“Character Is the Most Important Thing in Soccer”—A Pilot Study on the Development and Effectiveness of a Character Building Program in High-Performance Youth Soccer

Abstract

Background: Strength of character plays an important role in high-performance soccer. Yet little attention is paid to the character development of young athletes in most youth programs. Objective: The purpose of this pilot study was to describe the development of a new character building program and to evaluate its effectiveness on strength of character domains and implicit theories of intelligence and talent in a high-performance youth soccer club in Germany. Methods: A pre-post mixed-methods pilot study was conducted with 42 youth players. The intervention group (n = 14) was compared with a club-internal control group (n = 14) and one control group from an amateur soccer club setting (n = 14). The Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale was used to measure the player’s incremental beliefs about intelligence and talent and a new designed questionnaire was used to measure the strength of character. The quantitative analysis included Mann-Whitney-U and Wilcoxon tests. For the qualitative analysis, essays of the intervention group were thematically coded. Results: At baseline, the implicit theories of talent scores and the strength of character scores were higher in the intervention group compared with the amateur club players, whereas implicit theories of intelligence scores were non-significant. In the intervention group, scores on implicit theories of intelligence (p = 0.003) and strength of character (p = 0.004) were significantly higher at the end of the program compared with baseline. Conclusions: The character building intervention increased the incremental beliefs about intelligence and the strength of character in the young players of a high performance youth soccer club. These results are an important first contribution regarding the development and integration of character building in the context of professional youth soccer.