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The Relative Age Effect in the 2013 FIFA U-17 Soccer World Cup Competition

Received: 12 February 2014     Published: 20 March 2014
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Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to check the eventual existence of any Relative Age Effect (RAE) in the recent 2013’ FIFA Male Under-17 (U-17) World Cup Football tournament. The data pertaining to the players who participated in to that event were collected from the FIFA website. They included the players’ dates of birth (day, month and year) and position (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or striker).The distributions of birth months were significantly different with more players born in the early months of the year compared with the later months. For the entire cohort of players, 38.7% were born in the first quarter of the year while only 10.5% were born in the last 3 months in the same year. This relative age effect held for all FIFA-designated teams except for the Nigeria and the Côte d'Ivoire having shown a reverse relative age effect. The results of this investigation show that at the highest level of youth soccer, the RAE still exists and is a strong bias toward inclusion of players born early in the concerned year.

Published in American Journal of Sports Science (Volume 2, Issue 2)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15
Page(s) 35-40
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2014. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Youth Soccer, Reverse Relative Age Effect, Birth-Date

References
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Ridha Sallaoui, Karim Chamari, Moktar Chtara, Youssef Manai, Mourad Ghrairi, et al. (2014). The Relative Age Effect in the 2013 FIFA U-17 Soccer World Cup Competition. American Journal of Sports Science, 2(2), 35-40. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15

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    ACS Style

    Ridha Sallaoui; Karim Chamari; Moktar Chtara; Youssef Manai; Mourad Ghrairi, et al. The Relative Age Effect in the 2013 FIFA U-17 Soccer World Cup Competition. Am. J. Sports Sci. 2014, 2(2), 35-40. doi: 10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15

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    AMA Style

    Ridha Sallaoui, Karim Chamari, Moktar Chtara, Youssef Manai, Mourad Ghrairi, et al. The Relative Age Effect in the 2013 FIFA U-17 Soccer World Cup Competition. Am J Sports Sci. 2014;2(2):35-40. doi: 10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15,
      author = {Ridha Sallaoui and Karim Chamari and Moktar Chtara and Youssef Manai and Mourad Ghrairi and Mohcine Belhaouz and Abdullah Baroon},
      title = {The Relative Age Effect in the 2013 FIFA U-17 Soccer World Cup Competition},
      journal = {American Journal of Sports Science},
      volume = {2},
      number = {2},
      pages = {35-40},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajss.20140202.15},
      abstract = {Purpose: The purpose of this study was to check the eventual existence of any Relative Age Effect (RAE) in the recent 2013’ FIFA Male Under-17 (U-17) World Cup Football tournament. The data pertaining to the players who participated in to that event were collected from the FIFA website. They included the players’ dates of birth (day, month and year) and position (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or striker).The distributions of birth months were significantly different with more players born in the early months of the year compared with the later months. For the entire cohort of players, 38.7% were born in the first quarter of the year while only 10.5% were born in the last 3 months in the same year. This relative age effect held for all FIFA-designated teams except for the Nigeria and the Côte d'Ivoire having shown a reverse relative age effect. The results of this investigation show that at the highest level of youth soccer, the RAE still exists and is a strong bias toward inclusion of players born early in the concerned year.},
     year = {2014}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - The Relative Age Effect in the 2013 FIFA U-17 Soccer World Cup Competition
    AU  - Ridha Sallaoui
    AU  - Karim Chamari
    AU  - Moktar Chtara
    AU  - Youssef Manai
    AU  - Mourad Ghrairi
    AU  - Mohcine Belhaouz
    AU  - Abdullah Baroon
    Y1  - 2014/03/20
    PY  - 2014
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15
    T2  - American Journal of Sports Science
    JF  - American Journal of Sports Science
    JO  - American Journal of Sports Science
    SP  - 35
    EP  - 40
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2330-8540
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajss.20140202.15
    AB  - Purpose: The purpose of this study was to check the eventual existence of any Relative Age Effect (RAE) in the recent 2013’ FIFA Male Under-17 (U-17) World Cup Football tournament. The data pertaining to the players who participated in to that event were collected from the FIFA website. They included the players’ dates of birth (day, month and year) and position (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or striker).The distributions of birth months were significantly different with more players born in the early months of the year compared with the later months. For the entire cohort of players, 38.7% were born in the first quarter of the year while only 10.5% were born in the last 3 months in the same year. This relative age effect held for all FIFA-designated teams except for the Nigeria and the Côte d'Ivoire having shown a reverse relative age effect. The results of this investigation show that at the highest level of youth soccer, the RAE still exists and is a strong bias toward inclusion of players born early in the concerned year.
    VL  - 2
    IS  - 2
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Alahli Sports Club of Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  • Athete Health and Performance Research Center, Aspetar, Doha, Qatar

  • National Center of Medicine and Sciences in Sports, Tunisia

  • Alahli Sports Club of Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  • UAE Football Association, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  • UAE Football Association, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  • UAE Football Association, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

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