On FIFA’s web-site promoting the start of the U-17 World Cup in Nigeria the event is hyped as a chance to “discover the stars of tomorrow.”  And while there is an impressive list of former participants (including, for example, Ronaldinho, Michael Essien, and Luis Figo) another look at the history of the U-17 World Cup offers more cautionary tales than burgeoning stars.

You might think that winning the Golden Ball or Golden Shoe at the U-17 World Cup would be a sure predictor of future stardom—and that is certainly the assumption of many professional scouts.  But since the first U-17 FIFA tournament in China in 1985 the winners of those awards include such decidedly non-stars as James Will of Scotland, Mohammed Al-Kathiri of Oman, Sergio Santamaría of Spain, Brazilians William and Adriano (not the Adriano of Inter Milan fame, but the journeyman whose career history includes nearly 20 different clubs—mostly in the lower levels of Brazil), and many others whose names should provoke amonst fans of world soccer that simplist of honorifics: Who?!?!

In fact, depending on how you feel about Landon Donovan’s failure to ever make it outside the US (he won the FIFA U-17 Golden Ball in 1999), the only clear success of the award winners from 12 editions of the U-17 World Cup is Cesc Fàbregas.  Now, some of the other winners have had degrees of success and there have certainly been many other good stories from the U-17 World Cup—but the general point should be familiar to anyone who pays any attention to youth development: the best players at 17 are rarely the best players at 25.  Which is what makes youth development anywhere such a puzzle.

And while there are many pieces to that puzzle, one of the most basic (but oft ignored) is the issue of maturation.  Age groups based on birthdays are really just artificial markers intended to group people at approximately levels in their physical maturation (something I’ve written about before in relation to claims of age cheats).  But physical maturation rates actually vary dramatically from one person to another—something that is particularly notable to those of us still scarred by showing up for U-17 try-outs weighing a buck ten (49.9 kgs) soaking wet and getting squashed like a bug by the tank who had been shaving twice a day since turning 10.  The tank and I were, according to our birthdays, the same age—but our bodies were years apart.

So what often happens at the U-17 World Cup, and in youth soccer everywhere, is that the best players are just the early maturers.  In many cases, they are as good as they will ever be at 17 while the late maturers still have years of physical development to go.  But one of the key (and, again, oft ignored) problem for any youth development scheme is that the early maturers often seem as though they will be the better players, and thus get a disproportionate amount of attention and resources (see, for example, Freddy Adu).  Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book Outliers, a tome ultimately designed to promote equal opportunity, begins with a clever example of this phenomenon known as relative age effects—something I though would be fun to consider in relation to US Soccer (since I’m an American and all…).

Relative Age Effects

In the ongoing discussion about how to best organize a youth development system, you rarely hear anyone talking about the importance of birthdays.  But for myself, having a day job as a developmental psychologist, the issue of birthdays and “relative age effects” seems right on point.  Relative age effects are a phenomenon where people gain some advantage because their birthday is on the early side of a cut-off defining a cohort such as grade in school or age-group for youth sports.  The idea is that as children those with early birthdays, although ostensibly the same age as others in their cohort, subtly benefit from being older and more mature than those with later birthdays.  The kid born January 1^st is officially in the same age-group as the kid born December 31^st, but in reality is a full year older.

This has some relevance to school, where children born on the early side of the year set to define a class will be (on average) more mature than children born towards the end of the year, and it has some relevance to sports including soccer.  In fact, there is an excellent summary of relative age effects and past versions of the U17 World Cup available at Science of Soccer Online, and lots of other good research out there on the phenomenon, but US Soccer also seems to offer a persuasive example.

Though the question is partially just a matter of interest for statistics nerds, it also has some very real implications for talent development and future national team success.  The issues at stake are engagingly described by Gladwell in Outliers, which describes the impact of relative age on sport success as having been first established among elite hockey players.  The basic finding is that a statistically significant disproportion of professional hockey players were born in the first few months of the year, presumably because they were more physically mature during age group play (which uses January 1^st as a cut-off) and thus garnered extra success and exponential benefits.

