Anonymous wrote:For those who have boys in MLS Next, how much international play do those teams actually do? What benefit does that league particularly get by being aligned with international play?
I feel like for every domestic youth league (leaving out national teams for the moment) except MLS Next, school year cutoff is the clear winner. For MLS Next, I could see why they would resist if they play a lot of international matches or are sending players to Europe as pros when they turn 18.
Winner at what? What's the real measurable benefit?
Measurable benefits favoring school year alignment: higher overall participation rates, higher overall retention rates, improved relative age effect profile, decreased club operations workload (after year 1), decreased college recruiter workload, decreased time off training for the trapped subset and/or decreased cost for private training during that time, decreased team disruption at U18-19.
Have there been any measurable benefits from the switch to calendar year with increased international alignment? I'm willing to entertain even the most remotely plausible theory of a measurable benefit. No one seems willing to attempt to articulate one. It would seem that if there were some measurable benefit, the easiest place to identify it would be MLS Next.
Saying measurable benefits and proving measurable benefits are two different things.
You're doing a lot of 'sounds nice' not based on facts and reality.
There's a lack of participation issue because of BY?
Won't there still be kids who are the youngest if you move from Jan1 to September 1? (August becomes the new December)
If you reject the circumstantial nature of the participation, retention, and RAE studies over the last 8 years, fine. The trends are indeed "facts and reality," but the cause cannot be said to be birth year cutoffs with certainty. In the face of those though, you'd think someone would be floating some alternative explanations.
Hypothetically, if I'm a US Soccer decision-maker about to go into a meeting on this issue, what are my arguments in favor of birth year? Scouring this thread, I only can find (1) saying 2010 is simpler than saying 2028, (2) that birth year is the status quo, and (3) a blanket denial of proposed benefits to school year. International alignment for the sake of itself, without a proposed benefit, is unlikely to convince those in favor of the change. Is there anything more convincing I should take into that meeting?
So you solution to RAE is shift the late developers from Dec, Nov, Oct to June, July, August?
RAE has gotten worse since the change. Q4 is less represented in youth club soccer than it was prior to the change. RAE profiles as kids age up are no longer being evened out as they age. Participation and retention rates are also down since the change, with Q4 accounting for an outsized portion of that decrease. Hypothesis presented is that this is a result of the change to birth year. Is there an alternative explanation? The reasoning for the hypothesis is that introducing the social and operational challenges of being across grade level are causing the permanent departure of Q4 kids from organized soccer. They are no longer sticking with it while waiting for their physical maturity to catch up. If there is no alternative explanation, are there countervailing benefits that should be weighed against this?
RAE is not getting better/worse since the change. It exists and will exist regardless of where you draw the cutoff. If Aug 1 becomes the cutoff, then RAE will impact may/June/July birthdays and they will become underrepresented because they are 10-12 months behind others in the age group developmentally.
You can make an argument about retention rates and using birth year, but RAE in itself doesn't change depending on where you draw the line - someone will always be the oldest in a 12 month window and someone will have to be the youngest.
It's hard to find an exact apples-to-apples RAE comparison before and after the switch. But comparing girls ECNL before the switch with all female club soccer and female talent ID centers after the switch, Q4 representation before the switch started HS ages at about 15% and went up each year, stabilizing at 20%. Now, Q4 representation starts HS ages between 10-15% and bounces up and down, never going above 15% and no upward trend through ages. While RAE strictly "exists" in both sets, I think it's fair to say RAE is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon - it can be "worse" or "better." A steeper negative slope from Q1 percent to Q4 percent could be called "worse." By this definition, it has gotten worse since the change.
At the extreme, if one set showed 94% Q1 and 3/2/1% Q2-4, that would be "worse" than a set showing 35/30/20/15%. If you consider those the same, because they both show RAE, I guess we just agree to disagree.
Statistically the comparison of Q4 representation before and after a switch is not the right comparison. The correct comparison is the representation rates in the last three months of each age group, i.e., how is representation is Oct/Nov/Dec birth dates now versus representation in May/June/July birth dates after a school year switch.
