Stress among talents in a football academy

Abstract

This article studies Norwegian football academy players who have been part of a professional club at level 2 in Norwegian elite football. The purpose of the article is to report the stress levels of selected players in 2013 and 2016. In addition, the study compares the reported stress level of players who were part of the academy in both 2013 and 2016, with that of the players who were new to the academy in 2016. The selection consists of two groups of players between 12 and 16 years: group 1 consists of 57 players (age 12.8 years) from 2013 and group 2 consists of 51 players (age 15.0 years) from 2016. The results show that the 2013 players reported a signifi cantly higher evaluation and development stress and signifi cantly lower academic stress. The youngest age group reported a signifi cantly higher evaluation stress compared to both the 14-year-olds and the 15–16-year-olds. Compared to the oldest players, the 12–13-year-olds reported a signifi cantly higher development stress and a signifi cantly lower academic stress. Furthermore, the results showed that the players who had been part of the academy for a long time reported signifi cantly less stress on both dimensions – evaluation and development stress. The results would indicate that coaches should be aware of newly recruited players because of their potential lack of safety in the role as an academy player. Further studies should be conducted to see to what extent these results can be confi rmed in other academies or other similar performance groups.