ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 questions were raised about the ownership and control of children and young people, and in Chapter 3 assumptions about the needs and interests of young footballers were reiterated. The first purpose of the current chapter is to explain how our research team attempted to design a study of the FA’s child protection work in football that would do justice to the width and depth of young people’s involvement in the game. The second purpose here is to introduce the reader to the ‘football family’, as understood in this research.
