The Little One

I think my decision to ‘hot house’ my youngest daughter is beginning to pay off. After the moderate success of my eldest girl, and the disaster that my son is developing into, I was determined to get this one right! I think the fact that my youngest was a National Indoor Champion last year in the U4 division, and made it to the finals of the U5 3v3 World Championships this year is a pretty good indication that I’m doing something right, don’t you think?

A good grounding in the game is essential and I put a lot of her success down to the SoccaSpawn program that I enrolled her in about 15 minutes after she was conceived. During the gestation period of your superstar-in-waiting this program applies a series of carefully crafted audio-visual stimuli to the foetus. My daughter was already kicking in the womb at the sound of any foreign accent that would holler “man-on!” The visual element comes indirectly through the parent who watches video recordings of a series of interminably boring 0-0 ties between two non-entity EPL outfits called Fulham and Bolton. As a result, in later life, she’s likely to be superb at the sleep-inducing approach which is widely referred to as patient build up play.

The real meat of the program starts once the subjects can walk - although you will find the occasional fanatical nut-case parent who tries to get around this stage. My youngest was walking at 10 months but I then spent a frustrating six-week period spinning my wheels when we couldn’t get her the Adidas Tunits with the clima-cool chassis in a color which she liked. However, once she was kitted out properly it was time to hand her over to her Head Facilitator (none of that old-fashioned ‘coach’ nonsense for my kid).

At the end of the first session I could tell she was in good hands when the facilitator told me that he liked my daughter’s proprioceptive movement and spatial awareness. I wasn’t completely sure what he meant by that but it did give me the impression that I was getting good value for my money and it was worth it just to see the look on my girlfriend’s face as the only creative thing her demented little kid did all session was to soil another diaper.

He did say that both me and my daughter could do with a little bit of work on our socialization skills. That remark had a bit too much of an Obama sound to it for my liking and I’ll have to keep my eye open for any more of that sort of left wing talk from these highly creative types. After all, I just want everyone to get all along with each other.