Yes, if it wasn't clear, that was the comparison - Q4 before switch (May-Jul) against Q4 after switch (Oct-Dec). If you search for the recent study, the one they are discussing in the ECNL podcast, it's "Relative age effect across talent identification process of youth female soccer players in the United States," Finnegan et al., 2024.
Female youth data from before the switch showed a more balanced representation of Q1 (Aug-Oct) and Q4 (May-Jul) across all ability levels. When just looking at a more elite subset (ECNL), Q4 was lower. Q4 would start at about 15% at U13 and tick up 1% each age group, showing that some late-bloomers were moving up to more elite teams. At the very highest level, national senior teams, RAE was gone or even reversed, in what was termed the "underdog effect." The idea was that those who did succeed against the odds during development years were more likely to be among the very best at the end of the journey.
After the switch, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) is not represented across all club levels near 25%, but rather bouncing around below 15%. That would support the proposition that whereas the old Q4 (May-Jul) girls continued participating at less elite levels during the early years, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) girls simply quit the sport. Youth national teams have higher Q4 representation than all club, which tends to show that those Q4 (new) girls who do stick with it are more likely to be good. The underdog effect is still most likely there too, but it's hard to see because the senior team's Q1-Q4 don't line up with the younger age groups as they are across the date for the switch in 2017.
Now, this could all be because Q1 participation rate has grown, rather than Q4 participation rate having gone down. But there are other studies showing overall participation rate going down since the change. If it's my job to both grow the game and improve our senior national teams, I'm looking at this study thinking "oh, crap." We have lowered overall participation, and done so mostly through pushing out Q4 girls. Underdog effect would tell me that those girls could be particularly important for the senior team. I'm left hoping that the Q4 girls who are dropping aren't the same ones who are my eventual "underdogs."
You’re adding your own opinions into Finnegan’s findings.
Finnegan basically found that Talent ID at the YNT level was much better than at NT Camps and even more so at Club. The player pool (Club) remained the same, each tier filtered. It has nothing to do with underdog effect - the YNT players were included in the YNT Camp pool, which was included in the club pool.
The only takeaway, and one of the major points of the study, is the TALENT ID gets better as you scale upward, AND that the RAE is a non factor at the highest level, but is a significant factor at the Club level.
In short, your club coaches suck at talent id.
Actually, RAE has already had an impact before the older higher levels.
The filtering has already occurred.
That isn’t true. That’s an assumption based on “this is what it looks like at my club.”
At the highest level the data shows an age distribution across birth quarters that is in line with expectations from normal distribution - not from the selected pool. Read the study.
Can you please provide a legitimate and peer reviewed research paper or study on Relative Age Effect from a reputable source that shows an equal distribution through all four birth month quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) represented at the Academy and Elite club levels.
Thanks
Anonymous wrote:For those who have boys in MLS Next, how much international play do those teams actually do? What benefit does that league particularly get by being aligned with international play?
I feel like for every domestic youth league (leaving out national teams for the moment) except MLS Next, school year cutoff is the clear winner. For MLS Next, I could see why they would resist if they play a lot of international matches or are sending players to Europe as pros when they turn 18.
Winner at what? What's the real measurable benefit?
Measurable benefits favoring school year alignment: higher overall participation rates, higher overall retention rates, improved relative age effect profile, decreased club operations workload (after year 1), decreased college recruiter workload, decreased time off training for the trapped subset and/or decreased cost for private training during that time, decreased team disruption at U18-19.
Have there been any measurable benefits from the switch to calendar year with increased international alignment? I'm willing to entertain even the most remotely plausible theory of a measurable benefit. No one seems willing to attempt to articulate one. It would seem that if there were some measurable benefit, the easiest place to identify it would be MLS Next.
Saying measurable benefits and proving measurable benefits are two different things.
You're doing a lot of 'sounds nice' not based on facts and reality.
There's a lack of participation issue because of BY?
Won't there still be kids who are the youngest if you move from Jan1 to September 1? (August becomes the new December)
If you reject the circumstantial nature of the participation, retention, and RAE studies over the last 8 years, fine. The trends are indeed "facts and reality," but the cause cannot be said to be birth year cutoffs with certainty. In the face of those though, you'd think someone would be floating some alternative explanations.
