Amateur Football Clubs Research Articles

Youth, Associational Life and Civic Engagement in Northern Cameroon: Association des Jeunes Élèves et Étudiants de la Faada

ABSTRACT This article analyses the ways in which youths in Northern Cameroon have been able to access social citizenship. Tracing the nature of this access over an extended period – from the early 1990s to the mid-2020s – I underline the importance of youth civic engagement through associational life. Associational life is a hidden or covert way of engaging in politics, and leads to a reinvention of their interaction with hegemonic power, as they are not positioning themselves as moral stakeholders in their community. Drawing on a case study involving the members of the Association des Jeunes Élèves et Étudiants de la Faada, with longitudinal ethnographic data combined with interviews, the article articulates changes and continuities in civic engagement, based on learning by doing through discursive practices (in street parliaments), physical practices (amateur football clubs) and associative practices (in non-profit associations).

‘The Most Famous Amateur Football Club in the world’: Creating and Curating the Corinthian brand

AbstractCorinthian FC (1882–1938) was one of the world's most famous football clubs, despite never winning a league championship or a cup competition. At a time when association football, especially in Britain, was establishing itself as a form of commercialised entertainment with clubs organised as businesses and employing working‐class professionals, the Corinthians became the principal standard‐bearers for gentlemanly amateurism, effectively creating and curating a niche brand which had middle‐class appeal and proved remarkably resilient. Pursuing this analogy focuses attention on the core values with which the club was associated and the strategies pursued to protect the brand it had created. This article seeks to explain the appeal of this elite touring club in England and also overseas, where it focuses especially on its visits to South Africa in 1897, 1903 and 1907.

DETERMINATION OF THE HUBRIS SYNDROME LEVELS OF AMATEUR FOOTBALL PLAYERS – SAMPLE OF KAYSERİ PROVINCE, TURKEY

The aim of this research is to examine the hubris syndrome levels of individuals playing amateur football in Kayseri in terms of various variables. A total of 298 randomly selected individuals who were athletes in amateur football clubs in Kayseri province participated in the study voluntarily. In the study, the “Hubris Syndrome in Sport Scale” developed by Tutar and Nacar (2022) and the personal information form prepared by the researchers were used as data collection tools. The personal information form consists of 4 questions asked to obtain information about the age, league level, football playing history (years) and position of the participants. Statistical analyses of the data obtained were made with the SPSS 27.0 package program. Personal information about the candidates, inventory total scores and factor scores were given by determining frequency (f) and percentage (%) values. One-way analysis of variance (LSD) test statistics was used to compare the scores obtained from the scales. As a result, while a significant difference was found in the variables of soccer playing history (years) and position played (p<0.05), no significant difference was found in the variables of age and league level played (p>0.05). When the general hubris syndrome levels of the football players were examined, it was determined that the sub-dimension scores of self-importance and holding oneself superior to others were below the average, while the self-confidence sub-dimension scores were above the average.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0777/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Effects of Brand Awareness, Brand Association, Perceived Quality, and Brand Loyalty on Overall Brand Equity in Sport. A Case Study of an Amateur Football Sports Club

Abstract The primary objective of this research endeavor outlined in the thesis was to evaluate the impact of the individual dimensions of Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) – brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty – on the overall brand capital of the researched amateur football club Talent Warszawa. The author sought to discern which among the individual dimensions of CBBE exerted the most significant influence on fostering the overall brand capital of the club under examination. A questionnaire was distributed amongst the constituents of Talent Warszawa, including players, parents and guardians, players’ families, and supporters of amateur football. The survey garnered responses from a total of 102 stakeholders affiliated with the club. The reliability of the measurement scale was validated through Cronbach’s Alpha analysis. The findings of the study evince a positive correlation among all variables under scrutiny, encompassing brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, brand loyalty, and the overarching construct of CBBE. Notably, perceived quality emerged as the factor showing the highest positive correlation (0.88), thus indicating the most robust positive association with CBBE. However, despite the observed positive relationship, brand awareness manifested the lowest correlation with the overall consumer-based brand equity (0.70), relative to the other investigated factors. Using the insights from this study, amateur sports clubs can strategically manage brand elements to foster brand equity, emphasizing the importance of brand awareness as an initial step in building a positive brand image and fostering fan engagement and loyalty. Overall, the findings provide valuable insights into effective brand management strategies for amateur sports clubs to enhance their brand equity and foster enduring relationships with fans.

