Sport coaching systems in the European union: state of the nations

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, there has been increased recognition of the size and role of the coaching workforce in Europe. This has led the European Commission to increase its focus on sport coaching and call upon Member States to take steps towards its regulation or professionalisation. However, despite this policy direction, the academic literature, albeit limited to a handful of European countries, has been critical of sport coaching’s capacity and need to move towards a more professionalised status. The purpose of our paper is to begin a discussion about the current and future state of sport coaching across Europe. To do so, we will present the results of an expert survey that provides baseline quantitative data on the current state of coaching across 26 European countries. Results show mixed, but potentially higher than expected, systemic professionalisation of coaching in Europe, though there are also substantial regional differences. We also find significant deficits in national data collection and management; this severely limits the development of a clearer picture and diminishes policymaking. In response to these findings, we propose potential avenues for research and policymaking.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport coaching
• policy
• European union
• mapping
• professionalisation

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the partners from the PEAK and CoachForce21 projects for their support in this research, as well as all of the individual survey respondents who contributed their time and expertise.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. At least within the English language literature

2. The survey was completed prior to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union on 31 January 2020 and, at the time, the U.K. was still a full member of the EU.

3. Officially, Cyprus is classified as part of Asia. However, for the purposes of this paper, we have decided to classify it within Southern Europe.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially funded by the European Commission through two Erasmus+ project grants (603023-EPP-1-2018-1-DE-SPO-SCP and 603162-EPP-1-2018-1-UK-SPO-SCP). The funder did not influence the design, implementation or analysis of this study.