Abstract
Long-term talent development is defined as a sustained structuring of training and competitions in a progressive approach that involves time-limited developmental stages, each with specific and coherent content. This progression aims to transition from a foundational and versatile sports education to specialized training in a specific discipline. It is demonstrated that long-term talent development in sports follows a longitudinal approach grounded in scientific principles and consistent practices. The goal is to facilitate the journey of talents toward achieving excellence in their respective sports disciplines. In this context, talent management plays a pivotal role in fostering sporting excellence. It encompasses a set of collective practices developed to identify, train, and retain young individuals with high potential, creating the conditions for their talents to flourish. We designed a qualitative study to explore how coaches at the training center operate to ensure talent management. To address our research objective, we opted for semi-structured interviews to probe the perceptions of coaches at the training center regarding talent management, including its components: identification, long-term development, and talent retention. The latter will be examined through assessments related to the sports development environment within the training center. Analysis of the verbatim transcripts reveals that coaches possess knowledge about talent development but sometimes encounter challenges with the involvement of young players, which negatively impacts their development. Recommendations have been formulated to address these needs.
Keywords
Talent identification, talent development, sports talent development environment
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Publication date:
30 August 2022
