© 2014 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
Scand J Med Sci Sports 2014: 24 (Suppl. 1): 138–146 doi: 10.1111/sms.12276
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Football Fitness – a new version of football? A concept for adult players in Danish football clubs S. Bennike1,2, J. M. Wikman1,2, L. S. Ottesen1,2 Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health, Copenhagen, Denmark Corresponding author: Søren Bennike, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Nørre Allé 51, DK-2200 Copenhagen, Denmark. Tel: +45 35 32 08 15, Fax: +45 35320870, E-mail: [email protected]
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Accepted for publication 23 May 2014
This article explores a new Danish football-based activity for health called Football Fitness (FF). Data are from quantitative and qualitative methods, and the theoretical framework for the analysis of the organizational form of FF is the theory of path dependency (Mahoney) and firstand second-order change (Watzlawick et al.). Theories of Pestoff concerning differences between state, market, and the civil society and theories of voluntary associations in a Danish context (Kaspersen & Ottesen; Ibsen & Seippel) are applied. This article indicates how FF is a result of the changing landscape of sport and argues that it can be
beneficial to target sports organizations and include the expertise of non-profit sports clubs if the goal is to raise the physical activity level of the local community and make these long lasting. But the organizations need to consider how this is to be done. FF, established by the Danish Football Association (FA) and managed by the voluntary clubs, is one example in a Danish context. Data indicate that FF is beneficial to the clubs involved in a number of ways. Among other things, it attracts new user groups and improves the club environment, including social activities and parental environment.
Exercise has well-documented health benefits (Lee et al., 2012), including higher quality of life. What is relatively new are the findings that recreational football, organized as small-sided games, is highly beneficial for enhancing overall fitness (Krustrup et al., 2010a,b). In addition, studies indicate that team sports such as football may have an advantage over individual sports when it comes to personal development (Priest et al., 2008) and the development of social capital (Ottesen et al., 2010). Publications in social studies reveal a shift in the role of sport in society in general; we are experiencing greater political focus on sport due to the health-related outcomes of participation (Houlihan, 2005; Skille, 2008; Bloyce & Smith, 2010). This becomes very explicit in the Toronto Charter of Physical Activity (GAPA & ISPAH, 2010). Given the above, the next big issue will be how to get even more people to become active within the game of football? The aim of this article is to explore a new Danish football-based activity for health called Football Fitness (FF), which among other things is designed to meet new user groups and get more people to play football. Henderson (2009) notes that sports management literature has previously focused primarily on sport as spectatorship or entertainment and not on sport as an opportunity to promote participation in active behavior, which in turn can lead to better health. Priest et al.
(2008) highlights the importance of studying activities organized in sporting settings to increase participation in sport. FF will serve as one example where the fact that self-organized individual sport with a large degree of organizational flexibility is becoming more popular (Laub, 2013), the issue of sport has acquired political focus, and the findings on the effects of recreational small-sided football on health – all have contributed to the development of FF. In short the concept, which was launched by the Danish Football Association (DFA) in 2011, is football with a focus on health and enjoyment, rather than skills and tactics. It has no tournament structure and the target group is participants over 25 years of age. Most other concepts for health in the context of football comprise time-limited interventions with a particular focus on the health of men (Robertson, 2003; Spandler & McKeown, 2012; Hunt et al., 2014) or as community activities conducted by professional football clubs, especially in Great Britain (Brown et al., 2006). This is not the case with FF, which is an activity aimed at both men and women and conducted by voluntary football clubs1 and it is not intended to exist only for a limited time frame. With a specific focus on the organizational issues of FF, the exploration of FF will serve as
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In the following, “clubs” denotes voluntary associations, unless otherwise stated.
Football Fitness – a new version of football? an example of how sports organizations, in this case the Danish FA, respond to the already mentioned changes in the role of sport and contribute to the discussion of how to organize sports as a means for promoting health within sports organizations. The article will answer the following three questions: What defines FF? How is FF organized? And how does FF affect the clubs? Introducing the theoretical perspective To explore the concept of FF, we will draw on inspiration from the theoretical perspectives of Pestoff (1992) concerning the differences between state, market, and civil society. Moreover, we shall include research on the organizational form of the Danish sports system, which bears the stamp of a long tradition of associationalism as a model of governance in political practice in Denmark (Kaspersen & Ottesen, 2001). The history of associations and the Danish legislation regarding voluntary sports clubs make Denmark very “sport association friendly” (Ibsen & Seippel, 2010). The theories used to explore why the organization of FF has taken its present form are rooted in theories of organizational change and include the theory of “path dependency” (Mahoney, 2000) and the theory of “first-order change” and “second-order change” (Watzlawick et al., 1974; Bakka & Fivelsdal, 2010). Path dependency is a theoretical term used in new institutional theory and organizational studies that focus on the role of past events in defining the structures, culture, and routines of an organization. Once these are in place, they become part of the organization as an institutional pattern and influence future decisions. Once the organization is on a particular institutional path, it tends to remain on it rather than making radical changes (Campbell, 2004). This process is a key element of the theory of path dependency. But changes do happen, some more radical than others. In this article, we will use the theoretical terms first-order change and second-order change. These orders of change are also taken into consideration when organizational development is being planned and approached (Bartunek & Moch, 1987). First-order change is an incremental change in which already-existing elements are combined to gain a new outcome, or small changes are adopted so that the organization still resembles its previous form. By contrast, second-order change is more radical; the system itself changes and most dimensions of the organization change so that it no longer resembles the previous form. These theoretical terms will prove helpful in clarifying a number of points relating to the change in the organizational form of football represented by FF. Methods Study design and participants Data used to explore the concept of FF come from both qualitative and quantitative methods. This combination of methods will provide a fuller understanding and stronger conclusions to the
research questions we would like to explore than would be the case with a monomethod approach (van der Roest et al., 2013). The DFA provided the contact information for the participants but had no influence on the choice of research participants.
The qualitative inquiry The qualitative inquiry consists of interpretative document analysis (Hammersly & Atkinson, 2007), interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), and focus group interviews (Morgan, 1997). The texts of analyses consist of internal papers, public press releases, and manuals describing FF, all published by the Danish FA. Two public papers published by the English Football Association (EFA) are also considered. The interviews include individual interviews with three key persons in the FF steering committee, these being three of the six members of the steering committee and were selected because of their influence in FF, different tasks in the Danish FA, and their different fields of responsibility in relation to the FF concept. Seven focus group interviews (N = 35) were conducted, including one group of regional FF administrators (attended by 3 out of 4 nationwide) and two groups of football development officers (FDO) (attended by 12 out of 16 nationwide). These groups include the professionals at the Danish FA who work on implementation of FF. Four groups, each representing a club that offers FF, were also included. The four clubs were chosen in order to provide a geographical spread and a variation in the way they manage FF. The clubs represent the four biggest football country unions out of a total of six, and they represent FF for different target groups. Two clubs offer FF for women, one club offers FF for men, and one club offers FF for both men and women. Prior to the selection we could see the tendency, from which we will draw conclusions in following that FF was most prevalent for women, which is why two clubs offering FF for women were chosen. The minimum participants for the focus group interviews were the club chairman, one other board member, the key person/coach for FF, and one player.
