Dual-Sport Restrictions in Football and Futsal Athlete Career Development

Abstract

This qualitative case study examined how selected coaches, parents, adolescent athletes, and local sport-organization representatives described restrictions on concurrent participation in football and futsal in Blitar City. The core sample comprised two coaches, four parents, and four athletes aged 14–15 years; the archived manuscript did not retain the exact number of federation representatives, so the total sample requires verification. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, observations, and selected organizational documents collected mainly from late February to April 2026. A Miles–Huberman–Saldaña data-management cycle supported thematic comparison of purposively selected contrasting cases. Participants described two broad orientations: restriction justified by perceived injury, workload, schedule, and technical concerns; and conditional support based on coordinated schedules and perceived complementary practice. Restricted athletes described reduced autonomy, secrecy, anxiety, exhaustion, and diminished accomplishment, whereas permitted athletes described more open communication and perceived technical benefits. These are participant-reported experiences, not clinical burnout diagnoses or objective evidence of skill transfer. Calendar overlap was identified as a perceived institutional pressure, but the underlying event-level schedule evidence was not retained in the manuscript. The contrasting-case sampling may have amplified the two-orientation pattern. Ethics approval, parental permission, adolescent assent, and the number of organizational informants must be confirmed from original records before publication.