Hypothetically, if I'm a US Soccer decision-maker about to go into a meeting on this issue, what are my arguments in favor of birth year? Scouring this thread, I only can find (1) saying 2010 is simpler than saying 2028, (2) that birth year is the status quo, and (3) a blanket denial of proposed benefits to school year. International alignment for the sake of itself, without a proposed benefit, is unlikely to convince those in favor of the change. Is there anything more convincing I should take into that meeting?
So you solution to RAE is shift the late developers from Dec, Nov, Oct to June, July, August?
RAE has gotten worse since the change. Q4 is less represented in youth club soccer than it was prior to the change. RAE profiles as kids age up are no longer being evened out as they age. Participation and retention rates are also down since the change, with Q4 accounting for an outsized portion of that decrease. Hypothesis presented is that this is a result of the change to birth year. Is there an alternative explanation? The reasoning for the hypothesis is that introducing the social and operational challenges of being across grade level are causing the permanent departure of Q4 kids from organized soccer. They are no longer sticking with it while waiting for their physical maturity to catch up. If there is no alternative explanation, are there countervailing benefits that should be weighed against this?
RAE is not getting better/worse since the change. It exists and will exist regardless of where you draw the cutoff. If Aug 1 becomes the cutoff, then RAE will impact may/June/July birthdays and they will become underrepresented because they are 10-12 months behind others in the age group developmentally.
You can make an argument about retention rates and using birth year, but RAE in itself doesn't change depending on where you draw the line - someone will always be the oldest in a 12 month window and someone will have to be the youngest.
It's hard to find an exact apples-to-apples RAE comparison before and after the switch. But comparing girls ECNL before the switch with all female club soccer and female talent ID centers after the switch, Q4 representation before the switch started HS ages at about 15% and went up each year, stabilizing at 20%. Now, Q4 representation starts HS ages between 10-15% and bounces up and down, never going above 15% and no upward trend through ages. While RAE strictly "exists" in both sets, I think it's fair to say RAE is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon - it can be "worse" or "better." A steeper negative slope from Q1 percent to Q4 percent could be called "worse." By this definition, it has gotten worse since the change.
At the extreme, if one set showed 94% Q1 and 3/2/1% Q2-4, that would be "worse" than a set showing 35/30/20/15%. If you consider those the same, because they both show RAE, I guess we just agree to disagree.
Statistically the comparison of Q4 representation before and after a switch is not the right comparison. The correct comparison is the representation rates in the last three months of each age group, i.e., how is representation is Oct/Nov/Dec birth dates now versus representation in May/June/July birth dates after a school year switch.
Yes, if it wasn't clear, that was the comparison - Q4 before switch (May-Jul) against Q4 after switch (Oct-Dec). If you search for the recent study, the one they are discussing in the ECNL podcast, it's "Relative age effect across talent identification process of youth female soccer players in the United States," Finnegan et al., 2024.
Female youth data from before the switch showed a more balanced representation of Q1 (Aug-Oct) and Q4 (May-Jul) across all ability levels. When just looking at a more elite subset (ECNL), Q4 was lower. Q4 would start at about 15% at U13 and tick up 1% each age group, showing that some late-bloomers were moving up to more elite teams. At the very highest level, national senior teams, RAE was gone or even reversed, in what was termed the "underdog effect." The idea was that those who did succeed against the odds during development years were more likely to be among the very best at the end of the journey.
After the switch, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) is not represented across all club levels near 25%, but rather bouncing around below 15%. That would support the proposition that whereas the old Q4 (May-Jul) girls continued participating at less elite levels during the early years, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) girls simply quit the sport. Youth national teams have higher Q4 representation than all club, which tends to show that those Q4 (new) girls who do stick with it are more likely to be good. The underdog effect is still most likely there too, but it's hard to see because the senior team's Q1-Q4 don't line up with the younger age groups as they are across the date for the switch in 2017.
Now, this could all be because Q1 participation rate has grown, rather than Q4 participation rate having gone down. But there are other studies showing overall participation rate going down since the change. If it's my job to both grow the game and improve our senior national teams, I'm looking at this study thinking "oh, crap." We have lowered overall participation, and done so mostly through pushing out Q4 girls. Underdog effect would tell me that those girls could be particularly important for the senior team. I'm left hoping that the Q4 girls who are dropping aren't the same ones who are my eventual "underdogs."
