Sportspersonship orientation in the training process of young football players in different training contexts

Background: Football plays a fundamental role in the lives of the boys and girls who play it and it can become an invaluable educational instrument. However, for introduction to football to be truly educational, it needs to be carefully planned and guided; otherwise, it may encourage negative and undesirable behaviour from a moral and ethical point of view. That way, many authors claim that a careful and deliberate initiation to football is necessary for the promotion of sportspersonship to become a reality. Purpose: The goal of this research is to analyse the evolution of sportspersonship orientation in the social sports football schools of Fundación Real Madrid and in association football clubs. For this purpose, the Multidimensional Sportspersonship Orientations Scale is used. The research involves 1509 male and female youth football players aged between 8 and 16 years (M = 10.9±2.2), of whom 952 belong to the social sports football schools of the Fundación Real Madrid and 547 to association football clubs. Results: The most outstanding results show that the players of the social sports schools of Fundación Real Madrid obtain high values in sportspersonship orientation. Moreover, these values remain high in all categories, while they show a significant decrease in players from association football clubs. Conclusions: The social sports model of Fundación Real Madrid can contribute to maintaining high levels of sportspersonship orientation throughout the player’s training process.