OPINIÕES DE TREINADORES SOBRE O USO DO SÉTIMO JOGADOR DE QUADRA CONTRA O SISTEMA DEFENSIVO INDIVIDUAL OBRIGATÓRIO EM COMPETIÇÕES DE HANDEBOL DAS CATEGORIAS SUB-12 E SUB-14

The seventh court player rule was officially entered into handball at the Rio-2016 Olympic Games, in order to interfere with the adaptations implemented in youth handball competitions, in particular, the compulsory use of the individual defensive system in the under-12 and under-14 teams. Our objective was to identify the speeches of handball coaches about the interactions established between the use of this new rule and the mandatory use of the individual defensive system. In this exploratory-descriptive and qualitative study, we used the Snowball Sampling Technique to collect the opinions of 26 coaches, whose answers were analyzed from the Qualitative Content Analysis, and were aggregated into two broad categories, one against and another in favor of the seventh player rule. From the established discussions, we realized that the use of the seventh player doesn’t seem adequate when related to the mandatory of the individual defensive system.