The surveys Data also include two online questionnaire surveys (Boolsen, 2008). One questionnaire was sent to the chairpersons of 1288 out of approximately 1600 Danish football clubs (1247 were received), although contact details were not available for all clubs. In total, 475 chairpersons participated (response rate 38.1%). The other questionnaire was sent to the FF key persons at 112 clubs which, at the time of the survey, was the total number of clubs involved in the FF concept. In total, 62 persons with responsibility for 76 FF teams were represented (response rate 56.3%). The entire process of distributing, completing questionnaires, sending out reminders, and extracting the data was carried out via the survey program SurveyXact (Rambøl Management Consulting, Aarhus, Denmark).
Procedures Data were collected and analyzed concurrently from March to June 2013. However, interpretation of the qualitative data started as they were collected, which affected subsequent collections (Creswell, 2007). Data were collected in connection with an evaluation for the Danish FA concerning the implementation phase of the FF concept (Bennike et al., 2014, written 2013). This article, however, will focus on an exploration of the concept and the organizational issues addressed in FF, which have doubtless affected the implementation and dissemination of FF. Prior to this
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Bennike et al. research, a pilot study was conducted (Krustrup & Ottesen, 2014, written 2011). In addition to the results from the pilot study, data collection and data analysis were also influenced by an interest in changes in the club structure and culture as a result of FF and a theoretical model2 by Winter (2012) dealing with the implementation phase. The qualitative data were coded and condensed (Creswell, 2007) in Atlas.ti (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin, Germany), with pre-existing codes directing the coding in a hermeneutic deductive way, although this did not mean that the analysis was not open to additional codes (Creswell, 2007). The coding led to a number of themes and subcodes; the themes explored in this article are “the concept of FF,” “the organization of FF,” “the FF team,” “the FF club,” and “changes resulting from FF.” The quantitative data were analyzed in SPSS (IBM Corporation, New York, US) using a logistic regression model (Field, 2009) to test which variables had an impact on whether a club offers FF, and descriptive statistics were used to describe key components of FF teams and clubs and how FF has affected those clubs.
(later defined as football as professionalism and football as leisure), and they all meet new demands for flexibility in football. As part of its National Game Strategy 2011– 2015, the EFA states in Developing football for everyone (EFA, 2011) that a specific challenge is to provide “local and flexible formats of football to suit changing consumer lifestyles” and a specific priority is to “increase participation through FA Just Play centres.” According to the EFA (2014), the Mars Just Play! concept is: about turning up for an hour of exercise and a bit of fun. It’s football for those who can’t or don’t want to commit to an eight-month long season of matches and training. Similarly to the EFA, the Danish FA states in the Strategy for development 2015 (DFA, 2012) that:
Results What defines FF and how is it organized? An in-depth analysis of the organization of FF will follow, while this next section explores the concept of FF and shows who plays and which clubs offer FF. It is not possible, however, to explore FF without commenting on organizational issues, as the Danish FA argues that FF is presenting football in a sporting and organizational new way (DFA, 2010a). We will return to an analysis of this charge later. What is FF? We will briefly pay attention to the EFA’s Mars Just Play! concept, as there are certain similarities to FF, which will prove beneficial in the understanding of FF. Moreover, FF in its original form was hugely inspired by the English form of 5-a-side Football, which in contrast to FF is highly influenced by the market and can be defined as a pay per play concept. A representative of the FF steering committee states: We went to England to see this five-a-side, a big trend and very commercial, where companies build courts. It is like a squash centre in Denmark where they rent out the courts and run small tournaments. . . . We looked at this and wondered if this could be an alternative way for clubs to arrange the game for busy family dads who don’t have time for weekly training sessions and 11-a-side matches at the weekend. They could offer some flexibility, and from that came FF. Both FF, 5-a-side Football, and Just Play! are more organizationally flexible than the regular form of football 2
The integrated implementation model.
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the game of football has to maintain and strengthen its position through continuous development in accessibility and flexibility regardless of the skills and ambitions of the participants. FF is developed by the Danish FA and the Sports Confederation of Denmark and launched by the Danish FA as a top-down concept managed voluntarily at local level by the clubs. It is created to (DFA, 2010b) “promote football as a health-beneficial activity,” “to create an interest in football for fitness and exercise,” and “to support football clubs in creating more flexibility in relation to adult players, primarily over the age of 25.” Key factors are that FF (DFA, 2010a) “have a focus on health and enjoyment,” “is offered at a reduced membership fee compared to regular club members,” “teams do not engage in a tournament structure,” and “clubs can present the concept in a local way and adapt to the participations.” It is important to state that the FF concept has changed in form during the early implementation phase. When the concept was introduced to the clubs in 2011, it was presented as being much freer in its form and was regarded to a larger degree than today as a unisex concept (DFA, 2011). The clubs that are managing the concept were not able to fully comprehend the mission of FF, especially the wish for an online booking system, which has therefore been dropped. A member of the steering committee states: As a result of experience we have, to large degree, toned down our thoughts about an online booking system. Needless to say, the implementation of FF has not been easy as there has been resistance to the concept and the explicit focus on health and flexibility, which still persists today (Bennike et al., 2014, written in 2013). These
Football Fitness – a new version of football? difficulties have resulted in two manuals, Football Fitness for women and Exercise football for men – get into shape with Football Fitness, and the organization of inspirational meetings for clubs interested in FF. Moreover, some clubs have requested 1-day tournaments at which FF teams can compete. A member of the steering committee states: You can say that the concept we have in 2013 has a clear strategy. We have FF for men and for women. . . . We have one-day tournaments and we have inspirational meetings. We have a concept that is clear. Who plays FF and which clubs offers FF? This section identifies a number of characteristics of FF teams and clubs. In the survey, FF key persons were asked to mark the age and gender of the target groups of the teams, as divided into subgroups in Fig. 1. The FF key persons could mark as many subgroups as needed to describe the teams’ target group. Figure 1 shows that most teams include participants in the 25–39 and 40–59 age groups, and that there are more teams with women as target group and fewer with a mixed target group. However, an interesting point is that in the 60+ age group, men are more involved than women, compared with other age groups. From the questionnaire survey, we know that 66% of FF clubs have one team, while those clubs that offer more than one team generally have teams for different target groups. Almost 90% of teams train once a week in a fixed time slot on a work day (except Friday) between 6 and 9 h. Forty-four percent of teams have less than 10 participants, 35% of teams have 11–20 participants, and 18% of teams have 21–30 participants. The proportionally low number of participants and the solitary weekly time slot for FF make it impossible to have the flexibility for participants to choose their own time slot using an online booking system as we see in fitness centers. The interviews revealed that the four clubs involved in the research could be characterized as being aware of
their relationship with their external environment, and especially their relationship with the local municipal authority. They were open to new activities and innovative. One club chairperson states: As a club, we like to get involved with new things and point out that we are a non-elite club. The present board is very project-orientated – we like to try new things. As shown in the following, this tendency is also evident in the quantitative data. A logistic regression analysis revealed certain variables that influence the likelihood of a club offering FF (P ≤ 0.05). Out of 16 statements regarding purpose and importance, agreement with the three statements in Textbox 1 increases the likelihood of a club offering FF. Agreeing to these statements indicates a commitment by the clubs engaged in FF to carry out welfare and community work, e.g., health-related work. They see themselves as active organizations when it comes to welfare work in their local community. Furthermore, our results suggest that the total number of club members has an impact on the likelihood of a club offering FF. The chairpersons were asked how many members are in their club and whether they offer FF. Figure 2 shows that the percentage of clubs with less than 150 members offering FF is lower than the percentage of total clubs with less than 150 members. At the same time, clubs with 200–299 members are more often involved with FF than clubs with less or more members, indicated by the peak in the graph in Fig. 2. It is reasonable to assume that there is a link Textbox 1. Statements that influence the likelihood of a club offering FF.
