Following Bourdieu (1978), studies have described how participation in sports activities plays a significant role in this organized production of elite identity and in the reproduction of privilege (Stuij, 2015). Thus, sports comprise a critical arena for establishing and maintaining two central life resources: cultural capital (i.e. educational credentials and the possession of legitimate knowledge, traits, skills, and tastes) and habitus (i.e. an array of dispositions that individuals acquire through socialization, or what Bourdieu (1984) called second nature that became first nature.

Some of the sports in which participants are primarily members of higher socioeconomic (SES) classes (such as sailing, swimming, golf, tennis, and cricket; see Townsend & Cushion, 2017) have been described as imparting qualities and skills or physical capital (practicing strategic thinking more suitable to the bourgeoisie and valued in other elite spaces such as academia and employment). It is noteworthy that whereas middle and upper economic class parents are aware that their children will not become professional athletes, they encourage acquiring the cultural capital involved in participating in sports, such as competition, achievement, and discipline. This cultural capital, then, will convert into economic capital and symbolic capital (i.e. obtaining prestigious positions and engaging in sports themselves as symbolic capital; see Swanson, 2009). The sports associated with low-SES classes (e.g. soccer, boxing, wrestling, weightlifting) are perceived by the dominant elite and various gatekeepers as characterizing mere physical might such as brutality and pain (Bourdieu, 1978; Schmitt et al., 2020).

Relatively little research has addressed the role of sports coaches, as influential actors operating in informal educational spaces and within professional clubs for high-schools students, on these processes of producing class habitus, the transmission of advantage, and maintenance of privilege and inequality (Halvorsen, 2020). In addressing this research lacuna, the present article proposes two key research questions: How do coaches working in professional soccer clubs with high-SES youth define their role? Do the coaches' definitions of the role affect the reproduction of privilege, and how so?

Examining the accounts of soccer coaches is important because formal educational spaces (such as schools and boarding schools) and informal ones (such as enrichment classes and professional sports) function as a distinguished space (Kenway & Prosser, 2015) to promote elite socialization, establish distinctions, and elite habitus (Howard, 2008). Moreover, examining the role of coaches has broad implications as sports participation is one of the most notable informal educational arenas in which children and youth operate. Indeed, studies have revealed that few children and adolescents will become professional athletes in adulthood and earn their livelihood in that capacity. In Israel, for example, about half a million boys and girls engage in sports in schools, community centers, and sports clubs and invest about 12-15 hours a week in training and games (Noza, 2018). In comparison, in the major sports divisions in the USA, few youth-players will turn their sports careers into professional careers after the age of 18. For example, in American football the chances of becoming a professional are 1-4,233 (0.02%); in men’s basketball, 1-11,771 (0.008%); in women’s basketball, 1-13,015 (0.007%); and in soccer, 1-5768 (0.017%; Luke, 2016).

In order to answer the research questions in a complex way, our paper uses two main theoretical frameworks: Coaches, sports, and education (Baltzell & Akhtar, 2014; Townsend & Cushion, 2017) and class, education, and sports (Bourdieu, 1978; Schmitt et al., 2020).

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics ranks all municipal units by clusters ranging between 1 (low-SES localities) and 10 (high-SES localities). The cluster rankings are based on variables such as the average number of persons per household, the percentage of recipients of income support, and the percentage of recipients of a high school matriculation certificate. This present study is based on interviews with 15 male soccer coaches who coach in upper-class localities (Clusters 8-10). All coaches work with high school students. The participating coaches' age ranged from 24 to 50. All coaches studied in at the official training institutions for athletic instructors in Israel and held at least a soccer instructor certificate (first coaching level in Israel), which enabled them to coach children and youth. Half of the participating coaches held a coaching certificate (second coaching level in Israel), which allows them to coach youth teams and adults up to the amateur leagues. Most coaches were not employed solely as soccer coaches and had at least one other job that comprised their primary livelihood during daytime hours. Soccer training constituted their partial livelihood in the late afternoon and evening hours. All coaches work with high school students. Participants were selected using purposeful sampling. The primary criterion was soccer coaches affiliated with athletic organizations who coached high-school students. Finding suitable interviewees was done through acquaintances in the various clubs (e.g. team managers, coaches, managers). The research tool in this study is a semi-structured in-depth interview. The interviews, which lasted about an hour, comprised several sections: background details (sports training, daily agenda); perception of the coach's role ("Do you perceive yourself more as a coach or more as an educator?"; "What do you view as success?"); important values and social skills ("What are the key values that are important for you to impart to your players"); parents' expectations ("What are the parents' expectations of you as a coach?); working in different life spaces ("What makes working with children in this area special?"); and future orientation ("How do you envision your players' future? "). The interviews were recorded using a mobile recorder with the interviewees' consent and were then transcribed. The final six interviews took place remotely on Zoom as the Covid crisis began (March 2020). All interviews were analyzed using the methodological processes proposed by grounded theory.

The findings reveal how coaches describe their youth-players using a vocabulary of praise and emphasizing their exceptional qualities. They portrayed these descriptions as badges of distinction. The coaches also delineated their role through values of professionalism and strategic cultivation of the youths’ exceptional habitus. Furthermore, describing their youth-players, the coaches highlighted a positive, open future orientation (Shoshana, 2020), which included the youth populating elite spaces in their adulthood. They even related how they practice this future orientation with the youths. This future orientation and its practice operate as mechanisms for producing cultural capital (Appadurai, 2004). The coaches stressed that nurturing the exceptional youth-players, rather than conforming and instilling “normative” values (such as being a good and respectable citizen), is critical to their professional identity. Thus, the coaches expressed how their professional identity is related to standing out rather than fitting in (Gillies, 2005). According to Eriksen and Stefansen (2021), standing out rather than fitting in is a project of distinction. In this sense, coaches assist in producing and cultivating privilege as identity (Howard, 2008; Wheeler & Green, 2019), acting as culture guides (Lareau, 2015) for the youths. They exude a sense of confidence that the youths are exceptional, certain that these youth-players will be leaders in their future. The coaches engage in this role by employing an informal communication style reflected in a flat hierarchy. This ease of communication with adults may facilitate the youths' general sense of comfort with authority figures and their ability to activate them for their benefit (Calarco, 2018; Lareau, 2015). The findings add unique contributions to three main knowledge domains: understanding the professional identity of coaches; linkage of education, SES, and sport; the production and cultivation of privilege and elite identities (the linkage of position and disposition) in informal educational spaces.

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