Relative Age Effect and Long-Term Success in the Spanish Soccer and Basketball National Teams

Abstract

The aims of this study were: i) to analyze whether relative age effect occurs in the athletes of the junior national teams and professional athletes in Spain in general and in soccer and basketball, and ii) to compare the long-term success of the players selected for the junior national team between these sports. The samples for this study were Spanish professional soccer (n = 461) and basketball (n = 250) players in the 2013-2014 premier league and players from the junior Spanish soccer (i.e., n = 273; U-17: n = 107; U-19: n = 166) and basketball (i.e., n = 240; U-18: n = 120, U-16: n = 120) teams that classified to play in the European Championships (from 2004 to 2013). Junior players (42.3%) were more frequently born in the 1st quarter of the year than the professional players (30.7%) (χ2(3) = 30.07; p = .001; Vc = .157). This was found in both basketball (χ2(3) = 12.2.; p = .007; Vc = .158) and soccer (χ2(3) = 20.13; p < .001; Vc = .166). Long-term success is more frequent in soccer, where 59.9% of the juniors selected for the national team played later in the premier league, while in basketball that percentage was 39.6% (χ2(1) = 14.64; p < .001; Vc = .201). On the other hand, 79.4% and 39.8% of the professional soccer and basketball players had been previously selected for junior national teams (χ2(1) = 60.2; p < .001; Vc = .386), respectively. The talent selection process should be reviewed as players born in the second half of the year have fewer opportunities to stand out.

The Beginning of Senior Career in Team Sport Is Affected by Relative Age Effect

“…In this study, the IDs ranged from 1.34 to 2.69 underlined the presence of RAE in all considered team sports. Thus, the present results showed a different pattern in senior Italian context compared to International ones, where RAE was small or negligible as observed in basketball (Delorme et al, 2009; Werneck et al, 2016; López de Subijana and Lorenzo, 2018), rugby league (Till et al, 2010), volleyball (Campos et al, 2016) and water polo at senior level (Barrenetxea-Garcia et al, 2018). On the other hand, it possible that the proportion of players with less than 18 years (overall mean = 12%) in analyzed teams may partially influence the results contradicting previous results in senior teams and in accordance with other studies which describe RAE in European National Teams (Arrieta et al, 2016).…”

“…Despite the pervasiveness of RAE in youth sport teams, controversial results were found at senior professional level (Delorme et al, 2009; Romann et al, 2018). For example, large RAE was found in soccer (Gonzalez-Villora et al, 2015; Brustio et al, 2018), while small or negligible RAE was observed in other sport teams such rugby league (Delorme et al, 2009; Till et al, 2010; Jones et al, 2018), basketball (Delorme et al, 2009; Werneck et al, 2016; López de Subijana and Lorenzo, 2018), volleyball (Campos et al, 2016) and water polo (Barrenetxea-Garcia et al, 2018). A discrepancy in RAE at senior professional level may also emerge in relation to the countrywide.…”

“…This would mean that the relatively older athletes (i.e., those born close to the selection date) may be advantaged in entering the senior teams. Despite this sensible hypothesis, previous studies, focusing on RAE at senior level, investigated the senior teams without differentiating between the athletes in the first years of senior career and the others (Delorme et al, 2009; Till et al, 2010; Werneck et al, 2016; Jones et al, 2018; López de Subijana and Lorenzo, 2018).…”

The influence of initial selection age, relative age effect and country long-term performance on the re-selection process in European basketball youth national teams

“…As there is still a high probability that players included in the sample can still make their senior national team debut, it was not considered in this study. However, looking at the roughly 40% of players who were reselection until age 20, it is very similar to the junior-to-senior reselection seen in various sports, including basketball López de Subijana & Lorenzo, 2018;Wrang et al, 2018).…”

The relationship between the relative age effect and performance among athletes in World Handball Championships

“…The analysis confirmed that the RAE had an impact in most sports, both on an individual level and on a team level: for every two subjects born in the last quartile of an age group, more than three of the first quartile of the same age group participated in the same sporting context. The RAE appears to have a large impact on the selection processes associated with TID systems in team sports such as ice hockey [10], basketball [11,12], football [13][14][15], rugby [16], Australian football [17], and handball [18,19]. However, recent research in women´s sports has reported more diverse findings, and the impact of the RAE in these seems to be less extensive [20].…”