• “The purpose of the club is to promote health and well-being.” • “It is important for the club to offer football without a focus on tournaments and matches.” • “It is important for the club to offer football with a focus on the social benefits of the game.”* *This is tested at a significance threshold P ≤ 0.10. FF, Football Fitness.
30 25 20 Men's teams 15
Women's teams Mixed teams
10 5 0 17/18–24 years 25–39 years
40–59 years
60+ years
Fig. 1. Football Fitness teams broken down in numbers by gender and age of participants.
Fig. 2. Percentage of clubs offering Football Fitness (FF) and percentage of total clubs broken down by number of members.
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Bennike et al. between the size of the club and the willingness to be innovative with regard to welfare and community work. How does FF differ organizationally from football as leisure and football as professionalism? Figure 3 illustrates how FF differs in terms of organization from other traditional forms of football organized by the DFA, namely, football as “professionalism” and as “leisure.” This is inspired by the theoretical perspectives of Pestoff (1992) and a discussion by Rowe et al. (2013) of cycling as three different forms: competitive, recreational, and transportation. Data used to create this figure come from analyzing documents relating to FF, the qualitative interviews, and an exploration of football as leisure and professionalism in a Danish context. Football as leisure. In order to understand Fig. 3 and the way in which football in Denmark is organized, we need to take a retrospective historical look at the organization of sport in general. Since the 1870s and up to the present, sport, including football, has primarily been organized by voluntary sport clubs, with football organized as a leisure activity in particular as a result of gradually increasing government funding of associations from the beginning of the twentieth century (Kaspersen & Ottesen, 2001). This places football clubs and football as leisure in a strong, tradition-bound position. To benefit from financial support, clubs must be open to everyone and function as non-profit organizations. They will need to have a democratic legal structure, including a voluntary member-elected board. Other than these conditions for public funding, the state does not control how clubs are run, which can therefore be defined as selfgovernance. The funding is given in the form of rooms/ halls/fields for sport and on a membership basis for members under the age of 25 pursuant to the Danish Act on Popular Education (Folkeoplysningsloven). In addition to this public funding, membership fees and proceeds of activities organized by volunteers represent the main resources for clubs (Ibsen & Seippel, 2010). The
clubs conduct social and cultural activities with a focus on the civil society in a local context. In contrast to Great Britain, there existed an ideal to keep the game free from economic interests, which probably contributed to the strong tradition of leisure football. All of these characteristics have an enormous impact on the path dependency (Mahoney, 2000) that constitutes the organization of football in Denmark and is defined in Fig. 3 as “leisure,” shown in the middle column. These characteristics can be described as having a focus on civil society, working as a non-profit, democratic, selfgoverning organization funded primarily by the government, whereas the game of football as it is played is football as a hobby following national standard rules. Football as professionalism. The ideal of amateurism existed until 1978, when the Danish FA cancelled the amateur code (Grønkjær & Olsen, 2007). This was epoch making and resulted in a radical change in Danish football. The Danish FA reacted to the external and internal pressure from the sport in a global perspective, and the change was in some ways unavoidable if Denmark wanted to play football at the highest level. The rules of football were not notably affected, but in terms of the organizational system of governance of the clubs engaging in professionalism, this was a second-order change (Watzlawick et al., 1974). It meant that the clubs that wanted to participate in professional football had to change their organizational system and culture. The characteristics of professional football, represented in the left-hand column in Fig. 3, can be defined as having a focus on the market economy, working as a for-profit organization with a hierarchical management, whereas the game of football is being played as a job following international rules. Football as leisure continued more or less unchanged, while professional football was created and began to influence how football is thought of and played. Football as exercise. With the concept of FF, we experience a new change in the organization of football, defined in Fig. 3 as “exercise.” FF is an epoch-making
Ways in which football is organized by the Danish Football Associaon
Characteriscs of the organizaon
Characteriscs of the game
Professionalism
Leisure
Exercise (FF)
For-profit organizaon Private funding Hierarchical management No membership fee Football as a job Improving skills and taccs Internaonal rules
Non-profit organizaon Public funding Democrac management Membership fee Football as a hobby Improving skills and taccs Naonal rules
Non-profit organizaon Public funding Democrac management Reduced membership fee Football as a means for health Improving fitness Local rules
Fig. 3. Three types of adult football organized by the Danish Football Association.
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Football Fitness – a new version of football? concept in the formation and definition of football as exercise in Denmark. What is new in the concept of FF is not just the focus on health and greater flexibility in organized football, but also the way in which local clubs are given more control of organized football. One FDO states:
Fig. 1 shows that FF is played by more women than men. Other differences with regard to leisure football are the low number of participants in each team, the reduced fees for participants, and the predominant focus not just on health but also on football as a fun and social activity where skills do not matter. One local organizer states:
It is a concept that fits in with a lot of target groups and can be managed in many different ways. Some teams do ordinary fitness exercises, and some just play football. Others mix and match from activities that they are fond of. It is up to the clubs.
The less you know about football, the better you fit our target group. The less skilled you are, the better you fit our target group.
