Developing Service Quality of Childhood Football in Finland
Pahkasalo, Aleksi (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060420424
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060420424
Tiivistelmä
Finland is significantly behind the other Nordic countries such as Norway and Denmark in the youth and adult phases of football, despite the similar demographics and geography. Swedish and Danish teams as a collective, and players as individuals are already ahead of Finnish players in the youth phase in terms of level. Professional adult players from other Nordic countries have signifi-cantly higher combined player market values than Finnish players. Attrition from football in the youth phase of football is high in Finland. This background information should raise questions on what is being done in the childhood phase of Finnish football.
Examining the quality of service Finnish football clubs offer children was examined to understand how the service can be developed in order to develop better players and to keep more participants in the sport in the future. Understanding the various stakeholders and identifying their motives and expectations was important when considering how to give concrete suggestions on how to improve the quality of the service in the future.
The study was conducted by utilizing mixed methods. The primary qualitative data was collected by interviewing experts of the childhood phase of football from the Finnish FA, FIFA and Soccer Services Barcelona Ekkono Method on their experiences and observations of service quality factors of child-hood football training sessions in Finland. The secondary data was acquired from the Finnish FA’s larger study on Finnish training session quality with the data gathered from Observa-tion Forms that provided insights on what needs to be improved in the training sessions of child-hood football in Finland.
The main findings of the study were that there are several factors that can be improved in child-hood football training sessions in Finland. The coaching behaviors, the number of touches of the football, the time that the children are active, and the children‘s engagement in the training ses-sions were all evaluated to be at a relatively low level. The low quality of these factors were shown with the quantitative data of the Observation Forms and then complemented with qualita-tive data from interviews and backed up with a theoretical framework. Using the main findings of the study, concrete suggestions for service development were made for Finnish football clubs to improve the service quality of their childhood football training sessions.
Examining the quality of service Finnish football clubs offer children was examined to understand how the service can be developed in order to develop better players and to keep more participants in the sport in the future. Understanding the various stakeholders and identifying their motives and expectations was important when considering how to give concrete suggestions on how to improve the quality of the service in the future.
The study was conducted by utilizing mixed methods. The primary qualitative data was collected by interviewing experts of the childhood phase of football from the Finnish FA, FIFA and Soccer Services Barcelona Ekkono Method on their experiences and observations of service quality factors of child-hood football training sessions in Finland. The secondary data was acquired from the Finnish FA’s larger study on Finnish training session quality with the data gathered from Observa-tion Forms that provided insights on what needs to be improved in the training sessions of child-hood football in Finland.
The main findings of the study were that there are several factors that can be improved in child-hood football training sessions in Finland. The coaching behaviors, the number of touches of the football, the time that the children are active, and the children‘s engagement in the training ses-sions were all evaluated to be at a relatively low level. The low quality of these factors were shown with the quantitative data of the Observation Forms and then complemented with qualita-tive data from interviews and backed up with a theoretical framework. Using the main findings of the study, concrete suggestions for service development were made for Finnish football clubs to improve the service quality of their childhood football training sessions.