An investigation into the trade-off between nature and nurture in the development of expertise for female football players: the coach’s perspective

Talent identification is the process of recognising individuals with the potential to excel in a particular sport. Coaches are responsible for making an accurate and justified attempt at predicting talent and selection into a Centre of Excellence. However, there is considerable disagreement on what talent is, and what factors reliably constitute talent within the identification process. Innate characteristics are regularly used as indicators of future potential, performance and ultimately talent. Conversely, the theory of deliberate practice postulates that experts are made, not born, and proposes a positive relationship between the number of accumulated hours of practice and performance. This on-going debate regarding the relative contributions of nature and nurture in the development of expertise is a fundamental concept in talent identification literature. This study aims to explore, using phenomenological interviewing on six Centre of Excellence coaches, the perceptions, feelings, and attitudes surrounding talent identification, deliberate practice and ultimately the nature/nurture debate. Through the use of inductive coding, interview data revealed a thematic structure revealing four dimensions that characterised; career development, selection criteria/behaviours, influence of practice and the origin of talent/development. The data demonstrated that coaches believed practice to contribute significantly more than innate characteristics in the development of expertise although acknowledged the influence of innate characteristics