Allowance for local input, with FF being tailored to the local community and the culture of the organizing club, is possible because FF is not part of a tournament structure where the game has to be strictly controlled. The rules for playing FF are not fixed, which means the teams themselves control the rules and the format. There are no restrictions on gender, age, or skills, which allows men and women to play together, just as players of different ages and different skills can play together. It also means that you can play on smaller pitches and use the space available. Given this change toward a game, with the participants able to set their own rules, you might imagine that the game would acquire differing features and diffuse with substantial variations. However, data show that the general rules of FF appear to be rather similar in many clubs, mirroring the rules of national and international football, even though they have the option to change them on a local basis. What is new is the approach, which is highly social and noncompetitive, albeit there are still two teams of players trying to score, playing on a rectangular field with two goals, unable to use their hands, and with free-kicks awarded for over-enthusiastic tackles. FF – a new way of organizing football? To sum up the analysis so far, we will compare FF with leisure football, cf. Fig. 3. Regardless of similarities to leisure football in terms of rules and format, we find some crucial differences that may be indicative of a second-order change (Watzlawick et al., 1974). FF is more flexible than leisure football in terms of the “environment” of the game, and there is no season-long tournament structure. One FF administrator states: The flexible format is where FF and traditional football differ. FF is played under different conditions. You don’t have to train twice a week and play matches at the weekend. It’s more that you play whenever you have the opportunity. Furthermore, Textbox 1 and Fig. 2 show that certain types and sizes of club are more involved in FF, while
Despite these differences, there are a number of similarities to the game organized as leisure football – similarities that can be ascribed to the theory of path dependency (Mahoney, 2000) and the inertia that is characteristic of leisure football and the clubs organizing it. Few clubs radically change the structure of the game in FF, e.g., men and women rarely mix, and the concept of online booking has been dropped. Often the teams play once a week in a fixed time slot in the afternoon, similar to leisure football, and the participants belong to a certain team. A very important point for understanding the homogenization in teams and the similarity to leisure football is that the Danish FA organizes inspirational meetings, has developed a website that provides further explanation of the concept and contains a number of manuals, and FF is often run with the help of an FDO. The concept of path dependency can be used to argue that the work of the Danish FA is affected by the previous work in the world of leisure football and in the Danish FA as an organization. Due to path dependency, it is most likely that the Danish FA will follow the path and guide the clubs in a direction similar to the organizational form of leisure football. The initiative of the 1-day tournament is also a change toward leisure football, where the focus is largely on competition. In contrast to the cancellation of the amateur code, FF does not change the organizational structure of clubs, and in contrast to the English Just Play! concept, it is not as influenced by the market. FF is managed according to the same structural conditions as leisure football, as an activity in non-profit voluntary clubs, which implies a first-order change (Watzlawick et al., 1974). Nevertheless, as we will see in the next section, most clubs engaged in FF have experienced change resulting from the FF concept. However, this is a change in culture rather than structure. How does FF affect the clubs? Both the interview inquiry and the questionnaire survey show that FF has contributed to the clubs in several ways. In the interviews, the clubs speak of how FF “brings new user groups and creates new life in the clubhouse,” “retains and attracts new members,” “draws attention to the club in the local community,” and “is a stepping-stone for a female leisure football group.”
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Bennike et al. Table 1. How has FF affected the clubs involved?
How has FF affected . . .
Positively (%)
No effect (%)
Negatively (%)
Don’t know (%)
The club environment The social activities The number of members The club’s finances The parental environment The number of volunteer coaches The workload of the volunteers A new board composition
48 46 46 29 29 14 6 5
32 29 39 53 48 59 60 77
0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0
20 25 15 17 23 28 28 19
FF, Football Fitness.
A quote from the chairperson of one club clearly shows that the club had become aware of the political changes regarding sport as a health-beneficial activity and of FF as a means of legitimizing the club’s role and strengthening its collaboration with the municipality: The FF-team has put our club on the map, at least on the city map. We have been in the press with this concept. . . . We can show to the municipality that we do more than just leisure football. The questionnaire survey presents a similar pattern. The clubs engaged with FF were asked how FF had affected them. Table 1 shows how they answered. Among the clubs offering FF, almost 50% answered that FF had contributed positively to the club environment and its social activities. Furthermore, 29% answered that it had made a positive contribution to the parental environment, and some clubs have engaged new coaches on a voluntary basis. Overall, the introduction of FF to a club brings with it almost exclusively positive changes. Discussion As mentioned in the Introduction, many publications are indicating a change in the role of sport toward a focus on health. So far, we have found a lack of empirical publications dealing with the specific influence of these changes. This article includes an empirical perspective with an exploration of FF – a top-down concept initiated by the Danish FA directly generated by these changes and designed to promote health and physical activity within the established sports sector. Finch and Donaldson (2009) emphasize that there has been increasing recognition of the need for research within the realworld intervention context of community sport. If interventions are not widely adopted and sustained, it is most unlikely that they will have a public health impact (Finch & Donaldson, 2009). Henderson (2009) states that most theory regarding how to get people to participate in healthy behavior relates to individual behavior and cognition, concluding that “identifying additional ways to more fully connect health and sport is essential.”
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With the example of FF, we argue that it can be helpful to ground this connection in the sports clubs organizing the activities. If you do not succeed in getting the activity organized, who will attend? FF is one example in a Danish context of how football, one of the biggest sports in the world and the national sport of Denmark, and given the sociocultural and political focus on health, can encourage greater physical activity at a community level by changing its organizational form. This approach targets the established sports system and includes the expertise of non-profit sports clubs, which to some extent know the participants in their local community and know how to organize the activities. Vail (2007) demonstrates how top-down initiatives that ignore community needs have failed to succeed in sustaining sports participation. FF is a top-down concept, but, as we have shown, it makes room for local input and bottom-up activities and proves beneficial for the clubs, which encourages them to continue their work. Given the large number of football clubs throughout Denmark (approximately 1600) and the fact that they are locally embedded, this concept has the potential to combine a political focus on health with a local focus within the clubs, and to organize football for health in a sustainable way. If the concept proves successful, it will become self-governing as an activity managed by local clubs with a local focus and with state funding pursuant to the legislation benefitting the associations. The change in organization will tend not to be too radical in terms of the structure and organization of the clubs, as they can manage it in a form that suits them. Due to path dependency (Mahoney, 2000), this change will rarely take the form of a secondorder change (Watzlawick et al., 1974) in structure, as the organization of the club will remain unchanged. In regard to changes in culture it is an interesting result that more women than men are playing FF, which is far from the case of football as leisure or as professionalism. How will this effect club culture and could this provide a path toward more women being involved in the game of football? An analogy can be drawn with information technology: with the introduction of professionalism, clubs had to change operating system, but with FF the clubs do not have to change operating system – rather, this is a new version of football organized by the Danish FA. A
Football Fitness – a new version of football? new version that presumably will influence club culture more than club structure.
women in football? In future studies we will examine further how FF has affected the clubs.
Perspectives
Key words: Football Fitness, adults, soccer, health, football clubs, Football Association, civic society, Denmark.
Time and further investigation will show whether FF is widely adopted and how the relationship between football as leisure and football as exercise will develop. The game of football has transformed and developed over time in terms of rules, tactics, training, fashion, media, and new ways of playing (e.g., beach soccer and futsal). Does the concept of FF put us on the verge of yet another transition, with the focus on flexible organization, health-beneficial outcomes, and more
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the participants in the data collection process. A big thank you to Peter Krustrup (Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health, NEXS), student helper Lea Blom (NEXS), and Kenneth Grønlund Rasmussen (Danish FA). The study was supported by Nordea-fonden, Denmark, and the Danish FA.