You’re adding your own opinions into Finnegan’s findings.
Finnegan basically found that Talent ID at the YNT level was much better than at NT Camps and even more so at Club. The player pool (Club) remained the same, each tier filtered. It has nothing to do with underdog effect - the YNT players were included in the YNT Camp pool, which was included in the club pool.
The only takeaway, and one of the major points of the study, is the TALENT ID gets better as you scale upward, AND that the RAE is a non factor at the highest level, but is a significant factor at the Club level.
In short, your club coaches suck at talent id.
Actually, RAE has already had an impact before the older higher levels.
The filtering has already occurred.
That isn’t true. That’s an assumption based on “this is what it looks like at my club.”
At the highest level the data shows an age distribution across birth quarters that is in line with expectations from normal distribution - not from the selected pool. Read the study.
Can you please provide a legitimate and peer reviewed research paper or study on Relative Age Effect from a reputable source that shows an equal distribution through all four birth month quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) represented at the Academy and Elite club levels.
Thanks
Anonymous wrote:For those who have boys in MLS Next, how much international play do those teams actually do? What benefit does that league particularly get by being aligned with international play?
I feel like for every domestic youth league (leaving out national teams for the moment) except MLS Next, school year cutoff is the clear winner. For MLS Next, I could see why they would resist if they play a lot of international matches or are sending players to Europe as pros when they turn 18.
Winner at what? What's the real measurable benefit?
Measurable benefits favoring school year alignment: higher overall participation rates, higher overall retention rates, improved relative age effect profile, decreased club operations workload (after year 1), decreased college recruiter workload, decreased time off training for the trapped subset and/or decreased cost for private training during that time, decreased team disruption at U18-19.
Have there been any measurable benefits from the switch to calendar year with increased international alignment? I'm willing to entertain even the most remotely plausible theory of a measurable benefit. No one seems willing to attempt to articulate one. It would seem that if there were some measurable benefit, the easiest place to identify it would be MLS Next.
Saying measurable benefits and proving measurable benefits are two different things.
You're doing a lot of 'sounds nice' not based on facts and reality.
There's a lack of participation issue because of BY?
Won't there still be kids who are the youngest if you move from Jan1 to September 1? (August becomes the new December)
If you reject the circumstantial nature of the participation, retention, and RAE studies over the last 8 years, fine. The trends are indeed "facts and reality," but the cause cannot be said to be birth year cutoffs with certainty. In the face of those though, you'd think someone would be floating some alternative explanations.
Hypothetically, if I'm a US Soccer decision-maker about to go into a meeting on this issue, what are my arguments in favor of birth year? Scouring this thread, I only can find (1) saying 2010 is simpler than saying 2028, (2) that birth year is the status quo, and (3) a blanket denial of proposed benefits to school year. International alignment for the sake of itself, without a proposed benefit, is unlikely to convince those in favor of the change. Is there anything more convincing I should take into that meeting?
So you solution to RAE is shift the late developers from Dec, Nov, Oct to June, July, August?
RAE has gotten worse since the change. Q4 is less represented in youth club soccer than it was prior to the change. RAE profiles as kids age up are no longer being evened out as they age. Participation and retention rates are also down since the change, with Q4 accounting for an outsized portion of that decrease. Hypothesis presented is that this is a result of the change to birth year. Is there an alternative explanation? The reasoning for the hypothesis is that introducing the social and operational challenges of being across grade level are causing the permanent departure of Q4 kids from organized soccer. They are no longer sticking with it while waiting for their physical maturity to catch up. If there is no alternative explanation, are there countervailing benefits that should be weighed against this?
RAE is not getting better/worse since the change. It exists and will exist regardless of where you draw the cutoff. If Aug 1 becomes the cutoff, then RAE will impact may/June/July birthdays and they will become underrepresented because they are 10-12 months behind others in the age group developmentally.
You can make an argument about retention rates and using birth year, but RAE in itself doesn't change depending on where you draw the line - someone will always be the oldest in a 12 month window and someone will have to be the youngest.
