Actors, interactions, ties, and networks: the ‘doing’ of talent identification and development work in elite youth football academies

ABSTRACT

The Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) has transformed the ways in which young players are recruited, coached, supported and evaluated. To date, our scientific understanding of talent identification and development processes has been largely informed by (post)positivist studies addressing the physiological, psychological and biomechanical features of elite youth performance. In this paper, Crossley’s relational theorising is presented as a heuristic device that could allow us to systematically recognise the interdependencies, ties, dialectics, and co-constituted interactions that comprise talent identification and development activities in professional football. We argue that his thesis enables us to better understand both a) the configuration and meaning making of those that comprise these relational networks, and b) the enabling and constraining features of (inter)action for these interconnected actors. For us, such knowledge can ultimately support the generation of accounts of talent identification and development that better reflect their inherently social, interactive and practical complexity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2. Reilly et al., ‘A Multidisciplinary Approach to Talent Identification in Soccer’; and Unnithan et al., ‘Talent Identification in Youth Soccer’.

3. Premier League, Elite Player Performance Plan.

4. Abbot and Collins, ‘Eliminating the Dichotomy Between Theory and Practice in Talent Identification and Development’; Cobley et al., ‘Identification and Development of Sport Talent’; and Sotiriadou, ‘The Roles of High Performance Directors Within National Sporting Organisations’.

5. Baker and Farrow, Routledge Handbook of Sport Expertise; and Hollings et al., ‘Age at Peak Performance of Successful Track & Field Athletes’.

6. Cumming et al, ‘Bio-banding in Sport’; Mann and Van Ginneken, ‘Age-ordered Shirt Numbering Reduces the Selection Bias Associated with the Relative Age Effect’; McDermott et al., ‘Reliability and Validity of the Loughborough Soccer Passing Test in Adolescent Males’; Reeves et al., ‘Factors Affecting the Identification of Talented Junior-Elite Footballers’; Waldron and Worsfold, ‘Differences in the Game Specific Skills of Elite and Sub-Elite Youth Football Players’; and Unnithan et al., ‘Talent Identification in Youth Soccer’.

7. Jones and Wallace, ‘Another Bad Day at the Training Ground’.

8. Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching; and Potrac et al., ‘Critically Understanding and Engaging with the (micro)Political Dimensions of Coaches’ Work in an Advanced Undergraduate Coaching Course’.

9. Cushion and Jones, ‘Power, Discourse, and Symbolic Violence in Professional Youth Soccer’; Gibson and Groom, ‘Ambiguity, Manageability and the Orchestration of Organisational Change’; O’Gorman et al, ‘Translation, Intensification and Fabrication’; Potrac et al., ‘Handshakes, BBQs, and Bullets’; Cassidy et al., Understanding Sports Coaching; and Christensen, ‘“An Eye for Talent”’.

10. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

11. Potrac et al., ‘Emotions in Sport Coaching’.

12. Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching; and Potrac et a.l, ‘Exploring the Everyday Realities of Grass-Roots Football Coaching’.

13. Potrac et al., ‘Exploring the Everyday Realities of Grass-Roots Football Coaching’.

14. Parnell et al., ‘The Emergence of the Sporting Director Role in Football and the Potential of Social Network Theory in Future Research’.

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16. Cushion and Jones, ‘Power, discourse, and symbolic violence in professional youth soccer’.

17. Cushion et al., ‘Professional coach educators in-situ: a social analysis of practice’.

18. Parnell et al., ‘Football Worlds’.

19. Parnell et al., ‘The emergence of the sporting director role in football and the potential of social network theory in future research’; Cleland et al., Collective Action & Football Fandom; Turner, ‘“We are the vocal minority”’; and Parnell et al., ‘Football Worlds’.

20. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; and Potrac et al., ‘Exploring the everyday realities of grass-roots football coaching’.

21. Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology.

22. Potrac et al, ‘Exploring the everyday realities of grass-roots football coaching’; Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; and Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology.

23. Potrac et al., ‘Exploring the everyday realities of grass-roots football coaching’; and Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

24. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’; and Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

25. Ibid.

26. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Potrac et al, ‘Exploring the everyday realities of grass-roots football coaching’; and Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology.

27. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

28. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

29. Ibid.; Cleland et al, Collective Action & Football Fandom.

30. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’; Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

31. Ibid.

32. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

33. Ibid.

34. Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’.

35. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

36. Ibid.

37. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’; Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’; and Thomas et al., ‘From practice to theory’.

38. Parnell et al., ‘The emergence of the sporting director role in football and the potential of social network theory in future research’.

39. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

40. Putman, Bowling Alone.

41. Burt, Brokerage and Closure.

42. Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’.

43. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

44. Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity’; and Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

45. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Hall et al., ‘Doing hybrid management work in elite sport.

49. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; and Goffman, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life.

53. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Nelson et al, ‘Thinking, acting, feeling’; and Potrac et al., ‘Handshakes, BBQs, and bullets’.

54. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; and Potrac et al., ‘Emotions in sport coaching’.

58. Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’.

59. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

60. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

61. Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’.

62. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

63. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

64. Vandenburghe, ‘The Relation as Magical Operator’.

65. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

66. O’Gorman et al., ‘Translation, intensification and fabrication; Potrac et al., ‘Handshakes, BBQs, and bullets’; and Gibson and Groom, ‘Ambiguity, manageability and the orchestration of organisational change’.

67. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

68. Ibid.

69. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’; and Dépelteau, ‘Relational Thinking in Sociology’.

70. Crossley, ‘Relational sociology and culture’.

71. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

72. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; and Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

77. Cleland et al., Collective Action and Football Fandom; and Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

78. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

79. O’Gorman et al., ‘Translation, intensification and fabrication’.

80. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

81. Hastie and Hay, ‘Qualitative Approaches’; and Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

82. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’; and Erikson, ‘Relationalism and Social Networks’.

83. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

84. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

85. Crossley, ‘Networks, Interactions and Relations’.

86. Cushion, ‘Ethnography’.

87. Emmel, ‘Toolkit #03 – Participatory Mapping’.

88. Tracy, Qualitative Research Methods; and Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

89. Dinh et al., ‘Leadership Theory and Research in the New Millennium’; and Potrac et al., ‘Handshakes, BBQs, and bullets’.