DO CLIMA MOTIVACIONAL CRIADO PELO TREINADOR À MOTIVAÇÃO DOS JOGADORES DE FUTEBOL: UM ESTUDO NO ESCALÃO U14

Abstract

The motivational climate is related to a set of practical, behavioral, structural, relational, and leadership factors within a sports team. The coach establishes himself as a central figure in its development, influencing the motivation levels of his players and, consequently, in the well-being and sports performance. The present dissertation aimed to explore the perception of players and coaches of a Portuguese U14 men's soccer team about the motivational climate created by the coach and its possible relationships with the athletes' motivational factors, combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Thus, seeking to investigate the existence of relationships between the type of motivational climate created by the coach and the competitive level, we sought, in a first moment, to compare the A and B teams of a U14 soccer club in northern Portugal, and to analyze the relationships between the motivational climate and the motivation levels of the whole squad. For this, the adapted versions to Portuguese of the Empowering Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire - Coach and the Questionnaire of Self-regulation in Sports were applied to 38 athletes of the squad, divided between team A (19) and team B (19). The results showed that the players of both teams perceived the motivational climate created by their coaches as predominantly empowering. Descriptive analyses showed no significant differences between the motivation levels of the players on the two teams. Correlational analyses showed significant relationships between the empowering factors and autonomy support, social support, task orientation, intrinsic regulation, and with the Relative Autonomy Index. The disempowering factor showed significant associations with the factors ego orientation and controlling training. Next, in order to explore the coaches' (8) understanding of the motivational climate they created and its possible relationships with their perception of the athletes' motivation levels, a qualitative methodology was adopted and semi-structured interviews were collected. These were developed according to the basic premises of Duda's (2013) motivational climate model. A thematic analysis of the data was performed and four main themes emerged: empowering factors, disempowering factors, A x B team division, and club values and culture. From the analysis and discussion of the themes, the importance given to the coaches of the bracket on the social and emotional support provided to the athletes, especially those of the B team, was verified. Moreover, it was observed a high incidence of coaching elements that have their orientation more focused on the ego, to the detriment of an orientation for the task, a fact that did not coincide with the results of the questionnaires answered by the athletes. As a conclusion, it can be said that, despite the existence of disempowering elements, both players and coaches have the perception of the predominance of an empowering motivational climate in both teams of the investigated U14 level.