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Scand J Med Sci Sports 2014: 24 (Suppl. 1): 138–146 doi: 10.1111/sms.12276
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Football Fitness – a new version of football? A concept for adult players in Danish football clubs S. Bennike1,2, J. M. Wikman1,2, L. S. Ottesen1,2 Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health, Copenhagen, Denmark Corresponding author: Søren Bennike, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Nørre Allé 51, DK-2200 Copenhagen, Denmark. Tel: +45 35 32 08 15, Fax: +45 35320870, E-mail: [email protected]
1
Accepted for publication 23 May 2014
This article explores a new Danish football-based activity for health called Football Fitness (FF). Data are from quantitative and qualitative methods, and the theoretical framework for the analysis of the organizational form of FF is the theory of path dependency (Mahoney) and firstand second-order change (Watzlawick et al.). Theories of Pestoff concerning differences between state, market, and the civil society and theories of voluntary associations in a Danish context (Kaspersen & Ottesen; Ibsen & Seippel) are applied. This article indicates how FF is a result of the changing landscape of sport and argues that it can be
beneficial to target sports organizations and include the expertise of non-profit sports clubs if the goal is to raise the physical activity level of the local community and make these long lasting. But the organizations need to consider how this is to be done. FF, established by the Danish Football Association (FA) and managed by the voluntary clubs, is one example in a Danish context. Data indicate that FF is beneficial to the clubs involved in a number of ways. Among other things, it attracts new user groups and improves the club environment, including social activities and parental environment.
Exercise has well-documented health benefits (Lee et al., 2012), including higher quality of life. What is relatively new are the findings that recreational football, organized as small-sided games, is highly beneficial for enhancing overall fitness (Krustrup et al., 2010a,b). In addition, studies indicate that team sports such as football may have an advantage over individual sports when it comes to personal development (Priest et al., 2008) and the development of social capital (Ottesen et al., 2010). Publications in social studies reveal a shift in the role of sport in society in general; we are experiencing greater political focus on sport due to the health-related outcomes of participation (Houlihan, 2005; Skille, 2008; Bloyce & Smith, 2010). This becomes very explicit in the Toronto Charter of Physical Activity (GAPA & ISPAH, 2010). Given the above, the next big issue will be how to get even more people to become active within the game of football? The aim of this article is to explore a new Danish football-based activity for health called Football Fitness (FF), which among other things is designed to meet new user groups and get more people to play football. Henderson (2009) notes that sports management literature has previously focused primarily on sport as spectatorship or entertainment and not on sport as an opportunity to promote participation in active behavior, which in turn can lead to better health. Priest et al.
(2008) highlights the importance of studying activities organized in sporting settings to increase participation in sport. FF will serve as one example where the fact that self-organized individual sport with a large degree of organizational flexibility is becoming more popular (Laub, 2013), the issue of sport has acquired political focus, and the findings on the effects of recreational small-sided football on health – all have contributed to the development of FF. In short the concept, which was launched by the Danish Football Association (DFA) in 2011, is football with a focus on health and enjoyment, rather than skills and tactics. It has no tournament structure and the target group is participants over 25 years of age. Most other concepts for health in the context of football comprise time-limited interventions with a particular focus on the health of men (Robertson, 2003; Spandler & McKeown, 2012; Hunt et al., 2014) or as community activities conducted by professional football clubs, especially in Great Britain (Brown et al., 2006). This is not the case with FF, which is an activity aimed at both men and women and conducted by voluntary football clubs1 and it is not intended to exist only for a limited time frame. With a specific focus on the organizational issues of FF, the exploration of FF will serve as
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1
In the following, “clubs” denotes voluntary associations, unless otherwise stated.
Football Fitness – a new version of football? an example of how sports organizations, in this case the Danish FA, respond to the already mentioned changes in the role of sport and contribute to the discussion of how to organize sports as a means for promoting health within sports organizations. The article will answer the following three questions: What defines FF? How is FF organized? And how does FF affect the clubs? Introducing the theoretical perspective To explore the concept of FF, we will draw on inspiration from the theoretical perspectives of Pestoff (1992) concerning the differences between state, market, and civil society. Moreover, we shall include research on the organizational form of the Danish sports system, which bears the stamp of a long tradition of associationalism as a model of governance in political practice in Denmark (Kaspersen & Ottesen, 2001). The history of associations and the Danish legislation regarding voluntary sports clubs make Denmark very “sport association friendly” (Ibsen & Seippel, 2010). The theories used to explore why the organization of FF has taken its present form are rooted in theories of organizational change and include the theory of “path dependency” (Mahoney, 2000) and the theory of “first-order change” and “second-order change” (Watzlawick et al., 1974; Bakka & Fivelsdal, 2010). Path dependency is a theoretical term used in new institutional theory and organizational studies that focus on the role of past events in defining the structures, culture, and routines of an organization. Once these are in place, they become part of the organization as an institutional pattern and influence future decisions. Once the organization is on a particular institutional path, it tends to remain on it rather than making radical changes (Campbell, 2004). This process is a key element of the theory of path dependency. But changes do happen, some more radical than others. In this article, we will use the theoretical terms first-order change and second-order change. These orders of change are also taken into consideration when organizational development is being planned and approached (Bartunek & Moch, 1987). First-order change is an incremental change in which already-existing elements are combined to gain a new outcome, or small changes are adopted so that the organization still resembles its previous form. By contrast, second-order change is more radical; the system itself changes and most dimensions of the organization change so that it no longer resembles the previous form. These theoretical terms will prove helpful in clarifying a number of points relating to the change in the organizational form of football represented by FF. Methods Study design and participants Data used to explore the concept of FF come from both qualitative and quantitative methods. This combination of methods will provide a fuller understanding and stronger conclusions to the
research questions we would like to explore than would be the case with a monomethod approach (van der Roest et al., 2013). The DFA provided the contact information for the participants but had no influence on the choice of research participants.
The qualitative inquiry The qualitative inquiry consists of interpretative document analysis (Hammersly & Atkinson, 2007), interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), and focus group interviews (Morgan, 1997). The texts of analyses consist of internal papers, public press releases, and manuals describing FF, all published by the Danish FA. Two public papers published by the English Football Association (EFA) are also considered. The interviews include individual interviews with three key persons in the FF steering committee, these being three of the six members of the steering committee and were selected because of their influence in FF, different tasks in the Danish FA, and their different fields of responsibility in relation to the FF concept. Seven focus group interviews (N = 35) were conducted, including one group of regional FF administrators (attended by 3 out of 4 nationwide) and two groups of football development officers (FDO) (attended by 12 out of 16 nationwide). These groups include the professionals at the Danish FA who work on implementation of FF. Four groups, each representing a club that offers FF, were also included. The four clubs were chosen in order to provide a geographical spread and a variation in the way they manage FF. The clubs represent the four biggest football country unions out of a total of six, and they represent FF for different target groups. Two clubs offer FF for women, one club offers FF for men, and one club offers FF for both men and women. Prior to the selection we could see the tendency, from which we will draw conclusions in following that FF was most prevalent for women, which is why two clubs offering FF for women were chosen. The minimum participants for the focus group interviews were the club chairman, one other board member, the key person/coach for FF, and one player.
