Ableism as a determinant of priorities for the development of disability football: a critique of European National Football Associations

ABSTRACT

Rationale

Drawing on a conceptual lens informed by ableism and Importance Performance Analysis (IPA), the purpose of this paper is to discover how managers within European National Football Associations (NAs) develop disability football.

Design

This novel study explores the development of disability football from the perspective of 37 European National Football Association (NAs) managers. Results were based on a pan-European questionnaire that assessed managerial viewpoints that subsequently identified the priorities across the region.

Findings

Findings indicate that much resource has been dedicated to developing disability football, in some cases suggesting over-allocation of finance, facilities and human resources. Efforts to enhance levels of disability awareness and the competencies that underpin the development of disability football are needed.

Practical implications

Managers need to invest in developing competence through the formation of inter-organizational partnerships with disability sports organizations.

Research contribution

This paper provides a novel and pragmatic review of the priorities for disability football delivery in Europe. The results provide diagnostic support for quality enhancement.

KEYWORDS:

• Ableism
• mainstreaming
• inclusion
• integration
• disability sport
• Importance Performance Analysis

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 In this paper, we use the term mainstream as a reference to non-disabled social institutions, specifically football clubs/association that are transitioning into more inclusive organizations (Kitchin & Crossin, 2018).

2 Surveys were deemed unusable as they were significantly incomplete, in one case only the demographic data was supplied, in the other three the respondents had indicated some importance scores only with no corresponding scores for performance. Despite SPSS being able to handle missing data, we felt too much data was missing from these four responses.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is derived from a larger research project funded by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in their 2016–2017 Grant Program.