The overall quality of coach-athlete relationship has been shown to positively associate with coach leadership effectiveness on athletes` outcomes. Nonetheless, others also showed no associations when each subdimension of coach-athlete relationship was separately examined. This study used canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to examine the complete set of correlations between coach transformational leadership (six dimensions) and quality coach-athlete relationship (six dimensions). A total of 213 athletes (122 male; 91 female) from various performance levels and sports completed a multi-section questionnaire. CCA revealed positive, negative and no correlations between the coach transformational leadership and coach-athlete relationship variable sets. For example, the Direct Commitment dimension of the coach-athlete relationship was negatively related to the Individualised Support dimension and positively associated with the High-Performance Expectation dimension of coach transformational leadership. In light of these results, we discuss whether viewing the coach-athlete relationship as an inherent dimension embedded within the conceptualisation of coach leadership is suitable and accurate.
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