The surveys Data also include two online questionnaire surveys (Boolsen, 2008). One questionnaire was sent to the chairpersons of 1288 out of approximately 1600 Danish football clubs (1247 were received), although contact details were not available for all clubs. In total, 475 chairpersons participated (response rate 38.1%). The other questionnaire was sent to the FF key persons at 112 clubs which, at the time of the survey, was the total number of clubs involved in the FF concept. In total, 62 persons with responsibility for 76 FF teams were represented (response rate 56.3%). The entire process of distributing, completing questionnaires, sending out reminders, and extracting the data was carried out via the survey program SurveyXact (Rambøl Management Consulting, Aarhus, Denmark).
Procedures Data were collected and analyzed concurrently from March to June 2013. However, interpretation of the qualitative data started as they were collected, which affected subsequent collections (Creswell, 2007). Data were collected in connection with an evaluation for the Danish FA concerning the implementation phase of the FF concept (Bennike et al., 2014, written 2013). This article, however, will focus on an exploration of the concept and the organizational issues addressed in FF, which have doubtless affected the implementation and dissemination of FF. Prior to this
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Bennike et al. research, a pilot study was conducted (Krustrup & Ottesen, 2014, written 2011). In addition to the results from the pilot study, data collection and data analysis were also influenced by an interest in changes in the club structure and culture as a result of FF and a theoretical model2 by Winter (2012) dealing with the implementation phase. The qualitative data were coded and condensed (Creswell, 2007) in Atlas.ti (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin, Germany), with pre-existing codes directing the coding in a hermeneutic deductive way, although this did not mean that the analysis was not open to additional codes (Creswell, 2007). The coding led to a number of themes and subcodes; the themes explored in this article are “the concept of FF,” “the organization of FF,” “the FF team,” “the FF club,” and “changes resulting from FF.” The quantitative data were analyzed in SPSS (IBM Corporation, New York, US) using a logistic regression model (Field, 2009) to test which variables had an impact on whether a club offers FF, and descriptive statistics were used to describe key components of FF teams and clubs and how FF has affected those clubs.
(later defined as football as professionalism and football as leisure), and they all meet new demands for flexibility in football. As part of its National Game Strategy 2011– 2015, the EFA states in Developing football for everyone (EFA, 2011) that a specific challenge is to provide “local and flexible formats of football to suit changing consumer lifestyles” and a specific priority is to “increase participation through FA Just Play centres.” According to the EFA (2014), the Mars Just Play! concept is: about turning up for an hour of exercise and a bit of fun. It’s football for those who can’t or don’t want to commit to an eight-month long season of matches and training. Similarly to the EFA, the Danish FA states in the Strategy for development 2015 (DFA, 2012) that:
Results What defines FF and how is it organized? An in-depth analysis of the organization of FF will follow, while this next section explores the concept of FF and shows who plays and which clubs offer FF. It is not possible, however, to explore FF without commenting on organizational issues, as the Danish FA argues that FF is presenting football in a sporting and organizational new way (DFA, 2010a). We will return to an analysis of this charge later. What is FF? We will briefly pay attention to the EFA’s Mars Just Play! concept, as there are certain similarities to FF, which will prove beneficial in the understanding of FF. Moreover, FF in its original form was hugely inspired by the English form of 5-a-side Football, which in contrast to FF is highly influenced by the market and can be defined as a pay per play concept. A representative of the FF steering committee states: We went to England to see this five-a-side, a big trend and very commercial, where companies build courts. It is like a squash centre in Denmark where they rent out the courts and run small tournaments. . . . We looked at this and wondered if this could be an alternative way for clubs to arrange the game for busy family dads who don’t have time for weekly training sessions and 11-a-side matches at the weekend. They could offer some flexibility, and from that came FF. Both FF, 5-a-side Football, and Just Play! are more organizationally flexible than the regular form of football 2
The integrated implementation model.
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the game of football has to maintain and strengthen its position through continuous development in accessibility and flexibility regardless of the skills and ambitions of the participants. FF is developed by the Danish FA and the Sports Confederation of Denmark and launched by the Danish FA as a top-down concept managed voluntarily at local level by the clubs. It is created to (DFA, 2010b) “promote football as a health-beneficial activity,” “to create an interest in football for fitness and exercise,” and “to support football clubs in creating more flexibility in relation to adult players, primarily over the age of 25.” Key factors are that FF (DFA, 2010a) “have a focus on health and enjoyment,” “is offered at a reduced membership fee compared to regular club members,” “teams do not engage in a tournament structure,” and “clubs can present the concept in a local way and adapt to the participations.” It is important to state that the FF concept has changed in form during the early implementation phase. When the concept was introduced to the clubs in 2011, it was presented as being much freer in its form and was regarded to a larger degree than today as a unisex concept (DFA, 2011). The clubs that are managing the concept were not able to fully comprehend the mission of FF, especially the wish for an online booking system, which has therefore been dropped. A member of the steering committee states: As a result of experience we have, to large degree, toned down our thoughts about an online booking system. Needless to say, the implementation of FF has not been easy as there has been resistance to the concept and the explicit focus on health and flexibility, which still persists today (Bennike et al., 2014, written in 2013). These
Football Fitness – a new version of football? difficulties have resulted in two manuals, Football Fitness for women and Exercise football for men – get into shape with Football Fitness, and the organization of inspirational meetings for clubs interested in FF. Moreover, some clubs have requested 1-day tournaments at which FF teams can compete. A member of the steering committee states: You can say that the concept we have in 2013 has a clear strategy. We have FF for men and for women. . . . We have one-day tournaments and we have inspirational meetings. We have a concept that is clear. Who plays FF and which clubs offers FF? This section identifies a number of characteristics of FF teams and clubs. In the survey, FF key persons were asked to mark the age and gender of the target groups of the teams, as divided into subgroups in Fig. 1. The FF key persons could mark as many subgroups as needed to describe the teams’ target group. Figure 1 shows that most teams include participants in the 25–39 and 40–59 age groups, and that there are more teams with women as target group and fewer with a mixed target group. However, an interesting point is that in the 60+ age group, men are more involved than women, compared with other age groups. From the questionnaire survey, we know that 66% of FF clubs have one team, while those clubs that offer more than one team generally have teams for different target groups. Almost 90% of teams train once a week in a fixed time slot on a work day (except Friday) between 6 and 9 h. Forty-four percent of teams have less than 10 participants, 35% of teams have 11–20 participants, and 18% of teams have 21–30 participants. The proportionally low number of participants and the solitary weekly time slot for FF make it impossible to have the flexibility for participants to choose their own time slot using an online booking system as we see in fitness centers. The interviews revealed that the four clubs involved in the research could be characterized as being aware of
their relationship with their external environment, and especially their relationship with the local municipal authority. They were open to new activities and innovative. One club chairperson states: As a club, we like to get involved with new things and point out that we are a non-elite club. The present board is very project-orientated – we like to try new things. As shown in the following, this tendency is also evident in the quantitative data. A logistic regression analysis revealed certain variables that influence the likelihood of a club offering FF (P ≤ 0.05). Out of 16 statements regarding purpose and importance, agreement with the three statements in Textbox 1 increases the likelihood of a club offering FF. Agreeing to these statements indicates a commitment by the clubs engaged in FF to carry out welfare and community work, e.g., health-related work. They see themselves as active organizations when it comes to welfare work in their local community. Furthermore, our results suggest that the total number of club members has an impact on the likelihood of a club offering FF. The chairpersons were asked how many members are in their club and whether they offer FF. Figure 2 shows that the percentage of clubs with less than 150 members offering FF is lower than the percentage of total clubs with less than 150 members. At the same time, clubs with 200–299 members are more often involved with FF than clubs with less or more members, indicated by the peak in the graph in Fig. 2. It is reasonable to assume that there is a link Textbox 1. Statements that influence the likelihood of a club offering FF.
