The Relative Age Effect and How it Effects your Child

The Relative Age Effect (RAE) is one of the most talked about phrases in Youth Football today, unlike a lot of other buzzwords and phrases, RAE is worth our attention.

Arsenal's wonderkid, Max Dowman, goes against the grain of RAE being born in December.

For those not familiar with RAE, this is the advantage players can have when they are born earlier in the selection year compared to players born later in the same year group.

For example, if the age cut-off is January 1st:

• A player born in January could be almost 12 months older than a teammate born in December.

  
  

• At young ages, 12 months can make a huge difference in:

  
  

  • physical size

  • speed

  • strength

  • coordination

  • confidence

  • emotional maturity

    
    

Because of this, older players within the age group are often:

• selected more often

• viewed as “more talented”

• given better coaching opportunities

• chosen for elite teams

• given more game time

  
  

Meanwhile, relatively younger players may:

• be overlooked

• lose confidence

• receive fewer opportunities

• drop out of football earlier

So why is this so important? Well, the affect of RAE on long term development is bigger than you might think. Essentially it creates a false picture of talent.

A bigger, faster 13-year-old born in January may appear better than a technically gifted December-born player simply because they are more physically mature at that moment.

Over time, the later-born player may eventually:

• catch up physically

• surpass others technically/tactically

• develop greater resilience and creativity

  
  

The football world has been aware of RAE for sometime and in advanced footballing nations its a considered factor in selection processes, or I should say, becoming a more considered factor in selection processes.

The over-riding issue with RAE is that in youth football players future development is affected hugely by the coaching and opportunities these young players are given. If players are ruled out of selection early in the process they are less likely to receive the same treatment as players who are included; quality coaching, competitive environments, confidence etc.

The last FIFA Under 20 and Under 17 World Cups were however proof that RAE still plays a large role in the development of our young players.

The above, Figure 5, shows the age months players taking part in the 2025 FIFA Under 17 World Cup. The numbers of players born in the first 3 months of the year are still considerably higher than those born later in the year.

Interestingly though however, with the above data showing the split across different regions, OFC, shows the biggest proportion of players born in the first quarter of the year. I would say this is easily explained by countries in the OFC region not having the resources to consider RAE in their selection, not only of their Under 17 National Teams but most likely in the earlier years of development which leads to the development required to reach the ability required to make these teams.

That said, when you look at the data from the 2025 FIFA Under 20 World Cup(Figure 4), there is a considerable drop in these numbers for the OFC region. This symbolises the region itself is late in its development and that players do in fact still have a good chance of high level development whether they are selected for teams earlier or not.

In following with the above trend within the OFC region, I have been told that only 1% of Under 17 NZ Internationals go on to represent NZ at full international level.

On the surface it sounds like the issue of RAE has a lesser long term affect on the development of players in NZ, but that its an issue amongst selection in the early years due to a lack of resource making it hard to take RAE into account, or a lack of awareness of the issue by those in positions to make selections.

I currently coach 2 youth teams, one U12 and one U13, both are top teams within their age group and both have a very high number of players born in the first half of the year over those born in the second half, I would say in both cases the percentage is even higher than those seen above in the FIFA Under 17 World Cup data. In my experience I would say that the issue is not mentioned within the club and that the data is also not available to help ensure this is not taken into account throughout the process.

This brings me to the main point of this article, How does this affect your child?

I would say in New Zealand this is different to countries like Spain or England where the development process is considerably more advanced. It's likely that RAE will play a large role in your child's selection into teams and academies, but that the lasting effect is less so than in other nations.

This is mainly due to the fact that there are few opportunities in our country that lead to considerably more advanced development. So while RAE is more likely to impact selection in the early years of development, if your child is aware of this and continues to drive and train hard, they will much easier be able to overcome this and still succeed in football.

Its worth noting also that RAE seems to play a much smaller role in football prodigies, they do seem to be an exception to the rule, which makes sense as these players are an exception to most normal trends in football development. The one common trend amongst these players is however the high number of them that don't go on to reach their potential, this is due to a number of other factors which I will discuss in another article.

To give you an example of how these players don't follow RAE data, Max Dowman is born in December, Yamal born in July.