Youth footballers (13-15) and the coach: Generation Z

Youth football nurseries have historically served to expand grassroots football with a commitment to improving talent. Building on recent research on the Developmental Model of Sport Participation and the Long-Term Athlete Development model, this study explored the experiences for youth footballers in the coaching setting. This study investigated the perceptions and beliefs of youth footballers (13-15 years) on their experiences in youth football club nurseries in Malta. The focus was on (i) the youth footballer-coach relationship; (ii) experiences from the coaching sessions and games; and (iii) environment factors of significant others. Forty-two youth footballers from six nurseries participated in six in-depth semi-structured focus-groups. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The footballer-coach relationships revealed that participants desire for a coach that does not yell/ shout and remains calm, is caring and encouraging. The coach impacts resilience, motivation, mental-wellbeing, and decisions for dropouts. Youth footballers preferred deliberate play rather than deliberate practice pedagogies. Interestingly, co-operative coaching style was preferred by confident and skilful youths; while the command coaching style was reassuring for those who believed that they had a lot to learn. The findings showed that most participants preferred to play and enjoy themselves, rather than win every game and not play. The Gen Z characteristics of high expectations for success emerged in this study, but the focus on winning, rather than game strategy development was important to some of the youth footballers. This study recommends that the youth footballer-coaching relationship would benefit from the knowledge and application of advanced social-psychological disciplines from sports coaching sciences; and that youth football nursery programmes should be structured around participants and transitions of continued participation at recreational and high levels of performance.