Relative Age Effect in Top European Football Leagues

Relative age effect (RAE) known as the birth date effect phenomena that widely used in identifying the individual talents and skills which early born have greater advantages compare to later born individuals. The main objective of this study is to investigate the relationship of RAE between European football leagues team rankings. For this study it involved a total of 946 football players (n=946) from every top four European football league which included the English Premier League (EPL) (United Kingdom), Serie A (Italy), La Liga (Spain) and Bundesliga (Germany). The secondary data were collected from every football league official website and categorized into four different quartiles (Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4). The cut-off date started at 1st of January for Italy, Spain, Germany and England according to the equality principles that was established by FIFA. Then, the Chi-square (χ2) test assisted for birth month distribution into four different quartiles in order to gain frequencies in each quartile. Result showed the presence of RAE in all top four European football leagues. Moreover, there were overrepresented players in Q1 in every league ranking team especially among top four teams. To conclude, the top four European football leagues had prevalence in RAE which the early born mostly overrepresented in every top four European Leagues, and suggests that early born footballers are also associated with high ranking in those leagues. Thus, it is possible to associate high team ranking and success with RAE in elite professional football.