ArticleChildren (Basel, Switzerland)2022
Men Are from Quartile One, Women Are from? Relative Age Effect in European Soccer and the Influence of Age, Success, and Playing Status.
Article in Children (Basel, Switzerland), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Perceptual-cognitive skills in talent development environments: a survey of academy football coaches in the United Kingdom.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Biological maturity but not relative age biases exist in female international youth soccer players relative to the general population.Biology of sport · 2025Article
- Relative age effect at Concacaf championships: Influence of sex, age, nationality, playing position, and playing status.PloS one · 2025Article
- Relative age selection bias does not translate into a playing-time advantage: evidence from Italian Serie A football.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Born to win? Investigating the relative age effects in the big five European women's football leagues.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Perceptual-cognitive skills and talent development environments in soccer: A scoping review.PloS one · 2025Article
- Environmental factors associated with talent identification of women's youth national team soccer players in the United States.PloS one · 2025Article
- Relative age effects in European soccer: their association with contextual factors, impact on youth national teams' performance, and presence at the senior level.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Article
- The Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) relative age solutions project-part one: a call to action.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Relative age effect across the talent identification process of youth female soccer players in the United States: Influence of birth year, position, biological maturation, and skill level.Biology of sport · 2024Article
- Relative Age Effect Analysis in the History of the Ballon d'Or (1956-2023).Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Disentangling Gender and Relative Age Effects in Women's and Girls' Rugby Union.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2024Article
- Relative age effects in German youth A and B men's soccer teams: survival of the fittest?Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Article
- Career trajectories, transition rates, and birthdate distributions: the rocky road from youth to senior level in men's European football.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Article
- Push and Pull Factors: Contextualising Biological Maturation and Relative Age in Talent Development Systems.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The relative age effect (RAE) is characterised by an overrepresentation of athletes born earlier in the selection year. Whilst an RAE is consistently evident in male soccer, examinations in female players remain limited. The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of sex, as well as age, success, and playing status in European soccer players. The sample consisted of a total of 6546 soccer players from 55 soccer nations that competed in recent European Championship qualification campaigns. Results indicated an evident RAE in male [p = 0.017] but not female [p = 0.765] players. Male players were over-represented by players born in the first quartile for the U17 [p < 0.001] and U19 [p = 0.001] levels, however, this over-representation did not transfer to senior levels. No RAE was observed at any level for female players. Inside each age group, a slight selection bias towards those born in the first quartile for successful squads was observed but did not significantly differentiate between qualification status for either male or female players. Results from this study highlight the disparity in RAE prevalence between male and female players and raise further questions regarding the value of selecting relatively older players to metrics of success, transition, and selection for senior international soccer.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.