The McDonaldization of football’s formal coach education? Creating the McCoach.

Within this chapter, we address how the formal education of football coaches has become shaped—McDonaldized—by the omnipresent market pressures associated with the advent of late capitalism. To do this, we mobilise George Ritzer’s McDonaldization thesis, a sociological theory which for almost thirty years has captured the attention of a broad range of professions, businesses, and disciplines, but to date has largely evaded the critical purview of both football and coaching scholars alike. It should be emphasised that this chapter is not about McDonald’s in the objective sense of it being a fast-food restaurant, but rather how the principles designed by the founders of McDonald’s (Richard and Maurice McDonald) were harnessed by the businessman Ray Kroc in the creation of the McDonald’s franchise and subsequently articulated by Ritzer (1993) in ‘The McDonaldization of Society’ have pervaded into almost all sectors of contemporary society, including the formal education of football coaches.