Analisis Pengaruh Budaya Organisasi Terhadap Strategi Peningkatan Kualitas Sumber Daya Manusia Pada Persebaya Amatir

Abstract
 Organizational culture is a set of established norms that constitute the values or characteristics of a company. Organizational culture can shape, influence, and even reflect the quality of human resources. Employee orientation can create effective strategies to enhance development within it. This journal discusses the analysis of the influence of organizational culture on the improvement of Human Resources Quality, also known as resources, in Persebaya Amateur. The quality of human resources can experience improvement due to the influence of the organizational culture created within it. This research uses a direct survey method involving interviews with relevant parties. Data are analyzed using organizational culture as a crucial factor influencing the improvement of human resource quality in the company. The creation of quality human resources is a significant impact of a positive organizational culture. In general, this research aims to analyze the influence of organizational culture on the strategies used to improve human resource quality. This is also to measure the strategies and roles in regression techniques to assess the extent to which organizational culture influences the internal club development strategy. The research results indicate that a positive and strong contribution of organizational culture can enhance effectiveness in strategies and roles in improving human resource quality, which can be utilized for the internal development of the Persebaya Amateur Club. The implications of these findings create a foundation for amateur football clubs to enhance performance and its positive impact on overall club development. This study can provide guidance for other amateur football clubs that seek to strengthen key aspects within their organizations.

Pemanfaatan Media Sosial Instagram Dalam Membangun Brand Image Pada Klub Internal Persebaya Amatir

This research provides in-depth insight into optimizing the use of Instagram as an effective branding tool, with an emphasis on high-quality visual content to maintain brand consistency that is able to stimulate more active consumer interaction. As a football club, Persebaya Amateur feels the need to expand its reach and interaction with its audience, especially through social media as the main communication channel. The main focus of this research is on the Instagram platform, which is the main media used by the club. To obtain accurate data and information, careful research methods are used. The findings from this research can provide a deeper insight into the club, especially within the internal scope of Persebaya Amateur, to understand consumer behavior on social media and design branding strategies that are more targeted. This strategy involves consistent branding activities, focuses on the club's identity values, and can increase audience interaction and engagement. Practically, the results of this research can guide amateur football clubs and similar organizations in designing more effective branding strategies through social media, with the aim of increasing audience interaction and involvement, as well as strengthening the club's identity and image.

Criminal infiltration in amateur football: the case of the Netherlands

AbstractIn the past five years involvement of criminals in socially beneficial activities and philanthropy has received increasing attention in the Netherlands. Amateur football clubs appear to be particularly vulnerable to criminal infiltration. This paper presents the results of three exploratory studies conducted to answer two main questions. First, to what extent does criminal infiltration in amateur football occur, who are involved and what are their motives? Second, how may criminal infiltration be better prevented, both by clubs and public institutions? Suspected criminals have been active in amateur football as official and covert sponsors, as clubs’ presidents and coaches, or have misused clubs’ facilities for illegal activities. Our studies showed that in 2020, 19% of Dutch amateur football clubs reported to have been confronted with indications of attempted criminal infiltration and in this year the authorities had 40 cases under investigation. Criminal involvement in amateur football can be explained primarily from the perspective of social embeddedness and the aim to improve one’s status and social acceptation within local communities. Although awareness of the problem has been growing, preventing, detecting and tackling criminal infiltration may still be improved.

