Syftet med studien var att undersöka samband mellan lagsammanhållning och upplevt motivationsklimat i fotboll, samt skillnaden mellan kvinnliga och manliga fotbollsspelare i lagsammanhållning och upplevt motivationsklimat. I studien deltog 101 fotbollspelare mellan 15 år och 19 år (m=17.05, sd=0.93) från olika gymnasier med fotbollsinriktning i Halland. Lagsammanhållning mättes med ”Group Environment Questionarie” och motivationsklimat med ”The Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionaire-3”. Studiens resultat visade att såväl positiva som negativa samband mellan lagsammanhållning och upplevt motivationsklimat, samt att män och kvinnor skiljer sig i vissa kategorier av lagsammanhållning och motivationsklimat. Resultaten diskuteras utifrån tidigare forskning på området. / The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between cohesion and perceived motivational climate in football, and if male and female football players differs in cohesion and perceived motivational climate. In total 101 football players between 15 to 19 years (m=17.05, sd=0.93) from different high schools with a football academi participated. Cohesion was measured with, Group Environment Questionarie and the motivational climate with “The Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionaire-3”. The results showed both positive and negative relations between cohesion and the perceived motivational climate, and some differences between men and women in team cohesion and motivational climate. The result is discussed from previous research on the area.

Abstract:  Elite soccer in combination with education is a unique and demanding task. The path towards a glory career in sports takes hard mental and physical training. The objectives in this study are 6 elite focused high school students studying high school education programs in combination with football profile. They are 3 of each gender. The purpose of the study was to find out more about their perspective of motivation and what makes them keep going towards a career in football in beside their education. The study is of empiric hermeneutic survey used qualitative method and interviewing to collect data. The results have shown several patterns and similarities, also differences. They all see motivation as a mental force. They appreciate the social factors from parents through support and commitment in their football. Several of them found their interests in football through their parent’s interest in football. They are motivated by development and promotion in divisions. They are all experiencing a need of having fun towards their elite focused career.

This project argues that American college sports involving Black male athletes (primarily football and men’s basketball) at Gulf Coast State University (GCSU) actively construct and impact local knowledge about Black masculinity in relation to white, male, hetero-normative systems of authority. These sports, in turn, then impact policy, administrative decisions, and teaching approaches as they relate to young Black men on a college campus. In other words, Black male college athletes on a white college campus offer the opportunity for a reinforcement of systems of authority through the pattern of de-stabilizing their subjectivity (as nothing more than physical entities) in order to provide a revenue-generating resource for the university. I posit that the positioning of Black males in this space as athletes and as students is strategic and intentional, when one takes into account the ongoing dynamic of the hegemonic positioning of white, male, hetero-normative value systems as the unmarked standard of social norms. That these contested meanings become significant within the realm of sport situates sport itself as another, often underutilized, space for social inquiry. I further argue that this categorization is heightened in the context of a predominantly white institution. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I explored the sport (mainly football and men’s basketball) and academic community at GCSU with the goal of understanding how high-profile and high-revenue sports and their participants become central to the understanding and expression of normalized ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. I reason that the predominantly white demography of GCSU, added to the uneven ratio of Black to white males on the football and basketball teams, creates perceptions about race and masculinity that factor into people’s everyday understanding of the term “student-athlete”. The term “student-athlete” becomes racialized and gendered in ways that continually make reference to Black male athletes differently than other students and student-athletes at the university. I believe these effects on the term then impacts the structural mechanisms that affect the daily lives of these Black male athletes both on and off the field, both inside and outside the classroom. / text

