Leadership and Motivational Climate: The Relationship with Objectives, Commitment, and Satisfaction in Base Soccer Players

The objective of the present study is to analyze non-professional soccer players’ preferences regarding coach leadership style and motivational climate and to determine the relationship of these variables with players’ satisfaction, sport commitment, and sport objectives. The participants were 151 players, aged between 10 and 24 years, divided into five categories: Alevín, Infantil, Cadet, Feminine, and Juvenile, all belonging to the Aragonese Soccer Federation. The participants completed questionnaires assessing their perception of their coach’s leadership style, the team’s motivational climate, their individual satisfaction, degree of sport commitment, and sport objectives. The results show that the leadership styles of training and instruction (M = 3.98, SD = 0.43) and positive feedback (M = 4.02, SD = 0.53) are the most valued by the players in all categories. The training and instruction leadership style had the highest correlations with task-oriented motivational climate (r = 0.40). The findings of the regression analysis show that a training and instruction leadership style and a task-oriented motivational climate significantly predict players’ satisfaction (13.3%) and sport commitment (14.5%).