What is Bio-Banding in Football?

Bio-banding is the practice of grouping young players according to their biological maturity rather than their chronological age.

Traditionally, players are grouped by birth year:

• U13

• U14

• U15

  
  

However, two 13-year-olds can be at very different stages of physical development.

One player may:

• be 170cm tall

• have gone through puberty

• be physically powerful

  
  

Another may:

• be 150cm tall

• still be pre-puberty

• be physically immature

  
  

Bio-banding aims to reduce these developmental differences and create fairer learning environments.

Youth football, in particular between the ages of 12 and 15 often rewards size, strength, speed and physical dominance. These factors can lead to players who possess better long-term potential with attributes such as excellent technique, football intelligence and creativity being overlooked throughout talent I-D processes.

Jesse Lingard regularly played in a younger age group during his time in the Manchester United youth academy.

So, how is bio-banding carried out?

Clubs estimate biological maturity using:

• height

• weight

• sitting height

• growth measurements

• predicted adult height

  
  

Players are then grouped by maturity status rather than age.

For example:

Traditional U14 Match

• Early maturers dominate physically.

• Smaller players struggle.

  
  

Bio-Banded Match

• Players of similar maturity compete together.

• Physical advantages are reduced.

• Technical and tactical qualities become more visible.

While I believe alot of football organisations believe this process offers great benefits to player development, it does require considerable resource to manage. Bio-Banding was adopted by the English FA as early as 2016 with the organisation of bio-banded tournaments and festivals, and numerous high profile academies use bio-banding internally - whether that be as part of their selection processes or in the organisation of specific bio-banded training games and other competitions. Arsenal, Southampton, Chelsea and Manchester City all advocate for the use of Bio-Banding and use the process internally.

While Bio-Banding has not been used here in NZ, there are signs that it could be considered in sometime or when the resources were available. NZ Football and its regional bodies, as well as numerous private competitions, do allow for dispensation of players to play up or down age groups. Unfortunately, this is often not communicated correctly and parties have been known to use this for their competitive advantage rather than its purpose. Auckland's APL competition allows players born in the last 3 months of the previous year to play within an age group - the purpose of this is to allow players who might struggle physically to play in a more competitive environment, but you can see how this can be misused.

The benefits are not just for late developers, bio-banding can help the development of early developers too. Often players who develop physically early learn to rely on their physical ability. Bio-banding helps these players learn better decision making and technical quality becomes more important.

There are no real down-sides to bio-banding other than dealing with the stigma associated with playing down a year. Players and parents alike look at playing up a year as a symbol of success and high potential while they look at playing down a year as a problem. I'm always very wary of putting players up, and try to only do so if they will still stand out in the year above. I currently work with a number of players playing in higher years and each has very different reasons for this. I wouldn't say that all of them are there because they are 'prodigy's' and that their long term potential is any higher than those who are in their own age group. I can also think of numerous players that could really benefit from playing down a year. There are a number of players I work with currently that I see great potential for but probably miss out on selection currently purely due to a lack of physical ability.

When Bio-banding is so new to football and especially rare in NZ Football I'm not sure how the suggestion of playing down a year would go down with these players, I do however strongly agree they would benefit from it.