It's hard to find an exact apples-to-apples RAE comparison before and after the switch. But comparing girls ECNL before the switch with all female club soccer and female talent ID centers after the switch, Q4 representation before the switch started HS ages at about 15% and went up each year, stabilizing at 20%. Now, Q4 representation starts HS ages between 10-15% and bounces up and down, never going above 15% and no upward trend through ages. While RAE strictly "exists" in both sets, I think it's fair to say RAE is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon - it can be "worse" or "better." A steeper negative slope from Q1 percent to Q4 percent could be called "worse." By this definition, it has gotten worse since the change.
At the extreme, if one set showed 94% Q1 and 3/2/1% Q2-4, that would be "worse" than a set showing 35/30/20/15%. If you consider those the same, because they both show RAE, I guess we just agree to disagree.
Statistically the comparison of Q4 representation before and after a switch is not the right comparison. The correct comparison is the representation rates in the last three months of each age group, i.e., how is representation is Oct/Nov/Dec birth dates now versus representation in May/June/July birth dates after a school year switch.
Yes, if it wasn't clear, that was the comparison - Q4 before switch (May-Jul) against Q4 after switch (Oct-Dec). If you search for the recent study, the one they are discussing in the ECNL podcast, it's "Relative age effect across talent identification process of youth female soccer players in the United States," Finnegan et al., 2024.
Female youth data from before the switch showed a more balanced representation of Q1 (Aug-Oct) and Q4 (May-Jul) across all ability levels. When just looking at a more elite subset (ECNL), Q4 was lower. Q4 would start at about 15% at U13 and tick up 1% each age group, showing that some late-bloomers were moving up to more elite teams. At the very highest level, national senior teams, RAE was gone or even reversed, in what was termed the "underdog effect." The idea was that those who did succeed against the odds during development years were more likely to be among the very best at the end of the journey.
After the switch, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) is not represented across all club levels near 25%, but rather bouncing around below 15%. That would support the proposition that whereas the old Q4 (May-Jul) girls continued participating at less elite levels during the early years, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) girls simply quit the sport. Youth national teams have higher Q4 representation than all club, which tends to show that those Q4 (new) girls who do stick with it are more likely to be good. The underdog effect is still most likely there too, but it's hard to see because the senior team's Q1-Q4 don't line up with the younger age groups as they are across the date for the switch in 2017.
Now, this could all be because Q1 participation rate has grown, rather than Q4 participation rate having gone down. But there are other studies showing overall participation rate going down since the change. If it's my job to both grow the game and improve our senior national teams, I'm looking at this study thinking "oh, crap." We have lowered overall participation, and done so mostly through pushing out Q4 girls. Underdog effect would tell me that those girls could be particularly important for the senior team. I'm left hoping that the Q4 girls who are dropping aren't the same ones who are my eventual "underdogs."
You’re adding your own opinions into Finnegan’s findings.
Finnegan basically found that Talent ID at the YNT level was much better than at NT Camps and even more so at Club. The player pool (Club) remained the same, each tier filtered. It has nothing to do with underdog effect - the YNT players were included in the YNT Camp pool, which was included in the club pool.
The only takeaway, and one of the major points of the study, is the TALENT ID gets better as you scale upward, AND that the RAE is a non factor at the highest level, but is a significant factor at the Club level.
In short, your club coaches suck at talent id.
Actually, RAE has already had an impact before the older higher levels.
The filtering has already occurred.
That isn’t true. That’s an assumption based on “this is what it looks like at my club.”
At the highest level the data shows an age distribution across birth quarters that is in line with expectations from normal distribution - not from the selected pool. Read the study.
Can you please provide a legitimate and peer reviewed research paper or study on Relative Age Effect from a reputable source that shows an equal distribution through all four birth month quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) represented at the Academy and Elite club levels.
Thanks
A PP literally linked it 3 pages back….
Also, that isn’t what is being said. ECNL / Acadmey are awful at talent ID. You see a large RAE impact in those pools
YNT Camps have a reduced RAE impact as talent ID gets better
Then YNT has a regression to normal distribution, with exception of a few positions that are height heavy and tend to favor older players / taller payers (CB for example - where physical needs outweigh technical).