Gladwell uses the example to illustrate a much broader argument about the ways success in society is not just a matter of hard work and individual merit—rather much of our success is due to fortuitous circumstances.  But elsewhere Gladwell also notes that as a Canadian he wishes the hockey powers-that-be would pay more attention to the relative age effect.  In essence, the current system deprives Canada of much potential hockey talent by arbitrarily privileging kids born in certain months.  This is not just a matter of equal opportunity, it is a matter of having really good national teams.  Think of all the Benny Feilhabers (DOB 1/19) and Lori Chalupnys (DOB 1/29) we might find if we paid as much attention to kids born in October, November, and December as we pay to kids born in January, February, and March.

Analyzing the US Rosters

So finding myself thoroughly bored a few months ago, I cut and pasted all the player pools on ussoccer.com (as of 8/7/09) into a trusty excel spreadsheet and compared birth months.  The picture for the U15, U17, U18, and U20 teams is about what all the other research would predict:

The basic idea here is that US youth national teams are dominated by players born in the first quarter of the year.  Assuming that dates of birth are relatively randomly distributed and fundamentally irrelevant to true soccer potential, this basically means there is a systematic bias in our player development system (almost certainly unintentional and unconscious) towards older players.  The shame is that we are likely missing some great potential players who were born in December, and give up fighting the big kids before they ever fulfill their potential.

The picture for the older players is more complicated.  Including players from both the U23 / Olympic pools and full national team pools (I should note that I got a bit sloppy here because there is significant overlap in these pools, so some players were counted twice—though I don’t think that should dramatically change the distributions) the most popular time for women’s players to be born was July through September and the least popular was January through March:

I’m not sure what’s going on here.  It certainly could be that the women’s national team is more of a true meritocracy than other teams, though I kind of doubt that.  I wonder if it has to do more with the fact that during the years when most of the current national team players were growing up club soccer was a much more prominent place for female players to develop: the cut-off for club soccer were often August 1^st to coordinate with school years.  But that’s just a guess.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I found in this birth date sifting is that if you want to play in a World Cup for the US you best not have the misfortune to be born in December.  For the U-17’s, for example, the roster of 40 players “in residency” (and thus presumably receiving most of the resources) includes zero with a December birthday.  Similarly, of the 93 players in the men’s and women’s US senior national team pools a grand total of one was born in December (if all things were equal you’d expect to have about 8 born in December—and in each of the 12 months).

The one US senior national pool player with a December birthday? Jay DeMerit.  For anyone that knows the Jay DeMerit story this fits perfectly with the concept of relative age effects: DeMerit never got a sniff for any US national team until he paid his own way from Green Bay to a London pub league and miraculously found his way to a starring role in Watford’s promotion to the Premier League.  Just think what he might have done if he had been born in January.

And if you pay any attention to the U-17 World Cup this month, which I recommend for the fun of it all, try to keep an open mind.  No matter how good a youth development scheme a country has, the nature of maturation and the artificial use of birthdays to define age groups means that as many “stars of tomorrow” are sitting home wondering if they’ll ever need to learn to shave as will be on the field in Nigeria.

Andrew Guest writes weekly for Pitch Invasion. He is an academic social scientist and soccer addict living in Portland, Oregon. Having worked (and played) in Malawi and Angola, he has a particular interest in Africa. He can be contacted at drewguest (at) hotmail.com.

I love a World Cup (any World Cup) for the rare opportunity of putting whole imagined nations on public display.  Though the main event in South Africa is still eight months away, one junior version (U-20) just finished in Egypt and another (U-17) is just about to begin in Nigeria.  The fact that all these events are in Africa is an extra bonus for the inquiring mind; Africa represents so much that is powerful and so much that is perplexing about both soccer and society.

Some of this was on display in last Friday’s U-20 World Cup final from Cairo, where Ghana’s ‘Black Satellites’ defeated Brazil in penalty kicks after playing a man down through 83 scoreless minutes.  Like many things to do with world football, the game was not pretty but it was symbolic.  As the FIFA English commentator proclaimed enthusiastically at the dénouement: “African winners on African soil!”  It was the first time an African team had won a U-20 World Cup.

