Recently, I spoke with someone I know well who works in veterinary medicine.
He had spent years working in a smaller organization that eventually became part of a much larger one. The work itself had not necessarily changed, but the environment around it had. Decisions that once seemed relatively simple now required more layers of approval. He found himself wanting something different.
Around the same time, I spoke with a scientist who was also thinking about making a change. His reasons were different. What he seemed to need most was not different work, but an environment where he felt his contributions were valued.
Those conversations stayed with me. Their circumstances were different, but both made me think about how often we use the word need, and how many different things we ask it to describe.
Some needs are fundamental enough that we rarely have to explain them. Food, water, shelter and safety belong there. Living things need certain conditions simply to survive and grow.
Then there are the things we call needs that are harder to define.
My children sometimes tell me they need an iPhone, an Apple Watch, a particular drink their classmates are having, or a new soccer jersey. As a parent, it is easy to say, “You don’t need that.”
And in the most literal sense, they don’t.
But I have started to think that dismissing the object can sometimes cause me to miss what sits underneath the request. A child asking for the same phone everyone around her has may want the phone, but part of what she is reaching for may be belonging.
Understanding that does not mean buying the phone. Understanding the need and satisfying the request are different things.
I realized I had been doing something similar in soccer.
For quite a while, I thought my younger daughter needed to get faster.
She often played with older or more physically developed players, and from the sideline the problem seemed fairly easy to see. She would receive the ball and pressure would arrive. Space that had been there a moment earlier would disappear. A passing opportunity would close before she used it.
She looked slow.
My explanation was mostly physical. She was younger. She was still growing. Some of the players around her were quicker and stronger.
So I thought she needed speed.
As I continued watching her, and particularly after reading Use Your Brain, Raise Your Game, I started thinking differently about what I was seeing. I began paying more attention to what was happening before she moved, not just how quickly she moved afterward.
Sometimes my daughter was not particularly slow once she knew what she wanted to do. The decision itself was coming late.
She would receive the ball and then begin looking for the next option. She would recognize pressure when it was already arriving. She would see a passing lane just as it was closing.
By then, her legs were being asked to solve a problem that had begun earlier.
I began to see that some of her speed had to develop before the ball reached her. Scanning earlier and recognizing what was developing around her could give her time that her legs could never recover once the space had disappeared.
I wasn’t completely wrong that she needed to become faster.
I had misunderstood where some of the speed needed to come from.
That distinction has stayed with me. “Play faster” sounds like a need. So do “improve your first touch,” “be more confident,” or “make quicker decisions.” But these often describe what we hope to see at the end of development rather than what a player needs in order to get there.
Perhaps I should have understood that distinction more easily.
I grew up around farming, and much of my professional life has remained connected to agriculture. When a crop is not growing as expected, poor growth itself tells us very little about what to do next. The useful question is what is limiting it.
It could be water, nutrients, soil conditions, weather, weeds or disease. Timing matters too. What is needed at one stage may not be what is needed at another.
No farmer solves poor growth by simply asking the plant to grow faster. You try to understand the conditions around it.
Young players are obviously not crops, and human development is far more complicated. But I increasingly wonder whether we sometimes make the same mistake I made with my daughter. We identify what is missing in the performance and assume we have identified what the player needs.
Two players can appear slow in making decisions for completely different reasons. One may not be scanning early enough. Another may be limited by the first touch. Another may see the game well but hesitate because mistakes have become something to fear. The visible problem can look similar while what sits underneath it is different.
This becomes even more complicated because the player is not the only person in youth soccer with needs.
Clubs have real needs. They need fields, coaches, equipment, insurance, administrators, registrations and enough revenue to keep operating. Coaches have teams to organize, positions to fill and games they are trying to compete in. Parents bring schedules, financial limits and expectations of our own. None of those needs are wrong; youth soccer could not function without attending to many of them.
The difficulty is recognizing when the needs of clubs, coaches or parents begin to influence what we believe the player needs.
Part of the responsibility of a club or coach, I think, is not simply to provide development opportunities, but to pay close enough attention to understand what the individual player needs at that point in her development. Sometimes that will align perfectly with what the team or club needs. Sometimes it may not.
That distinction matters because there is almost always something more we can add. Another training session, a different competitive environment or specialized coaching may sometimes be exactly what a player needs.
But the existence of a solution does not prove the existence of the need.
A player who needs more touches can get them from a private trainer, but some can also come from a wall, a ball and a few other children. One player may benefit from more instruction while another needs enough freedom to solve problems without it. Even the same player may need more challenge at one point and more time at another.
There is another reason I think getting this right matters. Young players have a limited window in which to grow through the game. I understand this instinctively from agriculture: what a crop needs matters, but when it receives it matters too.
A childhood soccer journey has its own seasons. If too much of that limited time is spent meeting the needs of the adults or organizations around a player rather than understanding what she needs at that stage, we cannot simply give those years back later. Childhood keeps moving.
That limited time is also unfolding in a world different from the one many of us grew up in. Today’s children have almost constant access to entertainment and stimulation, while learning a game like soccer still asks for repetition, frustration and long periods when improvement is difficult to see. That environment is part of what surrounds their development too.
And some of the most important things a young player needs have little to do with soccer.
She needs to feel cared for, respected and that she belongs somewhere. She needs to know that the way the important adults in her life see her does not change because of a bad game.
That can be difficult to remember from the sideline.
I may see the pass my daughter should have made while she is thinking about why a teammate stopped passing to her. I may notice the minutes she spent on the bench while she is wondering whether the coach still believes in her. I may see a poor performance and begin thinking about what she should work on next while she is looking toward the sideline to see whether I am disappointed.
We can watch exactly the same game and experience something entirely different.
There will be times when my daughter really does need another training session, someone to push her, more repetitions or a more difficult environment. But love, care and respect cannot become just another part of a development program. Their purpose is not to make her a better midfielder.
They matter because she is a child.
I still catch myself watching her play and deciding what she needs next.
Sometimes I may be right. The coach may see something I don’t. My daughter may understand something neither of us sees.
Before adding another session, another instruction or another plan, I may need to understand the question a little better.