A Foucauldian auto-ethnographic account of a male former soccer player's move to coaching female players: a call to problematize the importation of gendered assumptions during a common coaching transition

It has routinely been observed that the disproportionate number of male coaches within women’s soccer is problematic for a number of reasons (Hall, 2003), not least because it limits the opportunities for the progression of female coaches. Regardless, the transition from ‘male player to male coach of female players’ is one that remains common, is likely to continue, but is not yet widely discussed in the sport/coach transition literature. In this confessional, analytical auto-ethnography (Anderson, 2006) we build upon our existing work regarding coaching women’s soccer that has been informed by the thoughts of Michel Foucault. Precisely, we use a collection of creative narrative reflections to discuss the first author’s transition from that of a British semi-professional soccer player context, to an Assistant Coach of a female soccer team in a North American varsity programme. In so doing we trace and map some of the (problematic) learned gendered assumptions which initially shaped and guided the first author’s coaching assumptions, relationships, approaches and practices within this context, before unpacking some of the challenges he navigated along the way (with varying degrees of success).