I probably thought
this was all football would be for me: a way of
forgetting the here and now. But when you and I
were going to the training sessions that first
autumn, it went the opposite way: football
actually got me out of the hole. I had no choice,
because you cannot be anything less than 100%
concentrating when you’re in charge of putting
plasters on two dozen five-year-olds. That was my
reason for staying in the light, because in the dark
you can’t see anything, which makes it impossible
to inflate the footballs. I didn’t even have time in
the car to think about how stressed out I was,
because you just wouldn’t stop fighting with me
about those damned corn crackers. I love you for
that. I love you so much.

I
’m sorry for all the things I won’t
understand about you. I’m sorry for all the
times I’ll be a bad father. It’s a game of
failure. My only hope is that at least I’ve
been around you enough that you’ve seen me
trying. I tell you before every training session that
it doesn’t matter if you mess up, as long as you do
your best, because that’s all I hope you’ll tell me
once you’re a grownup and look back on all this.
All those hours in the car, all those hamburgers,
all the petrol station hotdogs, all the sweets Mum
doesn’t know we had on weekdays, all the fights
and all the times we made up. That time you
yelled, “I have the worst dad in the world!” in
front of the whole team because I hadn’t noticed
that you’d injured yourself (I was busy trying to
figure out how to work the new electric ball pump
I’d bought). And then the moment just before you
fell asleep that evening, when we were each
holding on to a paw of your soft toy dog, and you
whispered: “OK, then. You’re not the worst.” And I
whispered back: “Darth Vader has kids. I must be
a bit better than him, right?” But you were asleep
by then. I went into the bathroom and laundered
the vests for the next training session. Packed the
corn crackers into the bag. I knew the goal of
organised sports was not only to raise players, but
also to raise children, I just wasn’t quite prepared
for how much it would also raise the parents.

We have five coaches in the team now. Last spring

I invited them over for dinner and we had a few
beers and laughed a lot, and the day after your
mother pointed out that four new friends are
more friends than she’s seen me make in the 14
years we’ve been together. I admitted that, sure,
we’re sort of friends now, not just football
coaches. “I don’t know how it happened,” I said.
Your mother rolled her eyes: “Honestly, Fredrik? I
know exactly how it happened. They’re with their
kids all the time, they’re dads first, they’re a lot of
other things, too, but they’re dads first. You
probably don’t even know what they do for a
living, and they couldn’t give a damn what you
do. They just know you through your daughter.
It’s probably the first identity you’ve ever been
comfortable with.”

O
ne of your other coaches told me a
story about when his eldest daughter
was seven years old. He was coaching
her team as they were playing a match
against a team from a rival city club he’d hated his
whole life. So obviously, as a responsible father, in
the weeks leading up to the match he put extra
effort into not giving away to her how he really
felt about the other team. It was just like any
other match, he convinced himself. Until it
started and his daughter scored. She scored lots of
goals in every match and never celebrated very
much, but this time she turned around, tore
herself away from her teammates and ran straight
on to the sideline and flung herself into her
father’s arms. He just stood there and wanted to
apologise to her and never let go of her at the
same time. It’s so bloody hard to be a good parent.
We always think we hide them so well, but you
know everything about the dreams we have for
you, you spend your whole childhoods with our
fears in your backpacks.

Why angry Just recently, the teenage

shouting men are a
fading force on our
daughter of one of the
children’s coaches played a match at
touchlines
Barney Ronay which parents of the other
team started yelling and
behaving badly. Afterwards I
asked the daughter if it had
affected her. She answered:
Read more “No, I’m used to that, I just
block that out. The only thing
that affects me is if my dad starts yelling.”

Her dad was standing beside her, his hands

shoved so deep into his pockets that they were in
his socks. He no longer yells at matches, but he
has permanent bite marks in his lower lip. We do
our absolute best, we hope you can see that we’re
really, really trying. That’s all.

Y
ou used to get angry because you felt I
encouraged the other players more
than you. I tried to explain that at
training I couldn’t be your dad,
because I had to be a coach to all the girls. The
other week we had a similar fight, and I was just
about to embark on the same monologue when
you rolled your eyes worse than your mother and
said: “I knooow, when we’re here all the kids are
your kids.” I wanted to point out that this was
actually not at all how I’d put it, because it’s no
simple matter for a grown man who makes a
living out of words to admit that yours are already
better than mine, but you were right. Being a
coach is about seeing all kids as your own kids,
rather than pretending you don’t have one of your
own.

But I’d just like to interject here that I really, really

don’t have the energy to fight with all 20 of them
about corn crackers. I only fight that way with
you.

I
t’s a Friday evening in October as I write
the last of this. Early tomorrow morning we
have training again; there’ll be icy winds
and sideways rain and burgers or petrol
station hotdogs afterwards. I don’t know what
we’ll fight about but I’m sure we’ll find
something. You have a theatre class just before
football and it’s always confusing for us both
when I holler out, “Stop being so dramatic!” when
you dive and fall down while doing one of those
activities, because that’s precisely what you’re
expected to do at the other. You’ll roar at me, “I’m
doing my best!” and I’ll roar back, “Me, too!” I
hope I’m no worse than Darth Vader and I hope
you know this was never about football for me. It
could have been anything. I just wanted to be
where you were, as much as possible. For as long
as you let me.

Fredrik Backman’s latest novel, Anxious

People, is published by Penguin Michael Joseph.

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