The data for the study come from the increasingly influential soccer statistics website WhoScored.com. Chris Anderson and David Sally, writing on their blog, Soccer by the Numbers, analyzed transfer market value of all players in the Premier League in October 2012 using regression analysis. James J. Or that the German team, whose starting line-up in the semi-final had an average age of 27.7, is likely to beat Argentina, whose starting 11 averaged 28.4? (2009) . (2007) . , and In fact, his advice encapsulates the theme of this paper. Kovalchik S.A. Whats unquantifiable is the psychological side of the modern game. According to the results in Table4a, the mean (and median) peak ages for midfielders and defenders are comparable, although the distribution is noticeably tighter for midfielders than defenders. In the past, it was thought that players needed to train as hard as possible to maintain their performance. The club has since softened its stance somewhat (Jackson, 2010; James, 2014). Some of the common age-related changes that occur in athletes are: All of these changes can have a negative impact on a players performance. 6e and 6f makes this visually apparent the peak age distribution for defenders not only exhibits a wider range, it also sits slightly to the right on the age scale relative to the one for midfielders. The consequence of fewer injuries may help a player stay in peak condition for longer. f. Peak age distribution from individualized age-performance fits Defenders. 3 Relative to other disciplines, fixed effects panel data model is the workhorse of applied economic research. Tel. Another way to prolong a career is by playing fewer games. Runners and jumpers, for example, peak around 25 years of age whereas throwers peak later, around 26 to 28 years. Does this suggest that the perfect age to be a footballer is 27.5? 5b shows that the overall trajectory of performance is significant and fits the expected pattern. If, at any given time, coaches or managers pick players purely on the basis of performance, then the players who are given the most minutes are the best performers. WhoScored.com states that its ratings are received as the most accurate, respected and well-known performance indicators in the world of football, increasingly being used by clubs, the media and bookmakers. Even better if you know for the various types of riders (sprinters, climbers, time trialists). Wayne Rooney could be past his peak already, Paul Scholes believes, Times, 22 May. The distribution of peak ages is analyzed for comparison with the peak age implied by the polynomial fixed effects model in the previous section. A player's skill at getting quality shots peaks around 26-27 years old. Your 20s: Sprinting. Indeed adolescence ranges from age 15 to 23 in a person's biological growth. But he isn't playing and so the older players' numbers are falsely inflated. Age and performance: Fixed effects regression fit, quadratic specification Defenders. Figures3a to 3c plot average performance by age for forwards, midfielders and defenders, respectively. However, some players continue playing into their 40s, while others retire in their early 30s due to injuries or other factors. A total of 14,092 individual match observations were analyzed using a computerized tracking system (TRACAB, Chyronhego, New York, NY). This is presumably why defenders tend to peak later but also maintain near-peak performance over a wider range, sometime well into their 30s. The fruits of experience such as game knowledge, anticipation and tactical awareness can be brought to the fore to minimize the effects of physical decline. Most of the semi-formal evidence comes in the form of short newspaper articles and blog posts. a. Bradbury J.C. Note: Ordinary Least Squares regression of peak age on ability. The results, which are presented in Table4b, strongly imply that better players indeed peak later in their playing career. Of course peak age is a random variable since the underlying estimators are random. Penguin, New York. When a team acquires a new player, the player typically receives a contract of at least two-and-a-half years -- usually more. Hey, it's easy to do when your goal as a coach or trainer is to improve the kids and your own coaching. Player-specific trajectories are then obtained through intercept shifts introduced by the player fixed effect and regression error. But, as can be seen from Fig. Right now, Chelsea have the Premier League's top scoring striker in Diego Costa, as well as highly-touted prospect Michy Batshuayi in reserve. Kazuyoshi Miura recently left Yokohama FC to play on loan for Suzuki Point Getters, a club managed by his older brother. In explosive events, such as sprints and 50100m swimming, the peak age ranges from 20 to 27 years, but it invariably decreases with event duration (i.e. In sum, based on modal age alone, one can conclude that forwards and midfielders share the same peak age (26) and peak range (2428), whereas defenders peak a year later and perform close to near-peak levels for longer as well. The middle