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare the Swedish elite football clubs CSR work by investigating their economic, environmental and social efforts. Method: The paper has been completed with the help of a document study and two complementary interviews. Theoretical perspective: Corporate Social Performance Theory, Shareholder Value Theory, Stakeholder Theory and the Triple Bottom Line Theory form the theoretical framework. Empirical result & Analyses: All clubs were engaged in some form of social and economic activities that can be considered to be CSR-related. Examples of social activities that the football clubs carry out is to visit the children's hospital, providing homework assistance for children, give lectures in schools, organize spontaneous football in disadvantaged areas, helping young people to get in touch with potential employers, visit prisons, invite refugees to football games and help people with disabilities into working life. Only two clubs (Helsingborgs IF and BK Häcken) are engaged in environmentally friendly activities. Only two clubs (Helsingborgs IF and BK Häcken) engaged in environmentally friendly activities. These activities are to improve waste management at the football stadium and clean sweat to clean drinking water. Conclusions: There are major differences in the extent of CSR work performed by the clubs. Four clubs (AIK, Djurgårdens IF, IFK Göteborg and Halmstads BK) have their own service for CSR managers. In addition to these four, five clubs (IF Elfsborg, Helsingborgs IF, BK Häcken, Malmö FF and GIF Sundsvall) have named CSR projects. These nine clubs can be considered to be in the forefront regarding CSR issues compared to the rest of the clubs.

Syfte Syftet med studien är att analysera tillslagsprecision i fotboll och jämföra eventuella skillnader mellan juniorer och seniorer på både herr- och damsidan. Metod Totalt 30 elitspelare varav 16 herrar och 14 damer utförde tester i tillslagsprecision. De färdigheter som testades var passning och skott. Upplägget var 60 skott (30 stillaliggande och 30 halvvolley) och 80 passningar (20 stillaliggande bästa fot, 20 rullande bästa fot, 20 stillaliggande näst bästa fot och 20 rullande näst bästa fot). Testresultaten analyserades via Excel och Kinovea, där kunde medelvärden och standardavvikelser för varje testperson och testgrupp räknas ut. Resultat Resultatet visar att det endast var signifkant skillnad på ett av sex moment vad gäller tillslagsprecisionen på herrsidan. På damsidan var det ingen signifikant skillnad på något moment. Slutsatser Författarna har i denna studie identifierat en platå mellan spelare i åldrarna 16-18 år och seniorspelare vad gäller tillslagsprecision. Spelare i åldrarna 16-18 är lika bra som seniorspelare på de individuella färdigheterna passning och skott. Denna platå kan vara resultatet av för lite individuell träning, sk isolerad träning vad det gäller tillslagsprecision, på föreningsträningarna. Om föreningstränarna följer den utbildning SvFF ger dem ska endast två minuter per träning gå till varje individuell färdighet (13 st enligt SvFF). Bristen av tid för dessa färdigheter kan vara en avgörande faktor för att utvecklingen av tillslagsprecision står stilla idag. / The aim of this study is to analyze if the precision of a shot and a pass differs between professional youth players (16-18 years) and senior players (22+ or older). Method A total of 30 elite players which were 16 males and 14 females performed tests in shooting and passing precision. The set-up on the test days were a total of 60 shots(30 lying still and 30 half volley) and 80 passes (20 lying still best foot, 20 rolling best foot, 20 lying still next best foot and 20 rolling next best foot). The test results were analyzed using Excel and Kinovea. In these programs the mean value and standard deviation for each player and test group could be calculated. Results The result shows that there were only significant differences in one of six parts regarding precision on the men's side. On the women's side, there was no significant difference in any of the six moments. Conclusions The authors of this study identified a plateau between players aged 16-18 and senior players in terms of accuracy in passing and shooting. Players between the ages of 16-18 is as good as a senior player at the individual skills passing and shooting. This plateau can be the result of too little individual training so called isolated training in terms of precision. If the club coaches follow the training SvFF educate, only two minutes per training session goes to each individual skill (SvFF names 13 skills). The lack of time for these skills can be a decisive factor for why the development of precision stands still today.

