Does the experience influence the efficacy of football coach? A perspective from coaches with different levels of experience as player and as coach

Abstract

The experience is as an important predictor of the football coach efficacy. To study its relevance in valuation of efficacy factors we used the CESp (Duarte et al., 2010), an adapted version of the Coaching Efficacy Scale (CES), of Feltz et al. (1999), in a sample of 60 football coaches from different competitive levels working in Portugal, which were categorized according to their experience as players (professionals and non-professionals) and as coaches (high and reduced). Based on the analysis of the results it was concluded that: 1) professional experience as a player does not interfere in valuing of the efficacy factors; 2) professional experience as a coach involves a factor´s different valuation, with a significance level on character factor; 3) coaches with less experience as athletes and coaches shows less consistency in the practical application of the factors with regard to their hierarchy and frequency of its use. This is a study that allows a deeper understanding of the importance of experience in football coach performance, emphasizing the need to consider the different levels of experience in coach training, and still require subsequent studies, particulary with coaches who work in other contexts, in order to better support the applicability of the results.