Forty boys on a small pitch

A coach in Imbaba runs a Friday morning football session for boys on a small rented pitch.

When it started there were twelve of them. He knew who hid on the wing when he was nervous, who needed a shout and who needed a quiet word. Parents noticed. The boys got better, and they told their cousins.

Now there are thirty. Then forty. The pitch is the same size and so is the coach. Each boy touches the ball less, drills turn into queues, and the quiet word becomes a whistle from the far end. Nothing collapses. It just gets a little worse every Friday, in ways nobody can point to.

This is the odd thing about something that works. The reason it works is usually tied to a size: the number of boys one man can actually see. Push past that size and you do not get more of the good thing. You get more of something else wearing its shirt.

And the pressure to grow is strongest exactly when the work is at its best. That is when the fathers phone, the new names pile up and the money is easiest to take. Saying no then feels ungrateful, even foolish. Saying no when it is going badly is easy, because nobody is asking.

The coach who holds it at sixteen will turn away boys who deserve a place. That is a real cost. But the coach who takes everyone will end up running a crowd rather than a team, and the parents will notice that as well.

Stopping is a decision you have to make while everything around you says keep going.