Well, the masters of the art should try to remain calm while watching their team compete in the Oxford Mail Boys Under-10s B League. See if their placidity stays in place as their lads contrive to throw away a 10-goal lead under the shadow of Didcot power station. Test their inner resolve when their deferential defence, brought up to share their toys, politely stands aside to let half a dozen shaven-headed tearaways from Blackbird Leys have a free run on goal. Assess their self-control mechanism when play has to be interrupted for the fourth time this half while the star winger has his laces done up by the referee.

For two seasons now, since I became coach of my son's Sunday football team, I have entered a weekly battle with my emotions. It isn't easy. Boys' football is probably the most emotionally intense form of sport known to man: a pursuit peppered with tears, tantrums, even fisticuffs. And that's just among the parents. Worse, for a manager looking to restrain his outbursts in deference to fragile egos (and their offspring), my natural inclination is towards the excited.

For years, I turned out as a player for a team of journalists alongside an urbane literary critic who felt constantly obliged to remind me that it was "only a game". Like Sergeant Wilson to Captain Mainwaring, he would offset one of my foul-mouthed tirades at a teammate's inadequacy with a wise "Do you think that's absolutely necessary?" Once, when this voice of restraint was absent injured, I shamed myself by rounding on our goalkeeper, a charming and renowned specialist correspondent. In the dressing room, after we had been pummelled by some improbable margin, I yelled at him for far longer than necessary, angrily suggesting that a plastic dustbin placed on the goal line would have been more use than he had been. Every time I see him being interviewed by Kirsty Wark on Newsnight, I redden at the memory. But it was difficult to remain calm after I discovered that the opposition centre-forward who had just scored a hat trick was sporting a false leg.

It is clear that such motivational techniques do not work with small boys, if they ever did with adults. I have seen the effects of such an approach in action at first hand, and it makes uncomfortable viewing. Last season, we were in a five-a-side tournament. Among the many new rules the players had to learn for the occasion was one which decreed that if a defender entered his own area, he would give away a penalty. Within 30 seconds of our first game in the competition, one of the opposition, a small, bewildered-looking boy in bottle-bottomed glasses, wandered across his own area. The referee, somewhat officiously, awarded us a penalty, which was duly converted. This provoked apoplexy in the opposition coach, who directed a vicious verbal volley at the boy. Despite the tirade, the lad clearly did not know what exactly he had done wrong, because the game had barely restarted when he did the same thing again, absent-mindedly walking into his own area.

Cue another penalty, another goal, and an even louder eruption on the touchline. At which the boy burst into tears, ran off the pitch and disappeared into a little copse behind the goals, looking for a place to hide his shame. "Good riddance," the coach yelled after him. "We're better off without you." The boy was eight years old.

Fortunately, such incidents are rare in our league. Mostly, games are conducted in a good spirit, confounding the cliches of junior football, with boys and parents alike absorbing defeat and victory with equal fortitude. Well, the boys, anyway. But that doesn't mean it is easy. Since I took over as manager of my son's team, the learning curve has been steep. I'd like to say I was offered the job because of my lengthy expertise, my knowledge of the game, my enviable way with tactics. In fact, no one else would do it.

Initially I was reluctant, in part because I didn't want to embarrass my son on a weekly basis. But, so far, our relationship has survived the pitfalls of brutal anti-favouritism. Nothing spreads discontent through a boys' team more than the manager's son taking all the free-kicks, penalties, corners and throw-ins, as well as the captain's arm band, so I have adopted the strategy that it is better to cheese off one individual than 20. Despite this, for the two of us, it has gradually grown into a shared obsession. Or perhaps he is just humouring me.

In fact, I do slightly worry how obsessed I have become. I wake up in the night dreaming of formations; spend hours online exchanging emails with our coach over who was man of the match; given the choice, I would rather watch our boys in action than a plum Premiership game. And I have extracted from the day job as many tips as I can. Every interview of a sportsman I conduct, I ask for advice on coaching the boys. The best came from Willi Raillo, Sven-Goran Eriksson's sports psychologist mentor, to whom I spoke just before a tournament we had entered. His recommendation was not to bother with any urgent, last-minute tactical instruction; instead, get the boys to sit down in a circle, tell them to shut their eyes and imagine lifting the trophy at the end of the afternoon. It worked: the boys won. Let's hope the technique is as productive with Sven's lads this summer.

Interestingly, most sports people offer roughly the same advice (except for a former player under Brian Clough, but that's another story altogether). It always comes down to this: stay calm, encourage, never blame and issue clear instructions without over-emotive baggage. And keep in your mind at all times that you should be doing this for the boys. It is about accommodating all talents, helping them all to learn how to win (and how to lose), rather than as a pursuit of your own dreams of being Alex Ferguson.

When it all comes together, when the boys pass and move and score, it is easy to remember all that. Defeat is a tougher taskmaster. Which is why my new coaching hero is no longer Eriksson or Fletcher. I saw him in action a couple of weeks ago, on the day our team clicked as never before. We hammered the opposition, crushed them, provoking broad grins and high fives from our loyal bunch of parental followers. As we wandered off the pitch, cheery in triumph, I noticed that the losing manager had brought his players together, seated in a Raillo-style circle on the turf. He was calmly, rationally, in measured tones, telling them that they had done nothing to be ashamed of, that he remained proud of them and that they should learn from the defeat rather than fret about it. He then shook each player by the hand.

Believe me, that would have taken some doing.