Authors

• Karim Zohrevandian
• Esfandiar Khosravizadeh
• Ehsan Shakeri

Abstract

Summary
The present work was done to investigate the role of talent management in maintaining the players of football clubs in the Isfahan province. The results obtained showed that talent management has a positive and significant effect on the dimensions of maintenance of the players. Talent management has a positive and significant effect on not leaving the club, job stability and security, and not empting the team key positions. Given the role of talent management in retaining the players in football clubs, it can be said that the club managers must consider careful planning to manage talent at all levels in order to retain talent in their club, and prevent them from leaving, and improve the club's performance.
Introduction
Human resources are the most valuable resources of an organization; the productivity of any organization depends on their activities, and their effective management is necessary to achieve the goals of the organization (1). Football clubs also act as an organization whose human resources include the players, coaches, and club staff. Attracting and retaining the capable players in the club plays a very important role in the success of football clubs (2). In this regard, talent management and talent development saves time, human, and financial resources (3). Therefore, it can be said that talent management in professional football is very important in the success of clubs. On the other hand, organizations that are unable to design and apply appropriate methods and measures for the longevity of their talents will inevitably have to witness their departure from the organization, which always imposes high costs on the organization (4). Football clubs, as an organization where the players and coaches are considered as the employees are no exception to this rule. Many times, we see the issue that the players leave their club and join other clubs, which causes many difficulties for the club to replace these players. In order to avoid this problem, clubs should always seek to keep their players. Therefore, the purpose of this research work was to investigate the effect of talent management on the three main factors in the retention of football players in the Isfahan province, i.e. not leaving vacant team positions, stability and job security, and not leaving the club on behalf of the players and coaches.
Methodology and Approach
In terms of purpose, the current research work was applied, and in terms of data collection, it was descriptive-correlational. The study population was all the players and coaches of football clubs in the Isfahan province (800 people) who were present in the national and provincial leagues, and the sampling in this research work was stratified-relative method (N = 200). The data was collected by the Talent Management Questionnaire of Nikpoor (2017) and Maintenance Questionnaire of Ghosi et al. (2015). The face and content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by 10 experts, and the reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha. For analyzing the data, the SPSS software (version 16) was used to prepare the data and descriptive statistics, and to test the model, the partial least squares method of structural equation modeling was used with the Smart PLS (version 3) software.
Results and Conclusion
Descriptive results showed that 23.9% of the sample (184 people) were women and 76.1% were men. The average of talent management was 3.146, the average of not leaving the club was 3.745, the average of not leaving vacancies was 3.086, and the average of job stability was 3.176. In order to fit the structural model, path coefficients and significant numbers of t, determination coefficient index, Stone- Geisser Q2 index were used, and the determination coefficient values showed that talent management explained about 19% of the variance of not leaving the club but in other parts, the average determination coefficient was higher than the average (0.33). The Stone-Geisser Criterion (Q2) also showed that the structural model was of good quality, and all the T value were greater than 2.58, which meant that all the specified paths had a confidence level of 99% and the appropriateness of the structural model. Talent management with a path coefficient of 0.559 was able to predict 0.313 of the total variance of not empting team key positions. Also, talent management with a path coefficient of 0.435 was able to predict 0.189 of the total variance of not leaving the club; and finally, talent management with a path coefficient of 0.619 could predict 0.384 of the total variance of job stability. The goodness of fit index (GOF) was equal to 0.41, which indicated the good fit of the overall model. According to the results of this research work, through the accurate implementation of talent management, club managers can ensure that, through the creation of a talent fund, they always have high-quality and technical players available, and in this way, save the maximum amount of money spent on buying the players for different positions. The point that the research work emphasizes is that by using talent management and by identifying talented players and placing people in the succession process, it is possible to help improve the performance of the club in terms of technical and financial results.

Keywords

• Esfahan
• Job stability
• Players
• Football
• Talent management

Main Subjects

• مدیریت استعداد و رهبری در منابع انسانی در ورزش