Development and Maintenance of Team Performance Crises: A Grounded Theory Approach on Professional Soccer Players’ Perspectives

“Team performance crisis” describes the prolonged underperformance of a sport team over the course of multiple competitions. To explore and understand the experience of such a crisis, we employed a grounded-theory methodology to contribute to an in-depth understanding of team performance crises in professional soccer by interviewing 17 male soccer players from professional European leagues. The persistent self-perpetuating cycle of unmet expectations on different levels, driving the team crisis, evolved as a core category of our grounded theory. Based on these expectations, teams enter a crisis through a vulnerable state (i.e., pressure to perform well), followed by a trigger (i.e., nonfulfilment of expectations). The trigger negatively impacts team-related factors (e.g., team atmosphere and collective efficacy), and the deficient regulation of pressure, atmosphere, and unpleasant emotions in the team leads to continued negative results. External structural factors (e.g., club officials, fans, and media) reinforce the development and maintenance of the performance crisis.