Introduction: Mazandaran Province, like all the cities of our country, has a great potential in various fields of sport such as football. For example, there are seven teams in the major soccer leagues out of eastern Mazandaran which participate in Mazandaran major soccer leagues and third division. In addition, the number of players in this sport is almost 50 individuals. Given the consideration being paid to this sport from the organization and its supporters, the desired results and progress are not achieved. So the aim of this study was to investigate the reasons for the failure of football in Eastern Mazandaran.
Methodology: The study population on the qualitative side includes academic elite, managers, referees, coaches, athletes and veterans of football in the province and on the quantitative side includes academic elite, managers, coaches, athletes and the province football veterans. In the qualitative phase, the reason for lack of success was discussed through the semi-structured interviews with 20 individuals of the study population. In the quantitative phase we categorize them. In the quantitative phase, a research made questionnaire was used that has the following six axes as the main points: facilities, training, official attention, sports management, sports support, monitoring. These items were prepared and distributed among the population.
Results: The results show that, regarding the average scores obtained from Friedman test and from the viewpoint of the whole sample, the lack of football success in the Eastern Mazandaran based on the most important to the least important factors include: educational factor with average rating of 5.0, sport sponsorship with an average rating of 4.3, operating facilities with an average rating of 3.5, the monitoring agent with an average rating of 3.3, official attention with an average rating of 3.25 and sports management with average rating of 1.59.
Discussion: The findings showed that among the topics of under study, training and developing human resources was recognized as the most important reason for the lack of football success in Eastern Mazandaran Province