• “The purpose of the club is to promote health and well-being.” • “It is important for the club to offer football without a focus on tournaments and matches.” • “It is important for the club to offer football with a focus on the social benefits of the game.”* *This is tested at a significance threshold P ≤ 0.10. FF, Football Fitness.
30 25 20 Men's teams 15
Women's teams Mixed teams
10 5 0 17/18–24 years 25–39 years
40–59 years
60+ years
Fig. 1. Football Fitness teams broken down in numbers by gender and age of participants.
Fig. 2. Percentage of clubs offering Football Fitness (FF) and percentage of total clubs broken down by number of members.
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Bennike et al. between the size of the club and the willingness to be innovative with regard to welfare and community work. How does FF differ organizationally from football as leisure and football as professionalism? Figure 3 illustrates how FF differs in terms of organization from other traditional forms of football organized by the DFA, namely, football as “professionalism” and as “leisure.” This is inspired by the theoretical perspectives of Pestoff (1992) and a discussion by Rowe et al. (2013) of cycling as three different forms: competitive, recreational, and transportation. Data used to create this figure come from analyzing documents relating to FF, the qualitative interviews, and an exploration of football as leisure and professionalism in a Danish context. Football as leisure. In order to understand Fig. 3 and the way in which football in Denmark is organized, we need to take a retrospective historical look at the organization of sport in general. Since the 1870s and up to the present, sport, including football, has primarily been organized by voluntary sport clubs, with football organized as a leisure activity in particular as a result of gradually increasing government funding of associations from the beginning of the twentieth century (Kaspersen & Ottesen, 2001). This places football clubs and football as leisure in a strong, tradition-bound position. To benefit from financial support, clubs must be open to everyone and function as non-profit organizations. They will need to have a democratic legal structure, including a voluntary member-elected board. Other than these conditions for public funding, the state does not control how clubs are run, which can therefore be defined as selfgovernance. The funding is given in the form of rooms/ halls/fields for sport and on a membership basis for members under the age of 25 pursuant to the Danish Act on Popular Education (Folkeoplysningsloven). In addition to this public funding, membership fees and proceeds of activities organized by volunteers represent the main resources for clubs (Ibsen & Seippel, 2010). The
clubs conduct social and cultural activities with a focus on the civil society in a local context. In contrast to Great Britain, there existed an ideal to keep the game free from economic interests, which probably contributed to the strong tradition of leisure football. All of these characteristics have an enormous impact on the path dependency (Mahoney, 2000) that constitutes the organization of football in Denmark and is defined in Fig. 3 as “leisure,” shown in the middle column. These characteristics can be described as having a focus on civil society, working as a non-profit, democratic, selfgoverning organization funded primarily by the government, whereas the game of football as it is played is football as a hobby following national standard rules. Football as professionalism. The ideal of amateurism existed until 1978, when the Danish FA cancelled the amateur code (Grønkjær & Olsen, 2007). This was epoch making and resulted in a radical change in Danish football. The Danish FA reacted to the external and internal pressure from the sport in a global perspective, and the change was in some ways unavoidable if Denmark wanted to play football at the highest level. The rules of football were not notably affected, but in terms of the organizational system of governance of the clubs engaging in professionalism, this was a second-order change (Watzlawick et al., 1974). It meant that the clubs that wanted to participate in professional football had to change their organizational system and culture. The characteristics of professional football, represented in the left-hand column in Fig. 3, can be defined as having a focus on the market economy, working as a for-profit organization with a hierarchical management, whereas the game of football is being played as a job following international rules. Football as leisure continued more or less unchanged, while professional football was created and began to influence how football is thought of and played. Football as exercise. With the concept of FF, we experience a new change in the organization of football, defined in Fig. 3 as “exercise.” FF is an epoch-making
Ways in which football is organized by the Danish Football Associaon
Characteriscs of the organizaon
Characteriscs of the game
Professionalism
Leisure
Exercise (FF)
For-profit organizaon Private funding Hierarchical management No membership fee Football as a job Improving skills and taccs Internaonal rules
Non-profit organizaon Public funding Democrac management Membership fee Football as a hobby Improving skills and taccs Naonal rules
Non-profit organizaon Public funding Democrac management Reduced membership fee Football as a means for health Improving fitness Local rules
Fig. 3. Three types of adult football organized by the Danish Football Association.
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Football Fitness – a new version of football? concept in the formation and definition of football as exercise in Denmark. What is new in the concept of FF is not just the focus on health and greater flexibility in organized football, but also the way in which local clubs are given more control of organized football. One FDO states:
Fig. 1 shows that FF is played by more women than men. Other differences with regard to leisure football are the low number of participants in each team, the reduced fees for participants, and the predominant focus not just on health but also on football as a fun and social activity where skills do not matter. One local organizer states:
It is a concept that fits in with a lot of target groups and can be managed in many different ways. Some teams do ordinary fitness exercises, and some just play football. Others mix and match from activities that they are fond of. It is up to the clubs.
The less you know about football, the better you fit our target group. The less skilled you are, the better you fit our target group.
