I am eighteen. I play centre midfield for my college side. I am five foot six and I have been five foot six since I was fourteen, which is why three different coaches have told me since I was twelve that I should try wide. A manager I had at thirteen said I would grow out of it. I did not. A coach I had at fifteen said to my dad, loud enough that I could hear him from the car park, that I was "a nice little player but we want something else in the middle now".
I watched the England U21s on Friday night and I thought about that car park.
The player I could not stop watching was five foot four. He is nineteen. The match report will tell you that he came on in the sixty third minute with England 2-1 down. He did not win the match on his own. He did do this: he got on the ball forty one times in twenty seven minutes. He passed forwards thirty two of them. He drew the foul that won the free kick that became the equaliser. And with two minutes to go, he took the ball in a position where a bigger player would have laid it off, and he ran through three Italian U21 defenders because he was small enough to slip the gap between their legs.
This is the part the highlight reel will miss. When he came off, injury time, absolutely gone, one of the Italian defenders he had skinned put a hand on his shoulder. He did not lean down. He did not have to. That is what playing the game properly looks like.
What I want to say to the twelve year olds reading this
You have been told you are too small. I have been told I am too small. You have sat in a car at half time while your dad tried to tell you that the coach did not mean it the way he said it. I have sat in that car. The coach meant it the way he said it. The coach was wrong.
Not every short player makes it. Not every tall one does either. Height is one variable of maybe forty that matter, and the coaches who reduce your game to one of them are not the coaches who will develop you. Find a coach who counts your touches, not your inches. If they do not exist at your current club, the next club is two bus stops away and they are looking.
What I want to say to the coaches reading this
I know you have a team to pick. I know the bigger boy already scored twice in the last match. I know the parents are loud. Watch the ball, not the body. The kid you are about to leave out of your U14s for another season is the one who is going to have to play half a season a man down at seventeen because you did. You have time to be wrong about this now. You will not have time to be right about it later.
The England U21s won on Friday 3-2. The match-winner was not tall. He was brilliant.
I am going to college training in the morning. I am not going wide.