To See or Not to See: Talent Identification in the Swedish Football Association

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore whether context and coaching cultures influence coaches’ practical experience and their unarticulated and embodied knowledge, and thus their different ways of seeing and defining talent. Using a cultural sociological perspective, we challenge the commonly held assumption that talent identification is, or can be made into, a rational and objective process. Our interpretations and analyses are based upon interviews with 15 soccer coaches in four districts within the Swedish Football Association’s talent organization program. The results imply that coaches’ talent identification is guided by what feels “right in the heart and stomach”; but what feels right is greatly influenced by their experience of previous identifications, interpretations of what elite soccer entails, and the coaching culture in which they find themselves.

Pupil-athletes’ Learning Dispositions and Their Potential Effects in School Sports-situated Talent Development Programs

“…Regarding resilience in particular, our findings echo scholars who note that being persistent and committed to high volumes of practice are key selection indicators for coaches and talent scouts (Christensen, 2009;Lund & Söderström, 2017; see also Saether, 2014). The reciprocity disposition manifested among the students in our study similarly resonates with previous research that highlights how successful athletes learn through communication with other athletes (Christensen et al, 2011;Henriksen, 2010;Larsen et al, 2013) and how social and communication skills play a part in team and talent program selection processes (Johansson & Fahlén, 2017;Kilger & Jonsson, 2017).…”

“…Together with the resonance that these dispositions find in previous research on athlete/ talent development (Barker et al, 2014;Christensen et al, 2011;Larsen et al, 2013), this finding suggests a certain consistency across talent development learning contexts. Previous research may thus be right in proposing that talent identification and selection processes promote certain skills and personalities, in turn creating, in some respects, homogenous talent groups (Christensen, 2009;Ferry & Lund, 2018;Kilger & Börjesson, 2015;Lund & Söderström, 2017).…”

“…Previous research suggests that talent groups are homogeneous in many respects (Christensen, 2009;Ferry & Lund, 2018;Kilger & Börjesson, 2015;Lund & Söderström, 2017), and two aspects in particular indicate that this applies to the group of pupils admitted to NIUF, too. First, prior to entering NIUF, all pupils in the program go through the same football development system-the club activities governed by the Swedish Football Association (SvFF).…”

“…In addition to the academic merits required, only players that are likely to develop into national-level elite athletes are admitted to the program (Lund & Liljeholm, 2012;Riksidrottsförbundet, 2012;Skolverket, n.d.). This usually means that a player needs to be among the 16 best male or female players in one of the 24 football districts that make up the talent system as a whole, or meet the standards of those 16 best regional players (Peterson, 2011;Lund & Söderström, 2017). However, regardless of the highly selective processes preceding admittance to the program, not all NIUF pupils move on to become successful elite athletes.…”

Waste Reduction Strategies: Factors Affecting Talent Wastage and the Efficacy of Talent Selection in Sport

“…To date, there does not appear to be a "gold standard" approach to talent selection; rather, there appears to be a high degree of variability in the techniques, protocols, and processes used for assessment and selection. Current approaches range from subjective preferences and intuition (Williams and Reilly, 2000;Christensen, 2009;Lund and Söderström, 2017) and the use of standardized testing batteries (e.g., 40 meter sprint, vertical jump, Gabbett, 2009;Wells et al, 2009) to hypothesis-free machine-learning approaches 2 (e.g., Güllich et al, 2019). Some researchers describe the talent selection approaches to be analytical and economically rational (Slack and Parent, 2006), while others have challenged the assumption that talent selection can be a rational or objective process (Cushion and Jones, 2006;Christensen, 2009;Lund and Söderström, 2017), describing the process as impulsive, irrational, atheoretical, and costly (Bar-Eli et al, 2011).…”