What Captaincy Style do Womenʼs Soccer Athletes Expect from their Leaders?: A Qualitative Structural Study Using Text Mining Analysis

Abstract

【Background】

  In team sports, multiple athletes must cooperate to achieve common goals. Team success depends on various factors such as understanding tactics, fulfilling roles, and mutual trust. The captainʼs leadership should play a role in addressing these problems. Previous leadership studies have identified gender differences between male and female teams. This study aimed to linguistically extract the leadership style expected of captains by female soccer athletes and to examine how captains can ensure that club activities run smoothly.

【Methods】

  The participants were 10 female soccer athletes（M = 20.90 years old, SD = ±1.45） from the Kanto University Womenʼs Soccer League Division 1. An open-ended questionnaire survey was conducted using Google Forms to collect textual data. The questionnaire consisted of 1）basic attributes（age, years of soccer experience, and number of club members）and 2）five questions about the leadership and management of the club captain in the club activity to which they belong:（1）the role of the captain,（2）psychological support methods,（3）how to deal with team problems,（4）how to treat club members, and（5）attitudes of captains.

【Results】

  As a result of the morphological analysis, 824 words（used words: 368 words）were extracted. The top 35 high-frequency words that appeared more than three times are listed in Table 1. The most frequently occurring words were “communication,” “voice,” “practice,” “team,” and “member.” Furthermore, the co-occurrence network analysis showed that descriptions of the leadership style desired in a captain can be roughly classified into four categories: 1）communication with members, 2）team coordination, 3）attitude as a player, and 4）captaincy as a leader.

【Discussion】

  This study used text mining analysis to examine the kind of captaincy required for leadership in womenʼs soccer teams. The results showed that captaincy can be roughly divided into four categories. This indicates that the captain of a female soccer team should consciously utilize the vocabulary content extracted from each category to play the role of a captain that can coordinate the team effectively. However, a double bind problem exists: if a female leader “acts strongly,” she will be criticized as unfeminine, and if she “acts gently,” she will be seen as an unbecoming leader. In the future, as times change, the captains of womenʼs teams will need to use different captaincy methods according to the culture and customs of each sport and team, without being bound by the current social and cultural stereotypes of “women = obedient and cooperative” and “leaders = assertive and authoritative.” To manage female teams smoothly, different captaincy methods must be used according to the culture and customs of each sport and team.