Which Former Professional Football Players Become Successful Professional Head Coaches?

11 Pages Posted: 19 May 2022 Last revised: 14 Apr 2023

See all articles by Matteo Balliauw

Matteo Balliauw

University of Antwerp

Marco Verheuge

Ghent University

Stijn Baert

Ghent University; University of Antwerp; Catholic University of Louvain (UCL); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract

One of the potential avenues for former professional football players to pursue their career is to become a head coach of a club's first team. An important question is how to best prepare for such a reconversion. This letter is the first in the academic literature quantifying the association between success as a professional head coach and prior experience of former professional players as a youth coach, player-coach, head coach at a lower division, assistant coach, in other staff positions and in club management positions. Our regression analyses, based on unique coach career data, show a significant positive association for the jobs of assistant or youth coach.

Keywords: sports management, regression analysis, education, coaching, football

JEL Classification: L830, Z220, Z260

Suggested Citation

Balliauw, Matteo and Verheuge, Marco and Baert, Stijn, Which Former Professional Football Players Become Successful Professional Head Coaches?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 15024, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4114554 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4114554

Matteo Balliauw (Contact Author)

University of Antwerp ( email )

Prinsstraat 13
Antwerp, 2000
Belgium

Marco Verheuge

Ghent University

Coupure Links 653
Ghent, 9000
Belgium

Stijn Baert

Ghent University ( email )

University of Antwerp ( email )

Prinsstraat 13
Antwerp, 2000
Belgium

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.uantwerpen.be/nl/personeel/stijn-baert/

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) ( email )

Place Montesquieu, 3
Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348
Belgium

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.uclouvain.be/en-309318.html

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/personnel/photos/index_html?key=6832

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
19
Abstract Views
125
PlumX Metrics