Using Age- and Size-Corrected Measures of Technical Skill to Better Assess the Performances of Youth Soccer Players

Youth soccer academies are dominated by the older players in each annual age cohort because they are judged to be better at the time of selection. Failing to identify talented players because they are simply younger in their cohort is a problem of both discrimination and poor practice. One potential method for addressing such biases is to develop and use age- and size-corrected assessments of individual players using traits closely associated with match success. In this study, we quantified the relationship between age and size with individual passing and control performance in six different tests for 170 players between 10 and 20 years old from a Tier 1 academy in Brazil. Passing tests were significantly repeatable and performance varied among tests (df = 5; F = 432.2; p < 0.001). Overall passing performance (PCP1)—based on all tests—was significantly positively associated with age (R2 = 0.42, t = 10.67; p < 0.001), height (R2 = 0.19, t = 6.13; p < 0.001) and mass (R2 = 0.23, t = 6.90, p < 0.001). In addition, tests of passing and control could discriminate among groups of differing playing levels (test 1: F(2,116) = 55.2, p < 0.001; test 3: F(2,116) = 12.0, p < 0.001). Normative algorithms from this study can be used to compare athletes during selection trials and against an elite group, after taking age and size into account, and using such algorithms could vastly reduce the insipid age-biases that plague youth football.