Psychology of athletes’ dual careers : A state-of the art critical review of the European discourse

Community sport clubs are a type of membership association largely run by member volunteers who organize and deliver opportunities for recreational and competitive sport participation. These clubs are where people are most likely to engage in organized sport, and have become a focus for achieving social policy objectives. It is important to understand the structures and processes that enable these organizations to meet their member-focused mandates. The purpose of this study was to develop a framework of organizational capacity in this context by uncovering critical elements within multiple capacity dimensions, namely, human resources, finance, infrastructure, planning and development, and external relationships. Focus groups with presidents of 51 sport clubs across Ontario revealed key strengths and challenges that impact the ability of these organizations to achieve their sport delivery goals. Variation by club size was observed. Implications for practice and future research on community sport clubs and...

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Toward a Multidimensional Framework of Capacity in Community Sport Clubs

Research arising from self-determination theory (SDT; Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268) indicates that the quality of the social interactions between athletes and coaches, and athletes' ensuing psychological responses, are critical determinants of intentions to drop out of youth sport. Little is known regarding whether these processes hold across countries. Grounded in SDT, this study tested the invariance of a model predicting youth sport dropout across five European countries. Seven thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine grassroots players (6641 males, 1020 females (M age = 11.56, SD = 1.40) from youth soccer teams in five countries (England, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain) completed a questionnaire tapping perceptions of coach-provided autonomy support, basic psychological need satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness), soccer enjoyment, and intentions to d...

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Intentions to drop-out of youth soccer: A test of the basic needs theory among European youth from five countries

This article provides a unique opportunity to compare gender inequalities in sports participation across Europe, and the extent to which this varies by age using large, cross-sections of the population. The Eurobarometer Survey 62.0 (carried out in 2004 at the request of the European Commission and covering the adult population of 25 European member states, N = 23,909) was used to analyse differences in regular sports participation by gender and by age in the different countries. For the majority of countries, the occurrence of regular sporting activity was less than 40%. Additionally, binary logistic regression analyses identified significant gender differences in sports participation in 12 countries. In Belgium, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Spain, and the UK, men were more likely to report being regularly active in sports than women, whereas in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands the opposite was true. Moreover, the extent to which these gender inequalities differ by a...

Gender and age inequalities in regular sports participation: A cross-national study of 25 European countries

Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of football players from Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia have been migrating to the top leagues in Western Europe (England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). This development has been massively fostered by the ``Bosman ruling'' of the European Court of Justice in December 1995. Perhaps surprisingly, the decreasing playing time that is now available to ``local players'' has not yet resulted in an increasing competitive balance of the national teams of countries importing players and those exporting players.

Globalization and Factor Mobility: The Impact of the ``Bosman-Ruling'' on Player Migration in Professional Soccer

that Parliament has already had such a code in place for over 10 years and asks the Commission to negotiate with Parliament for the establishment of common rules; is of the opinion that any code should contain a strong monitoring element with regard to the conduct of lobbyists; stresses that sanctions should apply to lobbyists who breach the code of conduct; emphasises that sufficient resources (staff and funding) must be set aside for the purposes of verifying the information on the register; considers that for the Commission's register sanctions may include suspension from the register, and in more serious cases removal from the register; believes that once a common register is established, non-compliance by lobbyists should lead to sanctions in relation to access to all institutions to which the register applies;

Directorate-General for Education

Papers

White paper on sport