From Psychological Skills Training to Observable Behavior: A Pilot Study Operationalizing the 5Cs as a Behavioral Coding Framework for Youth Central Defenders

Observing psychological skills in football can inform coaching feedback but is methodologically challenging. Meaningful behaviors can be difficult to isolate from tactical and technical actions due to the game’s complexity. This pilot study asked whether Harwood’s 5Cs framework (commitment, communication, concentration, control, confidence) could be operationalized into a behavioral coding system for central defenders, with what intra-rater consistency a single expert observer could apply it, and what patterns emerged across pre-, mid-, and post-intervention phases. Two youth teams (U15, U17) from a Major League Soccer Development Academy participated. Video footage from 16 competitive matches was analyzed using a template derived from co-designed 5Cs role descriptions. Five central defenders appearing in all three phases were retained for exploratory descriptive analysis. Event-detection agreement was 73.3%; mean intra-operator κ among matched events was 0.917 for behavior type and 0.799 for outcome, falling to 0.427 (95% CI 0.300–0.554) when detection and classification errors were combined. This indicates moderate overall agreement, consistent with single-expert feasibility rather than general reliability. The sample (n = 5) was not powered for inferential comparisons. Patterns are reported descriptively as rates per 90 min, success percentages, and within-player trajectories. The study offers a transparent template for operationalizing the 5Cs as observable behaviors, a prototype rather than a validated instrument.