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Players’ understanding of talent identification in early specialisation youth football

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-06-20, 08:48 authored by Nicola J. Clarke, Christopher CushionChristopher Cushion, Chris Harwood
Despite research illustrating the socially constructed and subjective nature of talent identification in football, little research has explored how players make sense of ‘being talented’ and how this shapes their identity experiences. Five football academy players aged 11 years participated in five focus group interviews. Thematic and interactional qualitative analyses were performed to examine the content and function of participants’ talk. Findings described how players constructed being scouted as authentically choosing, or being chosen by, a club, which worked to protect or enhance participants’ talented identities and self-worth. Talent was regarded as dynamic, but players’ perceived expectation to continuously improve implied a potentially problematic view of development as linear. Evidence of early socialisation into the academy culture indicated that while effort was seen as virtuous, it was used to judge performance in comparison to peers, suggesting that effort had become a rhetorical device that reflected conformity, rather than player motivation.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Soccer and Society

Citation

CLARKE, N.J., CUSHION, C.J. and HARWOOD, C.G., 2018. Players’ understanding of talent identification in early specialisation youth football. Soccer and Society, 19(8), pp. 1151-1165.

Publisher

© Taylor and Francis (Routledge)

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Soccer and Society on 15 February 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14660970.2018.1432388.

Acceptance date

2017-05-15

Publication date

2018-02-15

ISSN

1466-0970

eISSN

1743-9590

Language

  • en

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