Cooperation and cohesion in football teams in competition

Cohesion (the social affiliation inside the team) is the most extended concept for to explain the internal dynamics in the sportive teams; along with the sport cooperation (relation between personal objectives with those of the team mates and the coach). It has two trait-like factors (conditioned and unconditioned cooperation) and several situational others. This work studies the relationships between cohesion and cooperation in competitive soccer teams, and their interdependence. The Questionnaire of Sportive Cooperation and the Team Climate Questionnaire (which measures the acceptance, clarity and perception of the player roles) were applied to 423 Spanish players of soccer (X= 14.8 years; Rank: 12-18 years; and 6.9 years of average practice of soccer). 9.7% were goalkeepers; 40.2%, defenders; 28.4%, midfielders and 9.1% were forwarders. The results showed different values for the cohesion and the cooperation; relationships between unconditioned cooperation and cohesion (role clarity and acceptance); the cooperation explains a percentage of the cohesion, and the cohesion (and its factors) explain a low value of the variance of cooperation; and only the role clarity seems to predict some level of cooperation. These results are discussed both theoretically and regarding to the psychological intervention on the teams. © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.