Does the Relative Age of Young Soccer Players Define Who Makes the Team Starting Lineup?

Thepurpose of this study was to determine the influence of therelative age of young soccer players in the probability of beingon the starting lineup of two teams from Saint Catharine, Brazil.Subjects were 140 male U-15, U-17, and U-20 soccer players(mean age = 16.4 ± 1.69 yrs). The SPSS 20.0 software wasused to analyze the data. Non-parametric Chi-square was usedto study the association between relative age and starting lineupcondition. Logistic regression was used to study the associationafter adjusting for the influence of maturation and practice time.Players who were born in the second semester of the year had61.3% less probability to become starters in their teams,regardless of their maturational status. In the U-15 category,players who were born in the second semester of the year had85.7% less probability to become starters. The relative age wasunrelated to becoming a starter or not in the U-17 and U-20categories. The findings indicate that young soccer players who were born in the second semester of the year had less opportunity to be included in the startinglineup in the categories studied.