two quartiles of the peak age distribution are bounded by 25.1 and 25.4 years, with the mean (and median) peak age occurring at 25.3 years. An exercise in modeling the age-performance relationship and the estimation of peak age should therefore use an actual measure of performance and also adequately address the problem of potential selection bias. In essence, a players performance could very much ebb and flow with that of other players on the team, a fact that introduces too many unknowns into the estimation of individual profiles. For several years, the Premier League soccer club Arsenal has had an unofficial policy of offering players over the age of 30 only a one-year contract extension. (2012) . This estimate of peak age is bolstered by a relatively narrow confidence interval for each group. More recently he said that the optimum or peak age is between 23 and 30, while admitting that exceptional fitness of the modern player and the value of experience in the modern game imply clubs need to retain a few over 30 players in their squad (James, 2014). This means average computed performances during the early and later career years are biased upward due to the prevalence of players of very high ability in the sample. Buying success: Relationships between team performance and wage bills in the US and European Sports leagues. Curnow C. Ciyunsi Beili 207(CapitaLand), Bld 1, 7-901 *** - shows significance at 1%. The huge difference in average age is explained by the fact that eight of the team that started in the 1958 final also started in 1962 - which proves that the age of a side is irrelevant if it's simply incredibly talented. Arkes J. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 94: (447), 661676. However, considering that soccer is a sport that requires one to develop through different stages, it's, generally, too late to become a professional player when you're past 23 years old. Ive never seen a player lose it with Arsne, Guardian, 18 August. However, this does not mean that all players' peak or optimal age is the same as many factors can affect when a player reaches their peak performance, such as position, training, nutrition, injuries, and genetics. The type of training a player undergoes can also affect when they reach their peak age. We use two proxies for player ability average WS rating and maximum WS rating and separate regressions are run using the two measures. According to the ratings scale, a rating of 6.06.9 is considered Average, whereas 7.07.9, 8.08.9 and 9 or above are respectively classified as Good, Very Good and Excellent. While the rate of expected assists falls off quickly after 28, creative players may still be productive members of their teams. It can both generally identify which players a team should target and, more specifically, provides guidance in which types of skills a player may be more or less likely to improve as he gets older. Age and performance: Player fixed effects regression, age dummy variable specification. b. The aging curve for attacking players shows a tendency for players to take fewer shots as they age, but to increasingly get on the end of better chances and therefore make up the difference. They were virtually identical. Clifton, VA 20124 However, this does not mean that all players peak or optimal age is the same as many factors can affect when a player reaches their peak performance, such as position, training, nutrition, injuries, and genetics. Whereas defenders lose very little in performance even after 30 years of age, forwards and midfielders experience a considerably steeper decline in their 30s. Accordingly, for the average defender, the range in predicted performance is tighter and the duration of near-peak performance longer. Peak performance and age among superathletes: Track and field, swimming, baseball, tennis, and golf. We use data from the last five seasons, 2010/11 through 2014/15. (2013) . Further results are presented in Section 5. The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know about Soccer is Wrong. The main indicator of performance is players WhoScored.com rating. In the fixed effects specification in (1), all players in a sample share the same basic age-performance trajectory, f(Ageit). , and Theres a confluence between the physical and mental sides of football, and the 2019-20 season shows that its now an old mans game. Perhaps the best example of a creative player who maintained his performance level by moving to a deeper position and running the show from central midfield is Santi Cazorla. 