ArticlePloS one2023
Junior to senior transition pathway in Italian Football: The rocky road to the top is not determined by youth national team's selections.
Article in PloS one, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond the youth success trap: a Four-Gate Coaching Audit of Japan's 2017 U20 football cohort.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- Barriers and Facilitators in the Junior-to-Senior Transition in Male Football-A Scoping Review.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Road to Paris-2024: The Path of Brazilian Volleyball Athletes Goes Through the Youth National Teams.Journal of human kinetics · 2025Article
- Talent Identification: Time to Move Forward on Estimation of Potentials? Proposed Explanations and Promising Methods.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Review
- Relative Age Effect Among World-Class Jump Athletes.Journal of sports science & medicine · 2025Article
- Relative age selection bias does not translate into a playing-time advantage: evidence from Italian Serie A football.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Relative age effects in European soccer: their association with contextual factors, impact on youth national teams' performance, and presence at the senior level.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Article
- Birth Advantages in Male Italian Soccer: How They Influence Players Youth Career and Their Future Career Status.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Career trajectories, transition rates, and birthdate distributions: the rocky road from youth to senior level in men's European football.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Article
- The prevalence of relative age effects in a nationwide analysis of racket sports: Happy birthday?PloS one · 2024Article
- International selection and competition in youth sport: pin the tail on the donkey or targeted intervention?Frontiers in sports and active living · 2023Article
- The relationships between relative age effect, personality constructs and achievement level in soccer.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Football is a popular sport, but little is known about the youth-to-senior transition rates in elite players, particularly in large and successful countries. This study aims to investigate the youth-to-senior transition rate in the Italian national football team, both prospectively and retrospectively, and to explore if Relative Age Effects (RAEs) affect this transition. Data from 885 players selected in youth and senior Italian national teams between 2000 and 2021 were included in the study. For each player, the birthdate and the number of selection in Under 16, 17, 19, 21 and senior team was considered. The transition rate was determined by the number of youth players competing in the Senior National team (and vice versa), whilst birth quarter (Q) distributions with a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Prospectively, the transition rate increased as age increased (i.e., from ~20% in U16 to ~50% in U19). Retrospectively, less than 10-20% of youth players were subsequently selected for the senior team. Data revealed a skewed birth date distribution in all age groups, and the RAEs magnitude decreased when age increased (i.e., ORs for Q1 vs Q4 was ~ 9 in U16 and ~ 1.7 in senior teams). Nevertheless, the RAE magnitude was smaller for successfully transitioned players. In conclusion, most players in the senior team were not previously selected for youth teams suggesting that junior international experience may not be a prerequisite for later success. Moreover, while the birthdate strongly influences the selection of youth national teams, its impact is less evident in the youth-to-senior transition.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.