摘要：This research studies the leadership approaches by football coaches that are favored by professional football players in Malaysia based on age, race and league level. A total of 100 professional players aged between 20 and 40 years in Malaysia were selected using a purposive sampling method. The Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS) questionnaire developed (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) has been used to identify the style of coaching leadership in favor of professional footballers in Malaysia based on age, race and league level. This questionnaire was used to measure the five dimensions of leadership approaches namely training and instruction dimension (12 questions), democratic dimension (10 questions), autocratic dimension (6 questions), dimension of social support (6 questions) and positive feedback dimension (6 questions). The results of the descriptive study show that the players are more interested in democratic dimension leadership approach and the less desirable is the autocratic dimension leadership approach. T-test shows that there is no significant age-based difference in the leadership style of a coach who is interested by professional football players in Malaysia with the value of p > 0.05 (t = 0.14). T-test also showed that there was no significant difference based on the level of the league for the coach’s approach that is favored by professional footballers in Malaysia with a value of p > 0.05 (t = 1.20). The Kruskal-Wallis Test shows that there is no significant difference between races in all dimensions of leadership style with p > 0.05 values. This study has showed that democratic leadership approach is most favored by football players based on age, race and league level.
关键词：Leadership Approaches;Football Coaches;Football Players;Dimensions of Leadership;League Level