Effectiveness of a Program to Improve the Verbal Response of Football Coaches: A Delayed-Intervention Experimental Design

The pressure that coaches usually apply on their athletes, alongside injuries and the lack of enjoyment during sport practice, are key factors involved in sports abandonment. Behavioral interventions through psychoeducational programs have proven to be useful to improve coaching behaviors, providing appropriate context in sports. This study aims to assess a brief psychological intervention in football coaches to reduce potentially harmful verbal responses and increase the use of positive feedback. Our research was conducted in an amateur football club where 15 coaching staff teams agreed to participate. The experimental design of this study is a randomized controlled trial with control (n=7) and experimental (n=8) groups with delayed intervention. Verbal responses from coaches were collected as count data with an adapted version of the Coaching Behavior Assessment System. Data was analyzed using the Poisson Regression Model. The results show a reduction in hostile feedback by 87.7% (CI = 71% - 94.9%), technical instructions with ball in play by 39.8% (CI = 24.2% - 52.2%), complaints to referees by 95.8% (CI = 82.8% - 99.3%) and an increase in praise contingent with successful action y 87% (CI = 13% - 209%) after the intervention. These findings have important implications for the implementation of programs that seek to improve delivery of instructions in sport coaches, providing a thorough procedure for the shaping of the verbal response. Valuable insights to foster a supportive learning environment for adolescents and young athletes are addressed in the discussion. Keywords: Psychological intervention, Behavioral intervention, Sport coach, Verbal response, Technical instructions, Randomized controlled trial, Experimental design, Coaching Behavior Assessment System.

The Big Story of a “Small” Football Club: Gümüşlükspor as an Alternative Model Experience for Turkey

This article argues that counter-hegemony, which is at the heart of sports activism, is not just an action but also the construction of alternative institutional structures. For this purpose, it investigates the practices of an amateur football club and discusses the structural problems of the Turkish amateur football league. The data, collected during a 6-month field study, were interpreted from a critical perspective, using a dialectical dialogue method to apply the theory of hegemony in sports by applying Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the “organic intellectual.” Consequently, this sports club has provided socialization and free football training for children while creating an alternative football culture with local characteristics that are opposed to class and gender inequalities and to homophobic attitudes common in sport.

Examining discrimination against Jews in Italy with three natural field experiments

We use three natural field experiments to examine anti-Semitism in Italy by sending email inquiries to amateur football clubs, landlords, and employers and comparing the response rates to emails sent with Jewish- and non-Jewish-sounding names. Italy is an interesting country as discrimination was heterogeneous and geographically unevenly distributed during World War II. We analyze if today's anti-Semitism in Italy is geographically correlated to the deportations and killings of Jews during the Holocaust. The results show significant discrimination when looking for football club and an apartment, but not when seeking a job. We find markedly different results for women. Comparing areas with different societal and economic implications provides us with a more informed perspective about the extent of discrimination.

‘Scissoring? I can do that!’ Play, alternative place-making and nested sexual normativities in Dutch women’s amateur football

ABSTRACT This article addresses the way in which female players of “traditional” amateur football clubs in the Netherlands manage to create their team as “open” and “inclusive”. Drawing on the notion of playfulness and linguistic perspectives on humour, we show that women players engage in shared sexual joking and embodied performances that centre around gendered and sexual stereotypes and norms. In contrast to a reading of the persistence of norms as limiting anti-normative agency, a focus on play shifts attention to the active recontextualisation of norms in localized interaction and their “nested” quality – thus suggesting that norms are always imbricated in their alternative. It is through the subtle recoding of gendered and sexual norms and stereotypes Independent scholar accomplished in interactional forms of verbal and spatial play that team members recreate traditional club spaces, albeit transiently, into alternative sportscapes nested within otherwise strongly (hetero)normative spaces.

