Talent Development in Football—A Holistic Perspective: The Case of KRC Genk

Abstract

Interest in talent identification and the development of professional footballers has markedly increased in the past decade. Research in football has primarily focused on individual development and external factors affecting performance. In other sports, research from a holistic and ecological approach has examined successful environments, suggesting that such environments are not only unique, but also share features. Using a single case study design and a holistic ecological approach, this study investigated the youth department of the Belgium elite club KRC Genk (the Jos Vaessen Talent Academy). Results suggest that this environment, in many regards, is consistent with the shared features found in other successful environments in other sports (such as support of sporting goals by the wider environment and support for long-term development). However, three features were also observed as unique. These were (a) cultural awareness, openness, and sharing of knowledge; (b) the club’s ability to accommodate a broad diversity of players in the academy; and (c) an openness toward new ideas and learning on all levels of the organization. Collectively, our results indicate that Genk, in some respects, not only shares features with successful environments in other sports, but also bears unique features.

A Qualitative Meta-Study of a Decade of the Holistic Ecological Approach to Talent Development

“…Last, there were eight studies with no direct reference to Bronfenbrenner's theoretical influence. Yet, this group is subdivided into two papers (Henriksen et al, 2014;Larsen et al, 2013) citing the bioecological framework via and the remaining five papers (Flatgård et al, 2020;Haukli et al, 2021;Henriksen et al, 2010b;Larsen et al, 2020;Mathorne et al, 2020;Ryom et al, 2020) citing studies based on different theoretical underpinnings. Using different phases of Bronfenbrenner's work has previously been criticised (Tudge et al, 2009) and is, therefore, an important point to consider moving forward.…”

“…Four studies researched environments in Denmark, four studies set in Norway and one study in Sweden. The last three studies were from Ontario, Canada (Seanor et al, 2017), Belgium (Ryom et al, 2020), and the Netherlands (Larsen et al, 2020) (Table 2). Asides from nationality, the sample represents seven different sports (i.e., football n=6, golf n=1, sailing n=1, track and field n=1, kayak n=1, swimming n=1, and gymnastics n=1).…”

“…Nine studies (Haukli et al, 2021;Henriksen et al, 2010aHenriksen et al, , 2010bHenriksen et al, , 2011Larsen et al, 2013Larsen et al, , 2020Mathorne et al, 2020;Ryom et al, 2020;Seanor et al, 2017) were categorised as successful from the outset. ATDEs were considered successful based on track records of producing elite athletes.…”

“…We found a consensus in the research that some areas of the working models, particularly organisational culture, benefited from the philosophical assumptions of interpretivism. The subsequent seven studies all carried out thematic analysis (Aalberg & Saether, 2016;Flatgård et al, 2020;Haukli et al, 2021;Larsen et al, 2020;Mathorne et al, 2020;Ryom et al, 2020;Seanor et al, 2017). They also represent a reversal of the analysis where findings were initially coded concerning the study objective and then grouped into higher-order themes.…”

“…We grouped the findings from the included research into a table showing how the findings related to the proposed success factors from Henriksen and Stambulova (2017), see Table 3. Yet, Ryom et al (2020) introduced two additional features: Cultural Sensitivity and Sharing Knowledge. We argue below that under a different approach to culture; then cultural sensitivity could be grouped with organisational culture.…”