Gang Culture and Young Footballers

Young stars in trouble!!

How do we go about protecting our young stars?

We have knife and gun crime on our door step, young kids getting involved from the early stages and dragged into a life that seems to be unnecessary!

More and more we are starting to see young footballers being shot or stabbed from being associated to a gang or just happen to probably know someone in a gang.

Why do they believe that showing that they are a big man will achieve anything?

We have all if not majority of footballers come from deprived areas, Estates and inner city ghettos as some call it.

I know that when I was growing up in Portugal in a multi cultural estate, crime and drugs were the main issues, we had small gangs and got into all sorts of trouble, fights and stealing but it never was as bad as this and i was firtunate enough to have strict parenting and possibly a breain in my head, I have lost a couple of friends to guns and drugs along the years.

How about young footballers?

They are no more special than anyone else but many would think once they have achieved that step into an academy or into football they would most probably be mature and safe or at least be out of harm’s way.

Are parents or clubs doing more to protect these kids?

Are the parents doing enough to make sure that their children are not getting into these gangs or at least supervising part of what they get up to?

Over the years I have come across a lot of young players, from an early start in coaching in England I took my young cousin who was one the best young talents I had seen,  technically gifted but unfortunately falling into the wrong crowd seemed to distance himself from football. he started hanging with weed smoking youths and getting in trouble with the police. Despite a shoulder it seemed the parents didn’t have the control over him or the strength and that mattered a lot as it would fall on deaf ears and before too soon he just ended up doing little with his life. Today he looks back and knows he could have been a lot more

Around the same time A young player at Chelsea Academy and at Brent schools. He had a lot of talent, I had heard about him and as I lived and coached in the area, the boy had a stinking attitude and a lot of trouble around him. I remember coming across him on a bus, where he stood up and asked me for some money in an abrupt manner, to which in my days would have been met by a slap.. But he soon realized who I was and apologised, his gran by whom he was brought up with seemed to try her best, he faded into other ways.

More recently have had a player on the run to the Caribbean for something or other at the age of 15 and another who has been on court appearances for other stuff. Both have been raised well and parents can only hope they get up to good after school only to find out they just been in trouble or happen to be in a youth gang.

Is the way forward anywhere near?

How can we try and prevent our young players from getting into all this gang culture or association?

There is a mix feeling as some kids are well looked after and just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, others are just there for the wanting to be seen as one of the gang.

Local communities are stretched and seems local clubs have no funding to offer more than a couple of hours per week with young footballers in their care.

Local constables provide some activities in my area and hold a football tournament once a year which is not enough to bridge the gaps needed to stop some of this.

We can’t expect to stop gang culture all together but I hope we can protect some of our young stars by identifying early what sort of crowd they hang with and offer them a way out with the help from parents leasing with clubs and schools and offer possibly an extra corriculum.

Amongst many of our fallen young stars recently due to association or not to what might have been prevented are Rio McFarlane, Kiyan Price, Etem Celebi, Jahmal Mason-Blair, Oliver Kingonzila, Sofyen Belamouadden.

And these are just London or surrounding players I am mentioning from the last year or two and accross the rest of England there is many more fallen future England or International players that could have been.

I hope and wish we could do more to stop and help with what is now a postcode war.