Understanding the Relative Age Effect

Real consequences

The problem is that RAE is not simply a statistical quirk; it has real consequences for players and football. Many late developers and late-born players with the ability to become elite professional footballers never even enter the system or do not remain in the system long enough to reach their potential.

Younger players who may be physically inferior or consistently overlooked may lose confidence and quit football for other sports. Academies may invest heavily in early developers who then plateau while missing out on technically gifted late birthdays. Alan Shearer, Harry Kane, Lionel Messi, Luca Modric and Andreas Iniesta were all late birthdays in their selection year so any system with the potential to filter out talents like these has to recognise its flaws and try to do something about it.

One of the most successful programmes of this nature is managed by the Royal Belgian FA. It’s a specialised talent development initiative for late-developing players aged between 14 and 16. By identifying what they call the ‘green bananas’ (talented players who mature later physically) the Belgian FA provides specialised coaching and competitive opportunities to prevent these players from being overlooked in traditional systems. Talented players with high potential who are physically smaller and less developed than their peers are targeted in order to bridge the gap for late developers and offer international playing experiences. The initiative operates teams for different age groups (e.g. National Under 15 Futures) that run in parallel to the main youth teams and play regular friendlies and in international and national youth tournaments. The programme combines expert coaching with scientific analysis to monitor maturity.

The initiative called the ‘Futures’ programme has successfully developed notable players like Thibaut Courtois, Dries Mertens, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, Youri Tielemans and Leandro Trossard.

Creating better player pathways

So the good news is that RAE is human-made and not inevitable. With well-designed recruitment and coaching programmes academies can create fairer and more effective player pathways.

The first step is awareness and information. Academies should routinely collect and analyse their birthdate distribution data across all age groups to assess if there is a bias developing that needs combatting. Quarterly birthdate reports should be circulated amongst coaching and recruitment staff to make them aware of the bias and groups with acute RAE patterns should be identified. The data should be used to inform coaches, plus recruitment and retention decisions. This transparency will help academies recognise unconscious biases and adjust things accordingly.

Bio-banding is another method that has been tried by some academies in an attempt to even the playing field. This works by selecting groups based on the players’ biological rather than chronological ages. This allows smaller less physically mature players to show what they can do by reducing the dominance of the early birthday and early maturated players. The benefits of this are that late developers gain confidence and more meaningful training and matchday opportunities as physicality is negated to a large extent with skilful play and decision-making coming to the fore, helping technical staff to better identify true footballing ability.

It is important to realise that these initiatives, while helpful to give staff an idea of young players’ real potential, cannot be the norm, as training and matches full of little players are very different events from those full of big ones. Little, young players have to learn to be little and operate as such, and big players have to learn to be big.

“Many late developers and late-born players with the ability to become elite professional footballers never even enter the system or do not remain in the system long enough to reach their potential”

What this type of event does do is allow people with influence on a player’s career to see what their potential is and what they know and can do when the odds aren’t stacked so heavily against them. Results of such programmes are an overwhelmingly positive experience for the players involved and may prove an eye-opener for the staff resulting in some fantastic careers in the professional game like the outcomes of the Belgian FA Futures Programme.

In many ways recruitment has the biggest problem combating RAE as they are scouting cohorts that have already been pre-selected by whoever the grassroots coaches may be, so the bias is already baked in when the academy scout arrives on the scene. Academies can bypass this by having open days for anyone aged six who wants to play football and try to get in before grassroots selection takes place. Regular open days for late developers as they get older could also keep the focus on summer birthdays as they mature and instead of prioritising physical attributes the scout’s focus could be on first touch, if a player is two-footed, or can turn effectively away from trouble, has football intelligence, creativity, resilience, teachability, decision-making capabilities and is a consistent performer over time. All these indicators are better predictors of long-term football success than early maturation and physicality.

Unfortunately, many academies operate quite rigidly and as such their development pathways amplify RAE. To be more successful in combating RAE, academies should aim to operate in a more fluid way and allow multiple entry points into the next age range. Players would move up on their birthday and therefore experience being both the youngest and the oldest player in the group. Players should be exempt from release on purely physical grounds (i.e. size or speed). Shadow squad or development groups should be offered to allow for players who need more time to mature technically, physically, socially, psychologically and emotionally. This allows players who mature in these areas more slowly, access to the top-class teaching available to academy players.

Talented younger, less mature players often need a different kind of leadership to stay engaged and confident. Strategies could include dedicated futures initiatives like the Belgian FA that include a regular matchday programme as well as training, extra technical sessions, mentoring, positive reinforcement and individual development plans. All these interventions may help to counterbalance the disadvantages of being younger and less mature.

Perhaps the most important cultural shift is to move away from early selection and judgement. Academies should embrace the notion of a more open-door policy in the foundation phase where young players predominately train with the Academy but play for a mixture of their grassroots club at the weekend and in elite tournaments during the holidays. This will give them the best of both worlds while they are still at primary school because development is a non-linear journey.

Late developers, if given the same opportunities, have as much chance of a professional career as early developers and patience can give you a solid competitive advantage. When academies invest in long-term potential rather than short-term performance, they naturally reduce the effects of RAE.

“Little, young players have to learn to be little and operate as such, and big players have to learn to be big”

Giving young players the chance to succeed

RAE is deeply embedded in English development football, but the situation is not irretrievable. By combining flexible entry, birthdate data analysis, bio-banding, awareness, education, flexible development pathways and a long-term development culture, academies can create environments where every youngster with the will and the skill regardless of their birthday has a fighting chance to succeed.

Combating RAE is not easy and not just about being fair or even being seen to be fair; it’s about improving recruitment efficiency and selecting talented players that are now being discarded and lost altogether. It is about building stronger more diverse age groups. Academies that take RAE seriously and invest in the right programmes and initiatives will not just do the right thing by a host of untapped talent; they will gain a significant competitive edge in the long run.