335356. : +1 540 831 5437; Fax: +1 540 831 6209; E-mail: Copyright 2023 IOS Press All rights reserved. Positions that require the most athleticism are a young person's game, whereas older players will more often be found at positions that most prize guile. Under the cubic specification (2), the roots are given by: -22422-122262, where s are estimated coefficients. |t| ratios based on robust standard errors are shown in parentheses. In fact soccer players peak in their mid to late twenties for field players and perhaps the early thirties for goalkeepers. Analyse This: The ageing game. , (2004) . Aside from a drab legacy of overall competence, he also left behind a slew of perplexing quotes, a solid reputation for freakiness . Argentina goalkeeper Sergio Romero is 27.5 - though goalkeepers peak later than strikers, The surprising truth about frozen fruit. WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, 457471. In athletic endeavors, they conclude, typically physiological capacity eventually overrides experience. Table1 presents summary statistics on WS rating and age for each group. Historically, the perfect age to be a player in. Two caveats are in order, however. 13 It goes without saying that this is why clubs do extensive scouting and monitoring of potential buys and current players. Anderson C. The average age of retirement is 35 years old. Estimating the effects of age on NHL player performance. Position can dictate age when players decline. The peak age, which is computed through the appropriate non-linear transformation of the estimated coefficients, is presented along with a 95% confidence interval.5. Knowledge of when players are in their optimal age, therefore, has substantial value for the soccer industry. The use of an algorithmic rating such as WhoScored.coms for measuring performance is a strong suit of the paper. Journal of Gerontology, 43: (5), 113120. Here's what's interesting, studies have shown that active soccer players typically peak around the age of 25 & 27. This method avoids most of the problems of the "missing old players" because if a player disappears from the data set in the next season, his previous season is also not included. . The data are stacked in panel form (each player across years). , and Are the official world golf rankings biased? It should be noted, however, that just as goal-scoring rates peak in the mid-to-late 20s, so likewise do assist rates. At the very highest echelon of soccer, women players tend to be younger than . Midfielders realize a very similar pattern as forwards a peak at 26 and near peak frequencies between 24 and 28. "Most of the research would indicate that your mid to late 20s and possibly early 30s is when you're going to be at your physical peak in terms of endurance and muscle strength," Professor David Bishop, from Victoria . The long duration of near-peak performance predicted here for soccer players is in line with the observations of Arsene Wenger (James, 2014) and Kuper (2011). For each group, we predict the player-specific BLUPs of the random effects, combine them with the estimated fixed components, and construct individualized age-performance trajectories. For example, a quadratic polynomial implies a single peak and symmetry around that peak. Of course not. That mean is around the sweet spot, late 20s and early 30s, when experts say . Figures2a to 2c plot the ratio of total minutes by age for forwards, midfielders and defenders, respectively. http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2014/07/player-age-football. Based on our proxy, the age of individual peak soccer performance occurs around 27-28 years, varying across playing positions from 26 to 31 years. The reason is that official youth tournaments accept kids of at most 20 years old. In addition to simple age distribution and bivariate approaches, a player fixed effects model that accounts for potential selection bias is estimated. c. Age and performance: Fixed effects regression fit, dummy variable specification Defenders. There are many, many 26-year-olds in the Premier League and very few 34-year-olds because players reach their peak performance levels around age 26. This provides players a short period of active recovery and a time for specific training, that can not be done in between games which are taking place every 3 to 4 days. For forwards and defenders, the mean (or median) peak age computed from the individualized trajectories here is comparable to the estimated peak age from the polynomial fixed effects regressions in Table2. It is one of the first issues that analysts must study in any sport but successfully modeling aging presents problems. , (2015) . Soccer is one of those sports that you can't play effectively when you're past a certain age. Two types of bivariate analysis are employed here. But near peak frequencies contributions of 8 percent or above are observed 2 years either side of the peak. Select this link to jump to content, In content section. Players are then classified into three groups based on their field position: Forwards, Midfielders and Defenders. 2a, the minutes ratio for forwards peaks at age 27. Tom Worville Nov 14, 2021 89 They say that age is just a number, but in football, that number is extremely important. The results show that the average player peaks between ages 25 and 27. A soccer player usually reaches their physical peak between the ages of 25 and 27. The trajectory also shows that midfielders seem to perform near maximum levels over a slightly longer period, from about 21 to 29 years. Spurs' Son is now officially a year younger.