Ghanaian coach Sellas Tetteh immediately claimed the victory for the continent: “This is a wonderful historic event for Africa.  Now Africans can believe in themselves that they can do it… We’ve shown them the way. Africa will surely have a lot of hope and confidence (at the World Cup) that they can do it like we did here.”

Although Tetteh was referring to next summer’s feature event in South Africa, the general question of whether belief, hope, and confidence are enough to win major tournaments is interesting to consider approaching the start of the U-17 World Cup in Lagos and Abuja on Saturday October 24^th.  My own less sanguine suspicion is that talent and resources matter quite a bit more.  Unfortunately, Ghana itself won’t be in Nigeria to find out.  But 24 other teams will be playing in eight different Nigerian cities through the final on November 15^th.

As I did last month in an alternative preview of the U-20 World Cup in Egypt, I’m taking advantage of the opportunity of the U-17 World Cup to look at the world through a mix of soccer and armchair geography.  The idea is best encapsulated by Eric Hobsbawn’s eloquent words: “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.”  It also draws inspiration from Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey’s excellent edited collection of essays and miscellany related to the participants in the 2006 World Cup.

So, below I offer impressions of Nigeria and Malawi (the African nation closest to my heart—having been a Peace Corps volunteer there for two years in the 90’s) as examples of two “imagined communities,” and then draw on an idiosyncratic collection of ratings and rankings to create a statistical miscellany on the groups in the tournament.   At the end of this post is a table of the draw with FIFA rankings for the full national teams, population numbers, human development rankings, Gross Domestic Product per capita, per capita alcohol consumption, life expectancy, and infant mortality.  The only system here is to try and raise unlikely questions about soccer and society, and what else is a World Cup good for?

Some Stories

The Host: In its soccer and its society Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, represents both the potential and the perils of the continent.  Nigeria has won three of the twelve U-17 World Cups, been a finalist in two others, won the gold medal in the 1996 Olympics, achieved what I believe to be the highest ever FIFA ranking for an African team (5^th in 1994), and is the only sub-Saharan African nation to host a FIFA World Cup: the 1999 youth tournament (then called the “FIFA World Youth Championship”).  It has also been the subject of much controversy regarding the “real age” of its youth players, and there have been many questions as to whether it will be ready to adequately host this 2009 U-17 tournament (the 1999 tournament hosted in Nigeria was actually a make-up after FIFA had controversially revoked Nigeria’s hosting the 1995 tournament, taking it to Qatar because of uncertain fears).

Beyond soccer, Nigeria is home to many of Africa’s most brilliant minds, including a stunning collection of writers such as Wole Soylinka, Chinua Achebe, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ben Okri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, and Uwem Akpan.  But it also has a controversial reputation for corruption, it has struggled to manage vast oil wealth to the benefit of broader development goals (as have many oil-rich nations the world-over), and has suffered dramatic religious violence as it negotiates a national population split nearly equally (and regionally) between Muslims and Christians.

Deserved or not, the reputation of Nigerians across Africa is that they are intense and clever—in ways that can be used for good or for ill.  The recent critically acclaimed movie District 9 was telling in this regard; in a science-fiction version of Johannesburg South Africa aliens are locked into a segregated township where their potentially nefarious interests are catered to primarily by savvy Nigerian gangsters.  In the movie’s disturbing allegory about xenophobia, purposefully set in South Africa, the people most negatively stereotyped are the Nigerians.  This implication was not beyond the notice of the Nigerian government, who asked the makers of the film for an apology as part of their own effort to “rebrand” the nation.

Nigerians are also infamous the world over for internet scams—known as ‘419’ fraud with that number referring to the relevant article of the Nigerian Criminal Code.  Also called “advance fee fraud” the scam has become the brunt of many jokes about Nigerian princes who will share their wealth if only a small advance is sent to the right bank account.  But the not so funny reality is that the scam became popular because it worked: some clever Nigerians bilked some not-so-clever others for a good deal of money.  There is a fine line between the “swindler” and the “entrepreneur.”