Talent ID at the YNT is fairly solid RAE impact is minimal.
You sure about that? Eye test of u15 roster says different, one of smallest players on the team played nearly every minute at CB. Ball playing CB who read the game faster than the need to be big is what I saw, and frankly is what's needed in all of US soccer
Anonymous wrote:For those who have boys in MLS Next, how much international play do those teams actually do? What benefit does that league particularly get by being aligned with international play?
I feel like for every domestic youth league (leaving out national teams for the moment) except MLS Next, school year cutoff is the clear winner. For MLS Next, I could see why they would resist if they play a lot of international matches or are sending players to Europe as pros when they turn 18.
Winner at what? What's the real measurable benefit?
Measurable benefits favoring school year alignment: higher overall participation rates, higher overall retention rates, improved relative age effect profile, decreased club operations workload (after year 1), decreased college recruiter workload, decreased time off training for the trapped subset and/or decreased cost for private training during that time, decreased team disruption at U18-19.
Have there been any measurable benefits from the switch to calendar year with increased international alignment? I'm willing to entertain even the most remotely plausible theory of a measurable benefit. No one seems willing to attempt to articulate one. It would seem that if there were some measurable benefit, the easiest place to identify it would be MLS Next.
Saying measurable benefits and proving measurable benefits are two different things.
You're doing a lot of 'sounds nice' not based on facts and reality.
There's a lack of participation issue because of BY?
Won't there still be kids who are the youngest if you move from Jan1 to September 1? (August becomes the new December)
If you reject the circumstantial nature of the participation, retention, and RAE studies over the last 8 years, fine. The trends are indeed "facts and reality," but the cause cannot be said to be birth year cutoffs with certainty. In the face of those though, you'd think someone would be floating some alternative explanations.
Hypothetically, if I'm a US Soccer decision-maker about to go into a meeting on this issue, what are my arguments in favor of birth year? Scouring this thread, I only can find (1) saying 2010 is simpler than saying 2028, (2) that birth year is the status quo, and (3) a blanket denial of proposed benefits to school year. International alignment for the sake of itself, without a proposed benefit, is unlikely to convince those in favor of the change. Is there anything more convincing I should take into that meeting?
So you solution to RAE is shift the late developers from Dec, Nov, Oct to June, July, August?
RAE has gotten worse since the change. Q4 is less represented in youth club soccer than it was prior to the change. RAE profiles as kids age up are no longer being evened out as they age. Participation and retention rates are also down since the change, with Q4 accounting for an outsized portion of that decrease. Hypothesis presented is that this is a result of the change to birth year. Is there an alternative explanation? The reasoning for the hypothesis is that introducing the social and operational challenges of being across grade level are causing the permanent departure of Q4 kids from organized soccer. They are no longer sticking with it while waiting for their physical maturity to catch up. If there is no alternative explanation, are there countervailing benefits that should be weighed against this?
RAE is not getting better/worse since the change. It exists and will exist regardless of where you draw the cutoff. If Aug 1 becomes the cutoff, then RAE will impact may/June/July birthdays and they will become underrepresented because they are 10-12 months behind others in the age group developmentally.
You can make an argument about retention rates and using birth year, but RAE in itself doesn't change depending on where you draw the line - someone will always be the oldest in a 12 month window and someone will have to be the youngest.
It's hard to find an exact apples-to-apples RAE comparison before and after the switch. But comparing girls ECNL before the switch with all female club soccer and female talent ID centers after the switch, Q4 representation before the switch started HS ages at about 15% and went up each year, stabilizing at 20%. Now, Q4 representation starts HS ages between 10-15% and bounces up and down, never going above 15% and no upward trend through ages. While RAE strictly "exists" in both sets, I think it's fair to say RAE is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon - it can be "worse" or "better." A steeper negative slope from Q1 percent to Q4 percent could be called "worse." By this definition, it has gotten worse since the change.
At the extreme, if one set showed 94% Q1 and 3/2/1% Q2-4, that would be "worse" than a set showing 35/30/20/15%. If you consider those the same, because they both show RAE, I guess we just agree to disagree.