Not available / text

The focus of this thesis is the representation of football, as sport and culture, within the medium of the digital game. Analysing its three sub-genres - the televisual, the extreme and the management genre. This dissertation outlines how each configures, incorporates, rejects or ignores certain conventions, values and practices connected to the socio-cultural system of the sport, and the wider sport-media complex in its representational and ludic system. Though the marketing literature surrounding these games often makes claims to their simulational quality, these products will be shown to present very particular, dissimilar and above all ideologically loaded versions of the sport they claim to impartially represent. In an evolution of Baudrillard's (1983) concept of the simulacrum, these digital games will be revealed as euphemisms for sport, as inoffensive representations of something that may in reality be considered to offensive, or too harsh for inclusion into a marketable product. Also central to this thesis is the increasingly trans-medial nature of sport consumption, as the post-modern consumer does not simply distinguish between the various media he or she consumes and the 'reality' of the mediated object; indeed it is the mediation of the sport that now constitutes the dominant interpretation of its conventions and values. To quote John Fiske, the media no longer supply 'secondary representations of reality; they affect and produce the reality they mediate' (1994, p.xv).

A career as a professional footballer has long been regarded as a highly sought after occupation for many young males within the UK and, against this backdrop, since the 1970s increasing attention has come to be placed on the way young players are identified and developed within professional clubs. Particular concern has been expressed over the number of players who, having been developed by professional clubs, fail to secure a professional contract, and the ways in which clubs should help young players safeguard their futures through alternative career training. There, have, however, been very few studies that have analyzed the education and welfare provisions that are offered within professional football Academies and Centres of Excellence, and fewer still that have done this from a sociological perspective. By drawing upon the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias, concepts derived from symbolic interactionism, and existing work in the sociology of youth, the objective of this study is to examine the realities of young players' day-to-day working-lives, the experiences they have of the educational programmes they follow, and the welfare-related matters that arise within present-day Academies and CoE. Using data generated by self-completion questionnaires and focus groups with 303 players in 21 Academies and CoE in England and Wales, the findings of the study suggest that players continue to be socialized into a largely anti-academic culture that has traditionally underpinned the world of professional football, and in which the demonstration of a 'good attitude' and commitment to the more central members of players' interdependencies (especially coaches and managers) dominated all other concerns. Indeed, it was also clear that the deep-seated values players held in relation to the professional game as part of their individual and group habituses were shaped by the figurations into which they were born and had been developed during the more impressionable phases of childhood and youth. Players' welfare needs were significantly compromised by the strong degree of suspicion and obvious degree of mistrust that characterized their relationship with club management, which emanated from players' fears that confidential matters would always 'get back' to others inside the club. This was exacerbated, in almost all cases, by players' observations that they were treated as if they were 'bottom of the club' and whose welfare needs were not generally well understood by those working within Academies and CoE.

No description available.

The aim of this study was to examine how sports journalists used religious metaphors when covering football during the time span of the study, and how the athletes were portrayed as a result of the usage. The aim was also to study if the usage differed between the two newspapers chosen for the study, one of which is a morning paper (Dagens Nyheters sport section) and one which is an evening paper (Sportbladet). To answer our questions we used a quantitative and a qualitative method, the later of the two was based on a metaphor analysis. The quantitative method consisted of a content analysis where different variables were examined. The time span of the study is articles from one year. The results show that the religious metaphors were used in many ways. Some religious metaphors, such as ones including the word miracle, were more prominent than others. What is notable is that the more prominent metaphors also tended to be conventional, that is, used in a way that they are no longer looked upon as metaphorical. Many of the texts in the study were chronicles and reportages, genres where the language is more creative. This could explain why the religious metaphors were more frequent in these genres. A majority of the religious metaphors referred to individual athletes and were most of the times a part of positively angled texts. However, just as the athletes can be celebrated one day they can as easily be named scapegoats the next. As a result of the usage of religious metaphors athletes were portrayed as humans with extraordinary powers. The metaphors were used to intensify their performances. The two newspapers shared many similarities, but also showed some differences. The evening paper tended to have the religious metaphors in the headline and the introduction much more often than the morning paper. The morning paper also tended to use the religious metaphors in critical texts more often than the evening paper did.