Soccer coaches' leadership behavior: The perceptions and expectations of both NCAA Division I and professional German coaches: A comparison study

This study focused on the coaching styles of soccer coaches from the United States of America and Germany and how these affect and influence the performance of the players they interact with. Soccer is a sport widely played in every part of the world; however, it is still at its growing stage in the US, thus, their performances in international soccer leagues particularly in the World Cup is not something one might label as outstanding. On the contrary, soccer in Germany has become an essential part of the people's life - Germans, both young and old, play the said sport whether just a hobby in the streets or in official games itself. The intent of the research is to discover differences in coaching effectiveness and how and up to what extent coaching effectiveness influence success for the individual athlete and for the team as a whole. This study made use of a self-constructed Leadership Behavior Survey which was a combination of questions from Haplin's Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire and Hall's Productive Practice Survey. Substantive comparisons were made between German and U.S. coaches and players. From the results, it is clear that the U.S. and German coaches dwell equally on the two leadership dimensions; however, there were some initiating structure items that were given more emphasis by German coaches, while some consideration items were reinforced more by American coaches.