Born in December and striving for a career in sports? Bad luck for you.


Born in December and striving for a career in sports? Bad luck for...

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paladisious
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David Bauer wrote:
Born in December and striving for a career in sports? Bad luck for you.

April 11, 2014

A few weeks ago, one of our sports editors, Florian Raz, approached me with an interesting story. Apparently, birth months of professional football players are distributed unevenly over the year, with significantly more being born early in the year and less in the last quarter.

The reason for this: Junior squads, even though named after players’ age – under 15, under 17, etc. – are defined by year. Thus, a player born in December has to compete for a place in the squad against players up to 12 months older than him – quite a disadvantage at a young age. This early selection leads to an uneven distribution among those who make it.


1 = January, 12 = December

While this has been investigated before, notably by the German Football Association in order to find ways to counter the phenomenon, we thought we could take it one step further, investigate it at a larger scale.

There’s a database called transfermarkt.de with records of more than 240’000 football players, active and retired ones, most of them complete with birth date. We scraped the data, analysed it and came up with a comprehensive view of the phenomenon for football players worldwide. The thesis is confirmed and what’s more: The distribution has become more uneven for the latest generation of football hopefuls.



Read the full story at tageswoche.ch (in German)

tbitm
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Note to self, fuck my future wife a lot in April.
paladisious
paladisious
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tbitm wrote:
Note to self, fuck my future wife a lot in April.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Solid advice though for those hoping for a vicarious football career! ;)

Hope your kid isn't born a few weeks early and is stuck with a birthday right around xmas like myself!

Edited by paladisious: 12/4/2014 02:10:38 AM
Decentric
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Big issue in FFA.

Constantly discussed in conferences. It is called Relative Age Effect.

Last year I think I only selected three out of a rep squad of 16, inadvertently, who were November/December birthdays. Just didn't think of it whilst making selections, only about a month later. The good news is the youngest players improved most over the season.





Edited by Decentric: 13/4/2014 11:26:24 PM
moops
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One would think they would, virtualy playing a year higher than themselves.
I used to do little aths (a primary-school initiative) when I was a wee tacker, for some reason I was always put into the year above (born in Jan), it forced me to try harder I guess and found some events I did well at, though I was quite competitive.
But it's interesting to see those results, I would not have thought there would have been such a discrepancy, would it have to do with the way that evaluations are done?
CL
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heres a little about it also

http://www.aefca.eu/sites/default/files/AEFCA%20Symposium%202012_Praesentation_Bob%20Browaeys.pdf
nickk
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Would liketo see the stats on African born players in Januray. It doesn;t stand to reason that there is that big a jump from jan to feb unless something else is going on and it could be like that Syrian team with something like 5 players born on the 1st January.
dirk vanadidas
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Decentric wrote:
Big issue in FFA.
Constantly discussed in conferences. It is called Relative Age Effect.
Last year I think I only selected three out of a rep squad of 16, inadvertently, who were November/December birthdays. Just didn't think of it whilst making selections, only about a month later. The good news is the youngest players improved most over the season.

Edited by Decentric: 13/4/2014 11:26:24 PM


That might be so on a Kelly Cross powerpoint slide but in reality when an NPL club requested a player be able to play down a year due to maturity the club was threatened with losing its licence for entertaining the idea.

Europe is funding the war not Chelsea football club

moops
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dirkvanadidas wrote:
Decentric wrote:
Big issue in FFA.
Constantly discussed in conferences. It is called Relative Age Effect.
Last year I think I only selected three out of a rep squad of 16, inadvertently, who were November/December birthdays. Just didn't think of it whilst making selections, only about a month later. The good news is the youngest players improved most over the season.

Edited by Decentric: 13/4/2014 11:26:24 PM


That might be so on a Kelly Cross powerpoint slide but in reality when an NPL club requested a player be able to play down a year due to maturity the club was threatened with losing its licence for entertaining the idea.


Realy? Maybe there could be a three month buffer, seems logical.
GO


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