Elite Football Coaches Experiences and Sensemaking about Being Fired: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
Open accessAbstract
Background: Chronic job insecurity seems to be a prominent feature within elite sport, where coaches work under pressure of dismissals if failing to meet performance expectations of stakeholders. The aim of the current study was to get a deeper understanding of elite football coaches’ experiences of getting fired and how they made sense of that process. Method: A qualitative design using semi-structured interviews was conducted with six elite football coaches who were fired within the same season. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was chosen as framework to analyze the data. Results: The results reflected five emerging themes: Acceptance of having an insecure job, working for an unprofessional organization and management, micro-politics in the organization, unrealistic and changing performance expectation, and emotional responses. Conclusion: All coaches expressed awareness and acceptance regarding the risk of being fired. However, they experienced a lack of transparency and clear feedback regarding the causes of dismissal. This led to negative emotional reactions as the coaches experienced being evaluated by poorly defined expectations and by anonymous stakeholders. Sports organizations as employers should strive to be transparent during dismissal. In addition, job insecurity is a permanent stressor for coaches and should be acknowledged and targeted within coach education.
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Job dismissals lead to emotional distress and negative affective states.
“with job dismissals leading to emotional distress and negative affective states [24, 86].”
From The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
Section 4.3 reports that the elite football coaches studied experienced frustration and other negative emotions after being fired, supporting the claim for that population. The cited paper does not establish that job dismissals generally have this effect across occupations. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredElite-level coaches generally operate within high-pressure environments where success and failure are scrutinised by the public and can negatively impact employment status if perceived underperformance occurs.
“elite-level coaches generally operate within high-pressure environments, where the margin between success and failure may be scrutinised by a range of individuals who operate within the public domain (e.g. fans, the media, former elite sportspeople) [21, 22], and can negatively impact one’s employment status if a coach is perceived to have regularly underperformed [23, 24].”
From The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
Seven of the wellbeing studies investigated wellbeing using semi-structured interviews.
“Seven of these studies investigated wellbeing using semi-structured interviews [10, 13, 24, 83–86].”
From The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
Excessive workloads and persistent job insecurity were associated with low levels of wellbeing.
“Conversely, excessive workloads [87] and persistent job insecurity [24] were associated with low levels of wellbeing.”
From The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review
Frost, J., Walton, C. C., Purcell, R., Fisher, K., Gwyther, K., Kocherginsky, M., & Rice, S. M. (2024) · Sports Medicine - Open · doi:10.1186/s40798-023-00655-8 · Cited by 59 · see citing works
“Seven of these studies investigated wellbeing using semi-structured interviews [10, 13, 24, 83–86].”
BackgroundInfluentialImpact of Job Insecurity on Psychological Well- and Ill-Being among High Performance Coaches
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Self-citationMental Health of Elite Sport Coaches and Entourage
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- Authors
- Bentzen, M., Kenttä, G., & Lemyre, P.-N.
- Affiliations
- Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NO)
- University of Ottawa (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Bentzen, Marte
- Venue
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2020-07-18
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 14
- Pages
- 5196
- ISSN
- 1660-4601 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7400468
- OpenAlex
- W3043289576
- Cited by
- 44
- References
- 59
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 6.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Diva portal (Dalarna University Library) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Physical Education and Sports Studies
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Sports, Gender, and Society
- Keywords
- football coaches, job insecurity, dismissal, sensemaking, coach dismissal, performance expectations, emotional responses, organizational transparency, coach education, elite sport coaching
- MeSH terms
- Mentoring, Female, Football, Humans, Interviews as Topic, Male, Soccer, Stress, Psychological, Qualitative Research
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