The Relationship Between the Athlete Identities of Footballers and Their Level of Commitment to Sports

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between the athlete identities and their commitment to sports in terms of whether amateur and professional licensed footballers who are playing football in local and amateur football clubs differ according to various demographic characteristics. Footballers of the 1st Amateur, 2nd Amateur, and Regional Amateur Leagues registered in the Elazığ Amateur Sports Clubs Federation participated in the research. "Athlete Identity Scale" was developed by Brewer and Cornelius (2001) and adapted to Turkish by Öztürk and Koca (2013) and "Athlete Commitment Scale" was developed by Kayhan, Bardakçı, and Caz (2020) developed by Guillen and Martinez-Alvarado (2014) were used as data collection tools in the study. As a result of the research, while there was a significant difference in the athlete identity according to the license level variable of the football players, there was no significant difference in the level of commitment to sports. While there was a significant difference according to the league level, infrastructure training, age variable, and education status variable of the footballers, there was no significant difference according to the athlete year variable.Keywords: Athlete identity, Commitment to Sports, Football

The Examination of Risk Management in the Amateur Football Clubs Consisting of Student Players

The aim of the study is to examine student football players’ perceived risk levels according to some variables. Descriptive survey model was used in the research. The research was applied on 240 students playing football in 1st amateur football league, Ordu. The ‘Risk Assessment Scale’ developed by Karataş (2012) was used as a data collection tool. The scale scores of the groups according to the independent variables were compared with the student t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey multiple comparison tests for unrelated samples in parametric data, and the Kruskal Wallis-H test and the Mann Whitney-U test with Bonferroni correction for non-parametric data. According to the results of the analysis, it was determined that the risk perception and evaluation levels of students differed significantly according to the variables of marital status, number of children, education level, family income level, place of birth and sports year (p < 0.05). However, it was determined that the risk assessment levels of the students did not differ significantly according to age, father and mother education level variables (p > 0.05). The findings reveal that the decrease in the monthly income level increases the risk perception levels of the students in the sports life. In addition, it was determined that as the education level of the students increased, their tendency to take risks also increased. According to the results of the research, it can be stated that the level of perceiving and analyzing risks of experienced students is higher than those of less experienced students.

French amateur football clubs’ finance and revenue volatility: the determinants of demand shocks

ABSTRACT The article addresses financial troubles in French amateur football clubs and their origins. Previous literature has demonstrated that – in particular in French football – club bankruptcies are triggered by demand shocks. The present research intends highlighting the determinants of demand shocks on those clubs playing French amateur football top two tiers with a longitudinal analysis (2009/2010-2019/2020). Various exogenous elements that influence club demand (i.e. revenues) are taken on board, namely, macroeconomic variables, such as the variation of GDP growth rate between two football seasons, a dummy for the Covid-19 sanitary crisis, and a sport dummy for the effect of the French national team winning the 2018 male football World Cup. The latter is used to check a potential trickle-down effect on amateur elite football. None of these variables do explain demand shocks except if the heterogeneity of clubs’ economic models is taken into account. The determinants of shock demands appear to be clubs’ strategic orientations (towards win maximization vs. a stable economic organization).

Value co-creation and its impact on organizational performance: the case of the amateur football clubs of Antioquia football league of Colombia

Studies have shown the direct and positive influence of the co-creation of value on the performance of organizations. However, current knowledge about what and how co-creation of value impacts the performance of non-profit sports organizations has been unclear and marginally studied. This paper aims to analyze the impact of value co-creation on organizational performance in amateur soccer clubs. A structured questionnaire was used to measure the scales of value co-creation (21 items) and the dimensions of organizational performance in sports organizations (20 items). The sample comprised 345 managers, presidents, and executives of amateur soccer clubs in the Antioquia Soccer League of Colombia. The data were analyzed using partial least squares modeling with SmartPLS software. The results show that amateur soccer clubs jointly create value by developing goods, products, and services with consumers and suppliers. This fact significantly impacts their organizational performance in multiple dimensions, mainly in the financial dimension. Based on the empirical results, the authors make recommendations for management in nonprofit sports organizations in developing countries.

(Not) being granted the right to belong-Amateur football clubs in Germany.

