It Starts With a Dream
My message to every young footballer who wants to be at the 2034 World Cup - and the five things that will get them there
By Wayne Goldsmith
Three important messages:
The kids who make it are the ones who fall in love with the game first.
Skills win matches - so work on them every day, at speed and when you’re tired.
Parents, the kindest thing you can do is stop doing things for your kids.
I was on Weekend Sport in New Zealand with Jason Pine this week, talking about something every football nation is wrestling with.
How do we develop the World Cup stars of the future?
The focus was New Zealand. But honestly, this applies to every young player in every country who’s ever looked at a World Cup and thought, “I want to be there.”
So I started with a message for every player listening, aged 12 to 18.
The 2034 World Cup starts with a dream.
And then it’s all about you - and what you do day to day!
Here are the five things I told them.
1. Fall in love with the game:
This is the foundation. Everything else is built on top of it.
Because the road to a World Cup is long. Eight years long, for the kids listening right now. And across those eight years there will be early mornings, hard sessions, disappointments and days you don’t feel like showing up.
Love is what gets you there anyway.
A player who loves football will train for a decade.
A player chasing someone else’s dream quits at fifteen.
Fall in love with the game first. The rest follows.
2. Skills, skills, skills:
You want to play at the highest level? Then master the basics.
Not when it’s easy. Not when you’re fresh and the session’s going well.
Work on your skills every single day - at speed and when you’re tired.
Because that’s when matches are won and lost. In the last ten minutes. Under fatigue. Under pressure. The player who can still control, pass and finish when their legs are gone is the player who makes it.
The fundamentals, done brilliantly when it’s hard, are what separate the good from the great.
3. Develop resilience:
Let me be honest with you about what’s coming.
Setbacks. Injuries. Non-selections. Losses. Knockbacks you didn’t see coming and didn’t deserve.
Every player who’s ever made it has walked through all of it.
And here’s what brings them back every time - their love of the game. The setback knocks them down and the love picks them up, hungrier and working harder than before.
Resilience isn’t something you’re born with.
It’s something you build one setback at a time.
4. Be “job ready”:
Over the next eight years, learn how to be a professional - long before anyone’s paying you to be one.
Learn how to eat, and what to eat.
Learn how to look after your body and your mind.
Learn how to travel well. How to sleep well. How to recover.
These aren’t things you switch on the day you sign a contract. They’re habits you build now, as a 14 or 15 year old, so that by the time the opportunity comes, being a professional is simply who you are.
Start becoming “job ready” today.
5. Parents - stop doing things for your kids:
This one’s for the mums and dads. And it’s said with love.
Stop doing things for your kids.
They should be packing and unpacking their own bag. Cleaning their own boots. Cooking their own meals. Taking ownership and responsibility for their own football destiny.
I know it comes from a good place. You want to help. You want to smooth the road.
But every time you do it for them, you take away the very thing that makes a professional athlete - ownership.
The players who make it own their journey. They don’t have it carried for them.
Let them carry it. That’s how they get strong enough for what’s ahead.
Summary:
At the end of the interview, Piney asked me for a final message for the players out there.
Here’s what I said.
You can do this.
Living in this part of the world is not an excuse - it is an asset.
Believe that this is possible for you.
(If this is the kind of message you want more of, I write one like it every week).
Three Practical Applications For Your Coaching:
Coach the love before the result. With your 12 to 18 year olds, protect their enjoyment of the game as fiercely as you coach their skills. The player who still loves football at 18 is the one with a future. The one burnt out by results is gone.
Train skills under fatigue, on purpose. Don’t only practise skills when players are fresh. Build skill work into the back end of sessions - tired legs, high heart rate, real pressure. That’s where matches are decided, so that’s where skills have to hold.
Hand ownership back to the players. Look at everything you - or the parents - currently do for your players and start handing it back. Their bags, their gear, their preparation, their recovery. Ownership is a skill too and it’s one most young athletes are never taught.
Thanks for reading, listening and watching.
Wayne
Never miss a post. Coaching, talent and athlete development every week - no hype, just what works.
If you’re an NZ reader - you can listen to the full interview here: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/weekend-sport-with-jason-pine/audio/wayne-goldsmith-coaching-expert-on-how-to-coach-aspiring-world-cup-stars/