Determinants of National Football Team Head Coach Selection: Development and Validation of an Integrated Decision-Making Model
Keywords:
national football team; head coach selection; sport governance; leadership; human resource management; structural equation modeling; decision-makingAbstract
Selecting the head coach of a national football team is a high-consequence governance decision in which technical evaluation intersects with leadership, organizational strategy, financial capacity, stakeholder pressure, media scrutiny, and socio-cultural expectations. This study developed and examined an integrated model of the determinants influencing national team coach selection in Iranian football. A sequential exploratory mixed-methods design was used. In the qualitative phase, 34 experts drawn from university faculties, the football federation, professional clubs, national-level coaching, elite playing, licensed agency work, sport media, and supporter associations participated in semi-structured interviews. Grounded theory procedures involving open, axial, and selective coding were used to identify the principal categories and their relationships. The resulting framework informed a questionnaire administered to 396 football stakeholders in the quantitative phase, and the proposed structure was examined using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The findings characterized coach selection as a multidimensional governance process. Technical and professional competence, previous coaching performance, and leadership qualities formed the central candidate-level determinants. Organizational governance and financial feasibility shaped the formal decision environment, while media influence, political and institutional pressures, stakeholder networks, and socio-cultural expectations affected perceived legitimacy and final appointment choices. Technical competence and previous performance emerged as the most prominent determinants, but their influence was conditioned by governance quality and contextual pressures. The integrated model offers football federations a basis for transparent, competency-oriented, and strategically aligned recruitment procedures. It also extends sport governance and human resource management scholarship by explaining coach appointment as an interaction among candidate capital, institutional arrangements, and external legitimacy.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Reza Farahbakhsh, Mahdi Naderinasb, Elham Attari, Azam Abdollahpour, Akram Alsadat Hosseini Semnani (Author)
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