Empirical studies show that first- and second-generation immigrants are less likely to be members of sports clubs than their non-immigrant peers. Common explanations are cultural differences and socioeconomic disadvantages. However, lower participation rates in amateur sport could be at least partly due to ethnic discrimination. Are minority ethnic groups granted the same right to belong as their non-immigrant peers? To answer this question, this paper uses publicly available data from a field experiment in which mock applications were sent out to over 1,600 football clubs in Germany. Having a foreign-sounding name significantly reduces the likelihood of being invited to participate. The paper concludes that amateur football clubs are not as permeable as they are often perceived to be. It claims that traditional explanations for lower participation rates of immigrants need to be revisited.

Video Production and Distribution Platform in Swiss Sports Teams: An Analysis of Acceptance and Willingness to Pay.

Swisscom Asport (“Asport”) has set itself the target of covering the entire video process from production to distribution. Its services should be affordable not only for professional sports clubs but also for their amateur counterparts. Despite limited resources, clubs want to increase their attractiveness through new technologies and meet members' needs. This paper examines the factors that lead to the acceptance of Asport services by sports clubs. In addition, the willingness to pay for these services is evaluated. Pricing is critical to success in innovation and also because of the limited financial resources of sports clubs. Based on the literature research, a conceptual model was developed based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model (UTAUT), tested using an online survey of Swiss amateur football clubs, and evaluated using regression analysis. The study findings show that social environment exerts the strongest influence on behavioral intention, defined as “acceptance” in this paper. Furthermore, the two independent variables, performance expectancy and effort expectancy, have a significant effect on user acceptance. In contrast to the original model (UTAUT), this paper demonstrates the direct influence of attitude to use. Of the independent variables, facilitating conditions have an additional effect on attitude to use. The results demonstrate that it is not acceptance but attitude to use that influences willingness to pay. An in-depth evaluation of willingness to pay shows that the optimal price point is 83.3% lower than the price offered by the company; however, there are budget-dependent variations in the assessment.

Manejo de emociones en deportistas de fútbol amateur: un estudio de caso

This research aimed to review trait anger-anger expression styles of footballers who play in amateur football clubs in Pendik district of Istanbul Province by certain variables. Entirely 100 male footballers who play in 7 different amateur football clubs participated in this research. Trait Anger-Anger Expression Style Scale that was developed by Spielberger et all., (1983) and demographic information form were used to collect the data. Descriptive statistical methods, Pearson Correlation and ANOVA test were used to evaluate the data. According to analyzed results, there was no statistically significant difference (p>0,05) among trait anger, anger-in anger-out, anger management and total anger scores based on footballers’ educational background, age ranges, sporting years and the clubs. On the other hand, there was a positive significant relationship between trait anger and anger-in, between trait anger and anger-out. A negative significant relationship was found between anger management and trait anger. Moreover, a negative significant relationship between anger-out and anger management. In conclusion, it can be said that as the anger level increases, anger-in and anger-out level of footballers’ increase; however, anger management decreases at the same time. As the anger-out increases, anger management of footballers decreases.

Evolution of Professional Football Management in the People’s Republic of China from 1992 to 2016

In the early 1990s, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) introduced a reform of the football management system. The previous system was restructured into a new one that included professional and amateur football clubs, a number of football schools, and training centres. However, the football management system was still part of the administrative structure of the state at the national and local levels. In 2004, a new professional football league system was implemented by the CFA. Compared with the previous system, the governance structure of professional football experienced changes that brought about a degree of power sharing between large clubs and the CFA. A decade later, a new period can be identified by the 2015 decision of the Chinese government to issue an ‘overall programme’ for Chinese football development.

Mapping discrimination in Europe through a field experiment in amateur sport

Societies are increasingly multicultural and diverse, consisting of members who migrated from various other countries. However, immigrants and ethnic minorities often face discrimination in the form of fewer opportunities for labor and housing, as well as limitations on interactions in other social domains. Using mock email accounts with typical native-sounding and foreign-sounding names, we contacted 23,020 amateur football clubs in 22 European countries, asking to participate in a training session. Response rates differed across countries and were, on average, about 10% lower for foreign-sounding names. The present field experiment reveals discrimination against ethnic minority groups, uncovering organizational deficiencies in a system trusted to foster social interactions.