Abstract
Selection biases based on the use of cut-off dates and the timing of athletes’ birthdates have been termed relative age effects. These effects have been shown to differentially affect individuals involved in sport. For example, young male soccer players born early in their age group are overrepresented in elite teams while studies in adult soccer indicated potential carry-over effects from talent development systems. This two-study approach focuses on the processes within multi-year age groups in youth and adult elite soccer and on the role of players’ age position within the age band with regard to players’ birth year and birth month. Study 1 tests for an interaction of two different types of relative age effects among data from participants in the last five Under-17 FIFA World Cups (2007–2015). Analyses revealed a significant global within-year effect and varying birthdate distributions were found between confederations. Even stronger effects were found for constituent year effects. For the total sample, a multi-way frequency analysis (MFA) revealed an interaction with a pattern of a stronger within-year effect for the younger year group. This study highlights the need to consider interactions between different types of age effects. The main aim of Study 2 was to test for carry-over effects from previously found constituent year effects among players participating in the 2014 soccer World Cup and, therefore, to test for long-term effects of age grouping structures used during earlier stages of talent development. A secondary purpose of this study was to replicate findings on the existence of within-year effects and to test whether effects vary between continental confederations. No significant interaction between constituent year and within-year effects was shown by the MFA among the World Cup sample and previous findings on varying within-year effects were replicated. Results indicate that long-term effects of age grouping structures in earlier high-level talent development structures exist.
Highlights
For many sport administrators, the problem of how to group children for equal and safe competition in sport is usually solved by creating age groups, typically through the use of selection dates (e.g., January 1st)
Constituent year effect analyses revealed an overall overrepresentation of the older age cohort within multiyear age groups: the sample sizes of the age cohorts within this multi-year age band highlight the strong overrepresentation of the oldest age band (84.87%) compared to the younger age bands (15.13%)
Results cannot be traced back definitively to the last determination of January 1st as a cut-off date in 1997, it is interesting that results appear to suggest that during the last five tournaments the effect sizes of the overall within-year effects increased from 0.39 to 0.51. This finding might be due to the fact that previously used selection dates have increasingly lost their influence on players in the current sample since the cutoff date change mandated by FIFA
Summary
The problem of how to group children for equal and safe competition in sport is usually solved by creating age groups, typically through the use of selection dates (e.g., January 1st). In this approach, a player born in January is almost 12 months older than their prospective teammate born in December. Due to greater chronological age, relatively older athletes have an increased likelihood of advanced maturation and advanced physical characteristics (Malina et al, 2007). Relatively older players have a higher chance of accessing higher levels of competition and increased training conditions (Helsen et al, 1998b)
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