AAGS 2021

56 Fellows Research The number of activities undertaken by the Aspire Fellows provided a meaningful contribution to the continuously evolving football industry, and new knowledge generation become a reality of prime of concern since 2018. The first investigation on talent identification and development processes in professional youth football academies published in the Journal of Sports Sciences received particular appreciation, and now cited 19 times since May 2020 (source: Google Scholar, January 2022). With our community pursuing an interdisciplinary vision of football guided by principles of a canonical business research process starting with identifying areas for opportunities, the compilation of topics featured at our Summit editions over the years inspired the exploration of potential questions that remained to be answered. Football is a cultural sport with professional clubs around the world employing varied methodologies and practices and holding different philosophies and perceptions. Research in football often investigates or evaluates individual practices to determine their efficacy using an evidence-based approach. However, the current practices and perceptions that are currently undertaken and held by professional clubs is rarely quantified and published. At a professional level there is a lack of information regarding the organisational structures and working practices adopted by medical and performance departments as they strive to maximize effectiveness of their support to players. Information regarding practices and perceptions of professional clubs in the aforementioned area would be of interest to those in the football industry. For the first time, this section showcases the research design and main findings of the latest investigation conducted by the Aspire Fellows entitled Organisational structure and working practices of elite youth football academies: a survey of practitioners from around the world. Methods The Scientific Committee of the Aspire Fellows designed a cross-sectional survey to gather information on current practices and perceptions of staff regarding the efficacy of their organisational structure and working practices at the respective Club and National Federation. Existingwork in this and other research fields informed the survey design consisting of questions covering specific areas: 1) introduction and background information (#6 questions), 2) information about club academy’s strategy (#5 questions), 3) information about club academy’s structure (#9 questions), 4) knowledge management processes (#8 questions), and issues related to processes inherent to the return to play of the injured player (#7 questions), injury prevention strategies (#9 questions), data management procedures (#6 questions), concluding with research and development activities (#5 questions), respectively. The return-to-play phase was broken down into specific sub-phases characterizing this process. Specifically, the return- to-training sub-phase refers to the gradual re- introduction of the injured player from non-contact to resuming full team training. The return-to-competition involves the player’s progression of competitive match minutes, whereas in return- to-performance sub-phase the player is deemedmeeting the required competition demands. Question types involved multiple choice, simple multiple choice (yes/no), checkbox, numerical, ranking, and Likert formats. The survey was created using the online software SurveyMonkey® (Momentive Inc., USA), and disseminated to organization representatives via an email containing instructions on survey purpose and completion. In this context, fifty members of the Aspire Fellows were contacted to take part in the present study. Of these, 35 practitioners from individual clubs (n=25) and national federations (n=10) agreed to participating in the survey. The 25 clubs were from Europe (n = 19; Austria, Belgium, England, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine), North America(n = 2; United States of America), South America (n = 3; Argentina, Brazil, Chile), and Africa (n = 1; Tunisia). The 10 national federations were from Europe (n = 3; England, France, Italy), North America (n = 2; Honduras, Mexico), South America (n = 2; Argentina, Chile), Africa (n = 1; South Africa), and Asia (n = 2; Qatar, South Korea). Main findings Respondents Among the 25 club respondents, 1 was an academy director, 1 director of performance, 1 director of medical and performance, 2 technical directors, 2 heads of youth academy, 2 heads of medical and performance, 1 head of methodology, 10 heads of performance, 1 doctor, 3 strength and conditioning coaches, and 1 psychologist. Club respondents had worked at their current clubs for 5 years (interquartile range [IQR], 2 to 9 years), with 10 years (IQR, 6 to 18 years) of experience in professional football. Of these, 20% had a PhD degree, 40% a Master’s degree, and 28% a Bachelor’s degree. Of the 10 national federation respondents, 2 were heads of performance, 3 team coordinators, 1 doctor, 1 sport scientist, 2 strength and conditioning coaches, and 1