Today it all kicks off again. At 7am the phone will start ringing: “What time’s the game, Jim?” No matter that I’ll have told the lads at training a few days earlier, there’ll still be a few ringing up to check.

Barney, at 15 the youngest of my three children and our midfielder, will be oversleeping. I’ll get him hydrated and into the car with the balls, the bags, the bottles and a banana. Then there’s the registration cards, picking up stray players and the dog mess to be cleared off the centre circle before Northmeadow youth under15s can have their first glorious game of the season.

I am a stereotype of our times: the stressed-out manager of a boys’ football team, the touchline wally, windmilling with my arms, shouting “Coomon, lads”. It’s my seventh year as manager of the team Barney and 10 of his mates have played for since he was seven. I share common ground with England head coach Steve McClaren – on any given Sunday only half my players are available. One might be visiting his granny, divorced parents could be squabbling over weekend access to another, several will have a whiff of sleepover about them.

We have problems McClaren knows nothing about. Not only do we wage war against the dog mess, in our league a few parents wage war against each other. In one under15 game, thankfully not involving our team, the linesman was attacked by a gang – three players and a parent – who kicked him to the ground.

Every parent goes to a football ground wanting their child to do well. There isn’t much that makes you feel happier than half a dozen adults yelling “Well done” because your boy has scored the winning goal. Nothing fills you with as much pride as their success, nothing makes you suffer like their defeats.

But the attitude of some parents on the touchline is a real problem – and there is no class distinction. I have seen appallingly behaved middle-class parents.

I have been lucky in having dads in my club who are supportive in entirely engaging ways. There is one parent – Hamish – who says nothing particular, just makes a low growling noise at key moments. It’s become a rallying cry and other teams have noticed it too. They mimic him, and once when Hamish didn’t turn up to a match an opposing player came over and asked, “Where’s your growler?”

Some of our fathers get so excited their kids ban them from the touchline for being embarrassing – like Luke’s dad after he ran round with his arms out like an aeroplane when we won a vital match en route to a cup final. But none of them is abusive or sarcastic or emotionally oppressive of their kids.

My wife asked me yesterday, “What are you going to do when Barney stops playing?” (Luckily I think he’ll go on till he’s 18, which means another two seasons.) I said, “I’ll find something.” But it brought me back to the question any adult involved in kids’ football must keep asking: who is this for?

I have always regarded competitive sport as important in my children’s education. Sport teaches lessons you can’t learn in the classroom: about striving for achievement, something alien to the modern middle-class child who often gets everything he wants just by asking for it. When they do their A-levels, half of it is coursework which they can redo to get a better mark – if the art teacher hasn’t done it for them already. On a football field there’s no hiding place. Only by striving and having talent will you score goals.

The football pundit Alan Hansen once famously said “you’ll win nothing with kids” when Alex Ferguson fielded his youthful side featuring David Beckham in August 1995, but he was wrong (and not only because Man U won the title that season). Managing a kids’ football team is incredibly rewarding. They have taught me far more than I have taught them. I’ve learnt that shouting is counter-productive; the players respond best to calm rationality and clearly delivered instructions (though it’s still a battle between the two in my mind while a match is going on).

In truth you win everything with kids (not silverware, of course). This is what football is all about: fathers and sons. At the end of last season I walked off the pitch with Barney, arms around each other’s shoulders (he’s taller than me now). “Thanks,” I said. “What for?” he asked. “For this, it’s been a laugh.”

Jim White was talking to Sian Griffiths. His book You’ll Win Nothing with Kids: Fathers, Sons and Football is published by Little, Brown, £12.99

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