Statistically the comparison of Q4 representation before and after a switch is not the right comparison. The correct comparison is the representation rates in the last three months of each age group, i.e., how is representation is Oct/Nov/Dec birth dates now versus representation in May/June/July birth dates after a school year switch.
Yes, if it wasn't clear, that was the comparison - Q4 before switch (May-Jul) against Q4 after switch (Oct-Dec). If you search for the recent study, the one they are discussing in the ECNL podcast, it's "Relative age effect across talent identification process of youth female soccer players in the United States," Finnegan et al., 2024.
Female youth data from before the switch showed a more balanced representation of Q1 (Aug-Oct) and Q4 (May-Jul) across all ability levels. When just looking at a more elite subset (ECNL), Q4 was lower. Q4 would start at about 15% at U13 and tick up 1% each age group, showing that some late-bloomers were moving up to more elite teams. At the very highest level, national senior teams, RAE was gone or even reversed, in what was termed the "underdog effect." The idea was that those who did succeed against the odds during development years were more likely to be among the very best at the end of the journey.
After the switch, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) is not represented across all club levels near 25%, but rather bouncing around below 15%. That would support the proposition that whereas the old Q4 (May-Jul) girls continued participating at less elite levels during the early years, the new Q4 (Oct-Dec) girls simply quit the sport. Youth national teams have higher Q4 representation than all club, which tends to show that those Q4 (new) girls who do stick with it are more likely to be good. The underdog effect is still most likely there too, but it's hard to see because the senior team's Q1-Q4 don't line up with the younger age groups as they are across the date for the switch in 2017.
Now, this could all be because Q1 participation rate has grown, rather than Q4 participation rate having gone down. But there are other studies showing overall participation rate going down since the change. If it's my job to both grow the game and improve our senior national teams, I'm looking at this study thinking "oh, crap." We have lowered overall participation, and done so mostly through pushing out Q4 girls. Underdog effect would tell me that those girls could be particularly important for the senior team. I'm left hoping that the Q4 girls who are dropping aren't the same ones who are my eventual "underdogs."
You’re adding your own opinions into Finnegan’s findings.
Finnegan basically found that Talent ID at the YNT level was much better than at NT Camps and even more so at Club. The player pool (Club) remained the same, each tier filtered. It has nothing to do with underdog effect - the YNT players were included in the YNT Camp pool, which was included in the club pool.
The only takeaway, and one of the major points of the study, is the TALENT ID gets better as you scale upward, AND that the RAE is a non factor at the highest level, but is a significant factor at the Club level.
In short, your club coaches suck at talent id.
Actually, RAE has already had an impact before the older higher levels.
The filtering has already occurred.
That isn’t true. That’s an assumption based on “this is what it looks like at my club.”
At the highest level the data shows an age distribution across birth quarters that is in line with expectations from normal distribution - not from the selected pool. Read the study.
Can you please provide a legitimate and peer reviewed research paper or study on Relative Age Effect from a reputable source that shows an equal distribution through all four birth month quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) represented at the Academy and Elite club levels.
Thanks
A PP literally linked it 3 pages back….
Also, that isn’t what is being said. ECNL / Acadmey are awful at talent ID. You see a large RAE impact in those pools
YNT Camps have a reduced RAE impact as talent ID gets better
Then YNT has a regression to normal distribution, with exception of a few positions that are height heavy and tend to favor older players / taller payers (CB for example - where physical needs outweigh technical).
Talent ID at the YNT is fairly solid RAE impact is minimal.
So all these football associations and soccer governing bodies have it wrong?
They can all drop biobanding and other programs currently in place like National Youth B teams and competitions for specifically late developers?
It is quite clear to any logical person that since RAE has caused many late bloomers to quit the sport because of not getting selected at early ages to top teams, there will be less late bloomers at older ages.
Also, since this thing called puberty happens at older ages, many late bloomers catch up in physicality, so there will be less differences between the birth month quarters.
The biggest point about RAEffect is the dropout of late bloomers. So saying there are less of them later is stating the obvious.
RAE studies also show that at the older ages over U18, there are former late bloomers who managed to stay with high level soccer learning to use other skills at elite levels until their size caught up.