Allowance for local input, with FF being tailored to the local community and the culture of the organizing club, is possible because FF is not part of a tournament structure where the game has to be strictly controlled. The rules for playing FF are not fixed, which means the teams themselves control the rules and the format. There are no restrictions on gender, age, or skills, which allows men and women to play together, just as players of different ages and different skills can play together. It also means that you can play on smaller pitches and use the space available. Given this change toward a game, with the participants able to set their own rules, you might imagine that the game would acquire differing features and diffuse with substantial variations. However, data show that the general rules of FF appear to be rather similar in many clubs, mirroring the rules of national and international football, even though they have the option to change them on a local basis. What is new is the approach, which is highly social and noncompetitive, albeit there are still two teams of players trying to score, playing on a rectangular field with two goals, unable to use their hands, and with free-kicks awarded for over-enthusiastic tackles. FF – a new way of organizing football? To sum up the analysis so far, we will compare FF with leisure football, cf. Fig. 3. Regardless of similarities to leisure football in terms of rules and format, we find some crucial differences that may be indicative of a second-order change (Watzlawick et al., 1974). FF is more flexible than leisure football in terms of the “environment” of the game, and there is no season-long tournament structure. One FF administrator states: The flexible format is where FF and traditional football differ. FF is played under different conditions. You don’t have to train twice a week and play matches at the weekend. It’s more that you play whenever you have the opportunity. Furthermore, Textbox 1 and Fig. 2 show that certain types and sizes of club are more involved in FF, while
Despite these differences, there are a number of similarities to the game organized as leisure football – similarities that can be ascribed to the theory of path dependency (Mahoney, 2000) and the inertia that is characteristic of leisure football and the clubs organizing it. Few clubs radically change the structure of the game in FF, e.g., men and women rarely mix, and the concept of online booking has been dropped. Often the teams play once a week in a fixed time slot in the afternoon, similar to leisure football, and the participants belong to a certain team. A very important point for understanding the homogenization in teams and the similarity to leisure football is that the Danish FA organizes inspirational meetings, has developed a website that provides further explanation of the concept and contains a number of manuals, and FF is often run with the help of an FDO. The concept of path dependency can be used to argue that the work of the Danish FA is affected by the previous work in the world of leisure football and in the Danish FA as an organization. Due to path dependency, it is most likely that the Danish FA will follow the path and guide the clubs in a direction similar to the organizational form of leisure football. The initiative of the 1-day tournament is also a change toward leisure football, where the focus is largely on competition. In contrast to the cancellation of the amateur code, FF does not change the organizational structure of clubs, and in contrast to the English Just Play! concept, it is not as influenced by the market. FF is managed according to the same structural conditions as leisure football, as an activity in non-profit voluntary clubs, which implies a first-order change (Watzlawick et al., 1974). Nevertheless, as we will see in the next section, most clubs engaged in FF have experienced change resulting from the FF concept. However, this is a change in culture rather than structure. How does FF affect the clubs? Both the interview inquiry and the questionnaire survey show that FF has contributed to the clubs in several ways. In the interviews, the clubs speak of how FF “brings new user groups and creates new life in the clubhouse,” “retains and attracts new members,” “draws attention to the club in the local community,” and “is a stepping-stone for a female leisure football group.”
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Bennike et al. Table 1. How has FF affected the clubs involved?
How has FF affected . . .
Positively (%)
No effect (%)
Negatively (%)
Don’t know (%)
The club environment The social activities The number of members The club’s finances The parental environment The number of volunteer coaches The workload of the volunteers A new board composition
48 46 46 29 29 14 6 5
32 29 39 53 48 59 60 77
0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0
20 25 15 17 23 28 28 19
FF, Football Fitness.
A quote from the chairperson of one club clearly shows that the club had become aware of the political changes regarding sport as a health-beneficial activity and of FF as a means of legitimizing the club’s role and strengthening its collaboration with the municipality: The FF-team has put our club on the map, at least on the city map. We have been in the press with this concept. . . . We can show to the municipality that we do more than just leisure football. The questionnaire survey presents a similar pattern. The clubs engaged with FF were asked how FF had affected them. Table 1 shows how they answered. Among the clubs offering FF, almost 50% answered that FF had contributed positively to the club environment and its social activities. Furthermore, 29% answered that it had made a positive contribution to the parental environment, and some clubs have engaged new coaches on a voluntary basis. Overall, the introduction of FF to a club brings with it almost exclusively positive changes. Discussion As mentioned in the Introduction, many publications are indicating a change in the role of sport toward a focus on health. So far, we have found a lack of empirical publications dealing with the specific influence of these changes. This article includes an empirical perspective with an exploration of FF – a top-down concept initiated by the Danish FA directly generated by these changes and designed to promote health and physical activity within the established sports sector. Finch and Donaldson (2009) emphasize that there has been increasing recognition of the need for research within the realworld intervention context of community sport. If interventions are not widely adopted and sustained, it is most unlikely that they will have a public health impact (Finch & Donaldson, 2009). Henderson (2009) states that most theory regarding how to get people to participate in healthy behavior relates to individual behavior and cognition, concluding that “identifying additional ways to more fully connect health and sport is essential.”
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With the example of FF, we argue that it can be helpful to ground this connection in the sports clubs organizing the activities. If you do not succeed in getting the activity organized, who will attend? FF is one example in a Danish context of how football, one of the biggest sports in the world and the national sport of Denmark, and given the sociocultural and political focus on health, can encourage greater physical activity at a community level by changing its organizational form. This approach targets the established sports system and includes the expertise of non-profit sports clubs, which to some extent know the participants in their local community and know how to organize the activities. Vail (2007) demonstrates how top-down initiatives that ignore community needs have failed to succeed in sustaining sports participation. FF is a top-down concept, but, as we have shown, it makes room for local input and bottom-up activities and proves beneficial for the clubs, which encourages them to continue their work. Given the large number of football clubs throughout Denmark (approximately 1600) and the fact that they are locally embedded, this concept has the potential to combine a political focus on health with a local focus within the clubs, and to organize football for health in a sustainable way. If the concept proves successful, it will become self-governing as an activity managed by local clubs with a local focus and with state funding pursuant to the legislation benefitting the associations. The change in organization will tend not to be too radical in terms of the structure and organization of the clubs, as they can manage it in a form that suits them. Due to path dependency (Mahoney, 2000), this change will rarely take the form of a secondorder change (Watzlawick et al., 1974) in structure, as the organization of the club will remain unchanged. In regard to changes in culture it is an interesting result that more women than men are playing FF, which is far from the case of football as leisure or as professionalism. How will this effect club culture and could this provide a path toward more women being involved in the game of football? An analogy can be drawn with information technology: with the introduction of professionalism, clubs had to change operating system, but with FF the clubs do not have to change operating system – rather, this is a new version of football organized by the Danish FA. A
Football Fitness – a new version of football? new version that presumably will influence club culture more than club structure.
women in football? In future studies we will examine further how FF has affected the clubs.
Perspectives
Key words: Football Fitness, adults, soccer, health, football clubs, Football Association, civic society, Denmark.
Time and further investigation will show whether FF is widely adopted and how the relationship between football as leisure and football as exercise will develop. The game of football has transformed and developed over time in terms of rules, tactics, training, fashion, media, and new ways of playing (e.g., beach soccer and futsal). Does the concept of FF put us on the verge of yet another transition, with the focus on flexible organization, health-beneficial outcomes, and more
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the participants in the data collection process. A big thank you to Peter Krustrup (Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health, NEXS), student helper Lea Blom (NEXS), and Kenneth Grønlund Rasmussen (Danish FA). The study was supported by Nordea-fonden, Denmark, and the Danish FA.
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