‘He fell over,’ I say, careful not to look at the spot where the ball has ended up.
A little later, when the child can walk, I take him outside and kick the ball to him. He tries to kick it back, and he tips over. I pick him up, retreat a short distance with the ball and start again. This carries on for years marked by little discernible progress. In the meantime another son comes along, then another. I bounce balls off their heads in turn.
Then one day in the park I notice all three of them are performing strange manoeuvres with the ball, little feints and sleights of foot named for the players who first popularized them, players I’ve never heard of because I am American and know nothing about football. I don’t even call it football.
The children did not exist when these legendary footballers were playing, and yet their celebrated manoeuvres have somehow been passed down to them over my head. My primary feeling is one of relief.
They introduce me to games I don’t understand; schoolyard versions of football for four or fewer players, with rules that seem designed to work against me. Even though I am larger, I find it difficult to take the ball off them, and the pointless running is exhausting. Eventually I am relegated to permanent goalkeeper, positioned between two piles of coats, piles which I surreptitiously move closer together when no one is looking.
‘Dad, come on,’ shouts my son as I let in another goal. ‘You’re being useless.’ He is not teasing me; nor is he crowing. He is furious that my inability to defend is affecting the delicate balance of a one-on-one game between him and his younger brother. He has a much sterner accusation in reserve – that I am not even trying – but he knows me well enough. In my own pathetic way I am doing my best.
The extent to which a parent is competitive with children depends largely on how competitive you are in the first place. Many dads, including me, have virtually no experience of winning at games until they start thrashing their own tiny children. This is how I finally learned to enjoy ping-pong. You may pretend to yourself that you are teaching them to be good losers, but they are also learning how to be smug and graceless winners. Trust me: when the time comes, they will remember.
It has always seemed strange to me that children are traditionally introduced to the notion of competition via the cruellest game ever devised by man: Snakes and Ladders. Defeat is often crushing, and because it’s a game of chance there is no plausible way for parents to engineer a less painful outcome. After the second time the children land themselves at the top of a twisting snake you look into their little brimming eyes, even while you’re stepping your own piece up another ladder, and you tell them that it’s nothing to be upset about: this is just how games work. And also, by the way, how life works.
I was, frankly, quite content to suck at football, relieved to put the complex question of father–son competition behind me as soon as possible, and to step warily into the role of spectator.
When I was very small, I spent a lot of Sundays in a field watching my father play touch football, a slightly less violent version of American football. One of my earliest memories is of standing on the touchline on a crisp, autumn afternoon, aged about three, and having a motorcycle fall on top of me. The incident left me with a certain ambivalence towards spectatorship. At that point I never imagined I would have children who would one day be forced to watch me play sport. Which is just as well, because this never came to pass.
Instead, it is Sunday and I am standing on a touchline watching my middle son play football, in one of about twenty matches taking place on an open expanse of ground. I am dressed for the unseasonable weather, but I’m still cold, and I can see I’m going to have to give up my gloves at halftime: the middle one is playing with the ends of his sleeves bunched in his fists.
I’ve maintained a semi-regular presence at matches across the season, regular enough so that other fathers will occasionally come up and chat, but not so regular that they’ve realized I never have any idea what they’re talking about. One of them approaches and nods when he gets close.
‘They’re struggling today,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’s really muddy.’
As I speak, a well-aimed ball adheres to the ground just short of the goal, forcing the keeper to wade out and pull it free. I feel I have made a point worth making.
‘A few players missing,’ he says. ‘They’ve had to mix things up. That one, he’s never played at right back.’
‘Really? Where does he usually play?’ I ask.
‘He’s the keeper,’ he says.
‘So who’s that in goal then?’
‘The other keeper.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘This mud. Honestly.’
At half-time I wander over to another match, where the youngest one is playing and my wife is watching, with the dog sitting beside her. She hands me the lead as I approach. ‘What’s happening over here?’ I say.
‘They’ve just started,’ she says. ‘There was a delay because both teams showed up in the same kit, so someone had to go and get bibs.’
‘What’s the score?’
‘No idea,’ she says.
‘It’s two-one,’ says another father, thumbing at his BlackBerry. ‘Just doing my report for the local paper.’
‘They’re playing ever so well,’ my wife says. ‘Aren’t they?’
‘I’ll say your boy was solid at the back,’ the father says. ‘“Despite his diminutive stature, Dowling maintained a solid defensive presence for the” … Oh dear.’ A whistle blows.
‘What happened?’ I say. The youngest one jogs past, his face contorted with frustration and fury.
‘Never mind!’ the other father shouts at him. ‘Foul throw,’ he says to me. ‘They’ve been doing it all day. If they’d just learn to plant themselves, they’d be fine.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Throw-ins,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to keep both feet on the ground.’ I feel a twinge of embarrassment: even my children don’t know that I don’t know this.
‘How’s the other match going?’ the father asks. I look at the ground and shake my head ruefully.
‘It’s really muddy over there,’ I say.
At half-time I return to the first match, where several fathers are indulging in a pastime that often crops up when we’re losing badly: debating the ages of the other team’s players.
‘Look at number seven,’ one says. ‘He’s never thirteen – look at his calves.’
‘It’s a scandal,’ says another, as number 7 scythes through our defence. Obviously there is a broad developmental range at this age, with everybody either side of puberty, but I know better than to mention it.
‘Shocking,’ I say.
‘It’s a scandal,’ the first father says. ‘He’s at least seventeen!’
‘Number twenty-four is even bigger,’ the linesman says.
‘Yeah, the midfielder,’ another father adds. ‘He’s not on the pitch. Where’s he gone?’
‘He probably had to take his kids to the zoo,’ the first father says. Number 7 churns his way past us, a colossus beset by elves. His foot catches, and he drops to one knee as the ball sinks into the mire. A small boy runs up, works it free and boots it over the halfway line.
‘Mud,’ I say, ‘is a great leveller.’
For me the most difficult form of spectatorship revolves around the professional game, where I must watch alongside