On August 24th, 2015, US Soccer released coaching initiatives targeting improvement in youth development standard. Two mandatory changes were outlined for implementation in 2017: “Small-Sided Standards” and “Birth-Year Registration.” I would like to draw your attention to the latter (as if your attention hasn’t already been drawn there, haha).
In their release, US Soccer stated (link provided at the end of the blog), “Birth-year registration will now align with the start of the Calendar year and run from January to December, rather than August to July as it was previously.”
This statement in and of itself caused a rather large stir in the youth soccer community. To simplify, this initiative will affect players born from September-December. These players will be the oldest of their grade year, but on the younger side of the birth year. For example, when in 8th grade, their teammates are in 9th grade, or when in 12th grade, their teammates are in college.
US Soccer’s justification for this change: “The initiative will align registration with the international standard, while simultaneously providing clearer information on player birth dates to combat ‘relative age effect’.”
I could write an entirely different blog on aligning birth-year registration with international standard, but I'll leave that for another time. Instead, this blog will focus on the second part of that justification, “…while simultaneously providing clearer information on player birth dates to combat ‘relative age effect’.”
First off, in case you need an idea of what “Relative Age Effect” (aka: "RAE") is, US Soccer gave a good definition in their release: “Relative age effect refers to the selection bias related to players that are more physically mature than their peers due to being born earlier in the year.”
That being said, a couple of questions are raised:
Is US Soccer saying that changing this is going to somehow combat "RAE"?!?! If so, all this initiative does is change the reference date, and over time, “RAE” will rear it’s ugly head again.
Is US Soccer saying that this change will somehow provide clearer information on whether we have the same problem in the US?!?! If so, why do we need to have clearer information? It’s not like it somehow mysteriously exists in other countries, but not here… or vice versa.
Either way, we were left with more questions than answers. So instead of drowning in the negative and creating more of a problem by complaining, I decided I would be a part of the solution. So, I did as any rational person would… I googled it.
Initially, I stumbled across clubs utilizing Doctors to place each player based on where they are in their growth process. This is obviously ideal, but not realistic for many reasons. So I continued my search for potential affordable/practical resolve.
Eventually I came across a couple of plausible ways to potentially combat “RAE” at the youth level in the US:
While at Feyenoord of the Dutch Eredivisie, Raymond Verheijen and his staff found success in combating “RAE” by grouping players within 3 months of their birth-date.
Slightly different, but still successful, Tottenham Hotspur of the English Premier League grouped players of the same age together. More specifically, they would move players up to the older group on their birthday. For example, when a player turned 12, they moved up to play with the other 12 year-olds. This gave that player the chance to be the youngest as well as the oldest of the age group throughout the course of a year.
To be fair, I don’t think national, regional, or state leagues are ready to implement either of these at this point. However, they could be implemented within a club. This could be done through the creation of club-wide training sessions that occur once a week in place of a team training session. The size of the club and it’s membership would dictate whether the first or the second grouping option is utilized in these sessions. This could, at the very least, be a starting point in an effort to combat “RAE.”
My hope is that clubs take some initiative with combating "RAE." We need to do a better job of identifying players that have potential to make an impact down the road, and not just the players that are making an impact now. We preach development, but winning seems to still take precedence. “RAE” is real.
The bigger picture… Be proactive with this change and help combat “RAE”, stand firm for development, let’s make a change together.
US Soccer Release: http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2015/08/24/18/07/150824-coaching-player-development-initiatives-rel