If national teams do reflect national culture, then all this must make for some confusing on-field tactics.  Combing immense talent, uncertain motives, and an intense edge would seem to be an explosive brew.  But, in many ways, it also sounds like a lot of fun—and watching Nigeria’s Super Eagles is often just that.  Nigeria is not only the host of this U-17 championship, they are also the defending champion (having won the 2007 title in South Korea over Spain through penalty kicks).  Though their preparations seem to have been somewhat tumultuous, that is often the way the Super Eaglets roll and I wouldn’t be surprised if they still take home advantage.  While there is sure to be some drama and some criticism, as Nigeria Football Federation president Sani Lulu Abdullahi recently responded when questioned about recent Nigerian performances: “I don’t give a damn, because I am serving my God and Nigerians.”

The Junior Flames: Malawi’s national team is known as “the Flames”—but you’d have no reason to know that since this U-17 World Cup in Nigeria will be the nation’s first ever FIFA tournament.  In fact, most people have few reasons to know Malawi for much of any reason (though Madonna’s odd interest in the place along with books about windmills have raised its profile some).  The beauty and the tragedy of Malawi is that it’s been a relatively peaceful, stable country with little significant infrastructure and few valuable resources other than its warm hearted people.  In fact, in the statistics I compiled below Malawi only stands out for having the lowest per capita annual income (around $800 per year—which is dramatically little compared to $47,000 per year for group mates the USA) and the second lowest life expectancy at 48 years (second only to hosts Nigeria).  In many ways Malawians have had little of what may be the most undervalued quality in both soccer and national development: luck.

When I lived in Malawi between 1996 and 1998 it was just emerging from 33 years of autocratic rule by “His Excellency the Life President of the Republic of Malaŵi, Ngwazi Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda”—an idiosyncratic dictator and anglophile who kept his people relatively safe and well-fed as long as they did not cause any trouble.  In fine “big man” style Kamuzu had managed to name virtually everything in the country after himself, including the national stadium in Blantyre.  But when “democracy” arrived much of his cult of personality was dismantled and the national stadium was renamed Chichiri for its relatively bland neighborhood.  And then in 2004 it was re-re-named after Kamuzu—a seeming reminder that the more things change the more they stay the same.

In 2009, however, Malawi’s luck—at least in the ways of world football—seems to have changed.  First, the Junior Flames qualified for the U-17 World Cup due to the good fortune of Niger being disqualified for using over-age players.  And now, the senior Flames are on the verge of qualifying for their second ever African Cup of Nations (their only previous appearance was in 1984) based on being positioned third in a group of four.  Though their recent tie with Ivory Coast was mostly noted internationally for securing Ivory Coast’s place in South Africa, Malawians celebrated the fact that Didier Drogba and friends only needed one point.  As it stands, both the junior and senior Flames will have qualified for their respective tournaments after winning a single game in group play (the senior team needs just one point in their final game at the wonderfully alliterative Ouagadougou Burkina Faso on November 11^th).

While Malawians have long been passionate about football, these fortuitous circumstances arguably constitute the greatest year in their sporting history.  And when the Junior Flames take the field to play the US U-17’s on October 29^th in Nigeria at Kano’s Sani Abacha Stadium (another curious tribute to a former president identified as one of the world’s most corrupt leaders), I hope luck is again on their side.  In fact, I owe a debt to Malawian soccer for reminding me about the importance of luck: in an otherwise unremarkable academic paper I once wrote comparing American and Malawian mentalities towards soccer, among my main conclusions was that Malawians have a much better appreciation for the inevitabilities of the game.  Where Americans tend to have a deeply internalized sense that soccer is about self-improvement and competitive merit, Malawians tend to recognize that sometimes stuff just happens.  Luck matters more than we like to admit, and here’s hoping that Malawi starts getting all it needs and deserves.

