EARLY-BORN DOMINATION
Much has been said about RAE - relative age effect or age bias - within football and in the world of sports in general. RAE explains the effect to which players born far from national cut-off dates are less likely to succeed. In Denmark the 1st of January in a given year divide each age group from each other (i.e. 1st of January to 31st of December). However, to this day little has been done to even out the odds for the late born players and only sporadic initiatives like “Future youth national teams” have so far been introduced at a relatively late stage in the development of young footballers.
The emphasis of this article is to present an analysis of all teams participating in GFA Copenhagen - International U10 Tournament which a focus on the relative age of the players participating in the tournament.
A total of 422 players were registered in our tournament across 46 complete team sheets (2 incomplete teamsheets) divided on the following quarters:
ALL REGISTERED PLAYERS
➤ 2010 Q1: 155 players / 36,7 %
➤ 2010 Q2: 122 players / 28,9 %
➤ 2010 Q3: 74 players / 17,5 %
➤ 2010 Q4: 36 players / 8,5 %
➤ Other: 35 players / 8,3 %
The category “other” represents late developers - 15 players - from 2009 playing under special FA license and players born in 2011 - 20 players - participating in the tournament.
The findings are nothing short of remarkable. Although the findings correlate with previous studies on RAE these findings suggests that the RAE is already significant at an early phase of player development usually characterized by an emphasis on fun and love of the game. Also, although some football associations allow for late developed players to play with the age group below their own this group of players (born in 2009) was actually surpassed by younger and presumably early developed players from 2011.
The RAE only becomes more significant if the sample size is limited to the teams playing in the Gold Round consisting of top 24 teams in the tournament as almost 70 % are born within the first 2 quarters (212 players in total):
TOP 24 TEAMS
➤ 2010 Q1: 77 players / 36,3 %
➤ 2010 Q2: 71 players / 33,5 %
➤ 2010 Q3: 33 players / 15,6 %
➤ 2010 Q4: 14 players / 6,6 %
➤ Other: 17 players / 8,0 %
Due to the competitive nature of football the challenge of developing late born footballers is sometimes attributed to the fact that time and resources are scarce which means that less-resourceful clubs are forced to focus more narrowly. However, the small sample size of the 4 participating teams from top 5 leagues shows that the RAE becomes even more significant with 80 % of the players born in Q1 and Q2 (Man City, Dortmund, Atletico Madrid, and Juventus - 40 players in total):
PLAYERS FROM TOP CLUBS
➤ 2010 Q1: 18 players / 45 %
➤ 2010 Q2: 14 players / 35 %
➤ 2010 Q3: 7 players / 17,5 %
➤ 2010 Q4: 0 players / 0 %
➤ Other: 1 players / 2,5 %
The challenge of developing late born footballers is without any doubt a very difficult task but as players are born equally across all months clubs and football associations could theoretically increase the overall number and level of players produced to the highest level if they are to overcome the discriminating nature of the game. However, this little study suggest that organizations who want to realize the full potential of the RAE need to focus their resources on all stages of player development and especially the earliest phase of player development as the RAE is already significant at the level of U10.
