Abstract

Through supervising local competitions and following up the training of some games at the under 13-year-old level, the authors observed that coaches at that stage are not professionally trained to deal with junior players. Coaches seem unaware of the real objective behind training those junior players or of holding competitions for them: the coaches focus on one goal only, which is wining the match. This perspective puts the players under heavy psychological pressures and the fear of committing mistakes and bringing defeat to their team. Therefore, the authors sought to identify coaches' behaviour and their ability to deal with beginners under 13 years old. This study aimed to identify the training behaviour of football coaches for junior teams. The study included 40 randomly selected coaches of junior teams in Egypt, aged 30-40 years and with 6±1 total years of experience. The authors developed a written questionnaire as a self-report named training behaviour for coaches. Statistical calculations included correlations between items, Cronbach's α of the total questionnaire, and principal component factor analysis with oblique rotation. The value of coefficient α=(0.769) while the ratio of continuous flow intersection=(61.8%). Factor analysis produced five factors that explained 62% of the variance. The first factor included self-efficacy items, the second included communication items, the third included self-confidence, the fourth included controlling, and the fifth included commitment. The results indicated a low content related to training behaviour for football coaches of junior teams, which indicates a need for preparing coaches of junior teams through specialised educational programmes before allowing them to train junior players.