Some Statistics

The Group of Death: Apparently the term “group of death,” now ubiquitous in any group based tournament, was originally coined by Uruguay (Group F in Nigeria) manager Omar Borrás to describe his team’s group at the 1986 World Cup.  Borrás went on to get himself banned from a second round match due to his team’s ”ungentlemanly conduct” and reports that ”the referee was molested and even threatened.”  While molesting referees would seem to be quite a damaging habit, Borrás more awkward legacy may be the never-ending debates about which teams actually have to suffer through the “group of death.”

To avoid subjective questions about the quality of U-17 teams from diverse parts of the world, and at the risk of sounding morbid, the sobriquet could be taken literally.  Doing so is admittedly depressing.  Looking at statistics such as life expectancy and infant mortality highlights the injustices of a world where children born in rich countries such as Spain (Group E in Nigeria) and Italy (Group F in Nigeria) can expect to live an average of 80 years (where only 4 out of 1000 children will die before age 5), yet reside on the same planet as children born in poor countries such as Burkina Faso (Group D in Nigeria) and Malawi (Group E in Nigeria) who will be lucky to live past 50 (where approximately 200 out of 1000 children die before age 5).

So for me talking metaphorically about the “group of death” offers a helpful reminder that soccer is just a game—none of the groups in a FIFA tournament are actually a matter of life or death.  And, frankly, I have no idea which group will actually be most competitive on the field.  But I do have some other more lighthearted statistics…

Overachievers and Underachievers: The most basic statistic for any FIFA tournament is a team’s world ranking; despite all the problems with their ranking system, it does offer a standardized gauge of how all the world’s teams compare.  And while much goes into national footballing excellence, the most basic factor I’ve been able to discern for success is disappointingly simple: population.  The more people, the more potential players, and the better chance of putting forth a pretty good eleven.

For me this uninteresting equation becomes more interesting when considering outliers—the countries that seem to do either much better or much worse than their player pool should allow.  Of the countries in Nigeria, the three that stand out as overachievers in this regard are Uruguay (which ranks 132 in population but 25 in FIFA and is in Group F in Nigeria), Switzerland (which ranks 94 in population but 13 in FIFA and is in group B in Nigeria), and the US’s new BFF Honduras (which ranks 96 in population but 35 in FIFA and is in Group A in Nigeria).

On the other side of things, there are few countries in Nigeria with significantly lower FIFA rankings than might be predicted based on population—most of those guys probably didn’t bother to qualify.  The only two that seem to be of any note are Iran (which ranks 17 in population but 62 in FIFA and is in Group C in Nigeria), and Japan (which ranks 10 in population but 40 in FIFA and is in Group B in Nigeria).  If I had to guess I’d say the lesson here is that hard-line Islamic governments and aging populations with long life expectancies and low birth rates are bad for soccer success.  But that’s just a guess.

The Designated Drivers: A World Cup is often described as an international party, which made me curious about the relative popularity of that nearly universal party lubricant: alcohol.  Though the players in Nigeria should be too young to partake, in many parts of the world adult fan culture is defined partially by drinking and carousing—something which is alternately a point of pride and shame.  Just looking at the statistics, it appears fans who like alcohol with their soccer may find good company at this U-17 World Cup: in terms of per capita consumption of alcohol Nigeria slightly edges New Zealand (Group D in Nigeria), only trailing Switzerland, Spain, and grand “champions” Germany.

In fact, the data would suggest that few travelling fans in Group A should plan on driving home or operating any heavy machinery: with the slight exception of Honduras it seems the Nigerians, Germans, and Argentines all like to get their drink on.  In fact, those looking for peace, fellowship, and designated drivers may be best served watching games in the groups with teams from the Islamic world: Algeria and the United Arab Emirates report miniscule amounts of alcohol consumption, while Iran just reports absolute zero.  Come to think of it, maybe that’s why they underachieve in the FIFA rankings?

There is, believe or not, a significant correlation for the teams in the U-17 World Cup: for these 24 nations, the more a country drinks the higher its FIFA ranking.  But there must be some confounding variables—so back to the stats!

Andrew Guest writes weekly for Pitch Invasion. He is an academic social scientist and soccer addict living in Portland, Oregon. Having worked (and played) in Malawi and Angola, he has a particular interest in Africa. He can be contacted at drewguest (at) hotmail.com.