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. 2021 Feb 1;18(3):1321.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18031321.

Talent Development Environments in Football: Comparing the Top-Five and Bottom-Five-Ranked Football Academies in Norway

Kristian Gangsø  1 , Nils Petter Aspvik  1 , Ingar Mehus  1 , Rune Høigaard  1   2 , Stig Arve Sæther  1
Affiliations

Talent Development Environments in Football: Comparing the Top-Five and Bottom-Five-Ranked Football Academies in Norway

Kristian Gangsø et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to examine junior-elite football players' perception of their talent development environment by comparing clubs ranked as the top-five and bottom-five in the 2017 Norwegian academy classification.

Methods: In total, 92 male junior-elite football players recruited from under-19 teams from five professional football club academies took part in the study. The Talent Development Environment Questionnaire (TDEQ-5; Martindale et al. 2010) was used to measure the players' perceptions of their team environment.

Results: The subscale long-term development focus and support network had the highest score and indicated that they perceived that the environment was high quality with respect to those factors. Players from the top-five-ranked clubs perceived their development environments to be significantly more positive with respect to holistic quality preparation, alignment of expectations, communication and, compared to players from the bottom-five-ranked clubs.

Conclusions: The players' perceptions of the talent development environment seem to be in alignment of the academy classification undertaken by the Norwegian top football association.

Keywords: football; talent development environment questionnaire; youth sports.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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