Article Review on Football Management and Leadership
Analysis
In the article “A Review of Leadership in Sport: Implications for Football Management,” Crust and Lawrence discuss the roles of football managers, elaborate on research in leadership, elaborate on research in mental toughness, outline the coach-athlete relationship, and suggest further research to explain the traits and experience required for success in football management.
Football managers need to display both management and leadership personality traits and skills. The authors explain the definition of leadership in both early and contemporary research. The article is mainly concerned with the multidimensional approach to leadership. Research evidence supports the theory that required leader behavior, actual leader behavior, and group preferences interact and define group performance and outcomes together. Mental toughness is considered the most important trait for football managers because they have to deal with many stress factors that are not under their control. Finally, closeness, commitment, and complementarity are the most significant attributes in their relationship with athletes. However, future research is required to explain the multidimensional leadership model in football manager more accurately.
The sections covering mental toughness and relationships with athletes are the most relevant and interesting sections, but they deserved more attention than broad elaborations on leadership. The four factor model for researching leadership is interesting, but very few references were made to its application in sports leadership. An elaboration on mental toughness covered only one aspect of that model and gave little information about its application in sports leadership. The relationship with athletes was only a brief overview of closeness, commitment, and complementarity.
A football manager will find the fundamentals of research in leadership necessary. However, the article elaborates on the models and definitions of leadership to a greater extent than it does on aspects specific to leadership in sports. For example, the section covering the coach-athlete relationship is a brief overview with little useful information. Although the article increases understanding on general leadership, leadership is a broad topic, and the sections focused specifically on sports leadership require more attention.
Works Cited
Crust, Lee, and Ian Lawrence. “A Review of Leadership in Sport: Implications for Football Management.” Athletic Insight, 8.4 (2006): n. pag. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.
