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Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football

The relative age effect (RAE) is a well-established phenomenon in football. However, while the majority of previous studies focussed on established football nations, it remains unclear if the constraint of a limited population of soccer players in smaller countries associated with less strict select...

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Autores principales: Simon, Claude, Carson, Fraser, Faber, Irene Renate, Hülsdünker, Thorben
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9398004/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35998177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273019
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author Simon, Claude
Carson, Fraser
Faber, Irene Renate
Hülsdünker, Thorben
author_facet Simon, Claude
Carson, Fraser
Faber, Irene Renate
Hülsdünker, Thorben
author_sort Simon, Claude
collection PubMed
description The relative age effect (RAE) is a well-established phenomenon in football. However, while the majority of previous studies focussed on established football nations, it remains unclear if the constraint of a limited population of soccer players in smaller countries associated with less strict selection procedures may reduce the risk of RAE. This study aims to investigate the RAE in Luxembourg that follows an ‘open-door’ selection policy in youth football due to the limited pool of players. Birthdates from all licensed and actively playing Luxembourgish youth footballers including all players of the youth national teams (396 girls and 10981 boys) competing in the season 2018/2019 were analysed and categorised into birth quarters and semesters. To further investigate a performance dependence of the RAE in amateur leagues, success was determined based on the teams’ rankings at the end of the season. Differences between observed and expected birthdate distributions were calculated across all licensed players and age groups, within the national teams, and for the top- and bottom-tier football teams using chi-square statistics. While a RAE was absent across all age groups (except U7), significant RAEs with high effect sizes were observed in the top-level and national teams. These findings contrast the substantial RAE effects in large football nations and suggest that open selection systems might reflect an environmental constraint that limit the prevalence of RAE in football. Further, this study indicates that a performance dependence of the RAE is not limited to high level football but already occurs on an amateur level.
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spelling pubmed-93980042022-08-24 Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football Simon, Claude Carson, Fraser Faber, Irene Renate Hülsdünker, Thorben PLoS One Research Article The relative age effect (RAE) is a well-established phenomenon in football. However, while the majority of previous studies focussed on established football nations, it remains unclear if the constraint of a limited population of soccer players in smaller countries associated with less strict selection procedures may reduce the risk of RAE. This study aims to investigate the RAE in Luxembourg that follows an ‘open-door’ selection policy in youth football due to the limited pool of players. Birthdates from all licensed and actively playing Luxembourgish youth footballers including all players of the youth national teams (396 girls and 10981 boys) competing in the season 2018/2019 were analysed and categorised into birth quarters and semesters. To further investigate a performance dependence of the RAE in amateur leagues, success was determined based on the teams’ rankings at the end of the season. Differences between observed and expected birthdate distributions were calculated across all licensed players and age groups, within the national teams, and for the top- and bottom-tier football teams using chi-square statistics. While a RAE was absent across all age groups (except U7), significant RAEs with high effect sizes were observed in the top-level and national teams. These findings contrast the substantial RAE effects in large football nations and suggest that open selection systems might reflect an environmental constraint that limit the prevalence of RAE in football. Further, this study indicates that a performance dependence of the RAE is not limited to high level football but already occurs on an amateur level. Public Library of Science 2022-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9398004/ /pubmed/35998177 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273019 Text en © 2022 Simon et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Simon, Claude
Carson, Fraser
Faber, Irene Renate
Hülsdünker, Thorben
Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football
title Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football
title_full Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football
title_fullStr Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football
title_full_unstemmed Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football
title_short Low prevalence of relative age effects in Luxembourg’s male and female youth football
title_sort low prevalence of relative age effects in luxembourg’s male and female youth football
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9398004/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35998177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273019
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