Table 1_Organizational stressors and athlete burnout in elite soccer players: the mediating role of basic psychological need frustration and the moderating role of coach autonomy support.xlsx

Basic psychological need frustration was positively associated with athlete burnout and accounted for a significant indirect association between organizational stressors and athlete burnout. Coach autonomy support showed a small but significant buffering effect on the association between organizational stressors and basic psychological need frustration, and the conditional indirect association through basic psychological need frustration was weaker at higher levels of coach autonomy support.</p>Discussion<p>The findings suggest that athlete burnout among elite soccer players with dual educational and sport-training roles is closely associated with organizational stressors, and that basic psychological need frustration may help explain this statistical association.

Coach autonomy support may constitute a contextual boundary condition that modestly reduces the association between organizational stressors and basic psychological need frustration. These results suggest that management of organizational stressors, basic psychological need experiences, and autonomy-supportive coaching behaviors may be relevant targets for future longitudinal and intervention research. Given the cross-sectional and self-reported nature of the data, the findings should be interpreted as theoretically specified statistical associations rather than evidence of strict causality.</p>