So that’s why you will have the Harry Kane the De Bruyne the Declan Rice etc
RAE doesn't just become less of a problem at older ages. It has already eliminated many of the late physical developers.
Anonymous wrote:You sure about that? Eye test of u15 roster says different, one of smallest players on the team played nearly every minute at CB. Ball playing CB who read the game faster than the need to be big is what I saw, and frankly is what's needed in all of US soccer
Eye test/but sometimes evidence doesn't work, it is just throwing a dead cat on the table. The universe of study is almost always just too big for one persons eye test. Hence science uses real numbers, analysis, controls, etc. If a player's size is largely irrelevant than about half the starters should be smaller than average and about half should be larger. Only one example of a relatively smaller player actual proves the point, meaning the are so rare that you noticed. But again the sample size is too small too prove any hypothesis.
Anonymous wrote:You sure about that? Eye test of u15 roster says different, one of smallest players on the team played nearly every minute at CB. Ball playing CB who read the game faster than the need to be big is what I saw, and frankly is what's needed in all of US soccer
Agreed, I've observed some of the best CB at U14 and U15 are smaller players on different elite teams across the country. Yet to see a big CB that doesn't rely primarily on their size, it's a blessing and a curse. Elite coaches are recognizing that and are not afraid to play smaller players there. Can't say the same for the rest of travel who don't necessarily have that coaching and player talent so tend to favor the bigger players across the board.
Anonymous wrote:You sure about that? Eye test of u15 roster says different, one of smallest players on the team played nearly every minute at CB. Ball playing CB who read the game faster than the need to be big is what I saw, and frankly is what's needed in all of US soccer
Agreed, I've observed some of the best CB at U14 and U15 are smaller players on different elite teams across the country. Yet to see a big CB that doesn't rely primarily on their size, it's a blessing and a curse. Elite coaches are recognizing that and are not afraid to play smaller players there. Can't say the same for the rest of travel who don't necessarily have that coaching and player talent so tend to favor the bigger players across the board.
You are saying in your observation of U14 and U15 MLS Next and USYNT Center Backs, you have seen quite a few small players?
Anonymous wrote:You sure about that? Eye test of u15 roster says different, one of smallest players on the team played nearly every minute at CB. Ball playing CB who read the game faster than the need to be big is what I saw, and frankly is what's needed in all of US soccer
Agreed, I've observed some of the best CB at U14 and U15 are smaller players on different elite teams across the country. Yet to see a big CB that doesn't rely primarily on their size, it's a blessing and a curse. Elite coaches are recognizing that and are not afraid to play smaller players there. Can't say the same for the rest of travel who don't necessarily have that coaching and player talent so tend to favor the bigger players across the board.
You are saying in your observation of U14 and U15 MLS Next and USYNT Center Backs, you have seen quite a few small players?
Anonymous wrote:You sure about that? Eye test of u15 roster says different, one of smallest players on the team played nearly every minute at CB. Ball playing CB who read the game faster than the need to be big is what I saw, and frankly is what's needed in all of US soccer
Agreed, I've observed some of the best CB at U14 and U15 are smaller players on different elite teams across the country. Yet to see a big CB that doesn't rely primarily on their size, it's a blessing and a curse. Elite coaches are recognizing that and are not afraid to play smaller players there. Can't say the same for the rest of travel who don't necessarily have that coaching and player talent so tend to favor the bigger players across the board.
At U14/15 yes because they are waiting/expecting them to still grow. You won’t see many small CB’s on those teams at U17/19
Has anyone actually heard their ECNL director say they might change or it’s being talked about? Or is this all just made up from people who heard something from their friend’s cousin.
My daughter’s ECNL coach/director had no idea that this was even talked about. Thinks there is a 0% chance they change. Only thing he said was maybe they add biobanding option.
Anonymous wrote:Has anyone actually heard their ECNL director say they might change or it’s being talked about? Or is this all just made up from people who heard something from their friend’s cousin.
My daughter’s ECNL coach/director had no idea that this was even talked about. Thinks there is a 0% chance they change. Only thing he said was maybe they add biobanding option.
OK so your ECNL director has no idea this is even being talked about, when US soccer sent out a survey specifically on this topic? 🙄
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