Maturity Has a Greater Association than Relative Age with Physical Performance in English Male Academy Soccer Players.

John M Radnor,James Bevan,Sean P Cumming,Rhodri S Lloyd,Jon L Oliver,Jacob Staines,Adam L Kelly

doi:10.3390/sports9120171

Abstract

This study aimed to: (1) examine differences in physical performance across birth-quartiles and maturity-status, and (2) determine the relationships among relative age, maturation and physical performance in young male soccer players. The sample included 199 males aged between 8.1 and 18.9 years, from two professional soccer academies in the English Football League. Data were collected for height, weight, self-reported biological parent heights, 30 m sprint time and countermovement jump (CMJ) height. Relative age was conveyed as a decimal, while maturity status was determined as the percentage of predicted adult height (PAH). There were no significant differences in any measure between birth quartiles, however early maturers outperformed on-time and later maturers in most performance measures. Pearson-product-moment correlations revealed that maturation was inversely associated with 30 m sprint time in U12 to U16 (r = −0.370–0.738; p < 0.05), but only positively associated with CMJ performance in U12 (r = 0.497; p < 0.05). In contrast, relative age was unrelated to sprint performance and only significantly associated with superior CMJ performance in U16. This study indicates that maturity has a greater association with sprint performance than relative age in English male academy soccer players. Practitioners should monitor and assess biological maturation in young soccer players to attempt to control for the influence on physical performance, and avoid biasing selection on absolute performance rather than identifying the most talented player.

Highlights

Introduction published maps and institutional affilSoccer academies are a vital pathway in the long-term development of youth players, with the primary objective of identifying and developing talented individuals to compete at senior levels [1,2]
The main finding of the current study was that maturity status and relative age were differentially associated with sprint performance in young soccer players
The weakest significant association between sprint performance and maturation was within the U13 age group, and this group had an average predicted adult height (PAH) of 85.7%, suggesting they were at the onset of the adolescent growth spurt

Summary

Introduction

Introduction published maps and institutional affilSoccer academies are a vital pathway in the long-term development of youth players, with the primary objective of identifying and developing talented individuals to compete at senior levels [1,2]. Two factors that have been shown to impact both player performance and selection in youth soccer are relative age and biological maturation [3,4,5]. Due to the application of arbitrary and chronologically aged (bi)annual groupings for soccer academies (e.g., U9, U10, U11, etc.), players within the same age group can be by almost twelve months apart in chronological age. This results in the phenomenon known as the relative age effect (RAE), where players born earlier in their selection year

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Discussion

Conclusion