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

Abstract

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.