Young talents in football: How the date of birth determines your career!

Young talents in football: How the date of birth determines your career!

The current study by Lukas Tohoff from the ROCKWOOL Foundation in Berlin and Mario Mechtel from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, published in the Journal of Sports Economics, highlights the serious errors in the talent assessment of young football players in Germany. These deficiencies not only lead to financial losses for the clubs, but also to distorted talent development in youth football. Loud leuphana.de By selecting players based on their birth cohort, the actual ability of the talent is often misjudged, as the physical advantages of older players are often confused with above-average talent.

The research shows that 44.6% of the U-19 players supported in performance centers were born in the first quarter of a year, while the proportion that should correspond to the legal proportion is only 25%. Furthermore, 71.5% of these players come from the first half of the year of birth, instead of the expected 50%. This reveals that younger players have to work significantly harder to get a place in the selection process, while they could suffer long-term disadvantages in their careers.

The Relative Age Effect in detail

The Relative Age Effect (RAE) describes how the birth dates of players in a sample are disproportionately distributed. For example, in a Bundesliga club's U10 team, up to 50% of the players may have been born in the first six weeks of a year. This phenomenon results in a preference for physically stronger and more experienced players, which hinders long-term talent development. The advance.football highlights that physical differences between players who were born up to a year apart can be significant, which, for example, leads to a systematic disadvantage for younger players when selecting national teams.

However, as differences in biological maturity become less relevant after puberty, there is a risk that talented but less physically developed players will be excluded from the selection process. This can have long-term effects on the careers of these players, including the Bundesliga and national team.

Approaches to combat RAE

To counteract these problems, various solutions have been discussed. This includes, among other things, adjustments to the selection process. With the FOOTECO project, the Swiss Football Association has initiated an example to promote late developers. This project grants special permissions for players who have negative deviations in height and weight. In Belgium, a classification of young players according to biological age is already being successfully practiced. These methods could help reduce the inequities in the talent development system caused by the RAE, such as for.sport reported.

Another promising approach is “bio-banding,” which involves grouping players based on their biological maturity and not just chronological age. Studies show that this method can significantly reduce the influence of RAE on talent identification and team selection, although it does not completely solve all problems.

It is crucial that coaches, clubs and associations are aware of the RAE and make appropriate changes in their selection processes. Relatively younger players could also be given more time for personal development in order to promote individual strengths such as agility and coordination and not allow physical deficits to have an exclusionary effect.