Football clubs waste millions on young talent

2025-03-20 Lüneburg/Berlin. Football clubs systematically misjudge their young talent. As a result, they are missing out on millions.This is the finding of a new study published by Lukas Tohoff from the ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin) and his co-author Mario Mechtel from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg in the Journal of Sports Economics. ‘Clubs lose millions because they confuse short-term physical advantages with real talent and overlook very good players. Our results from Germany can be transferred to other sports and most football leagues in Europe and South America,’ says Tohoff.

Youth players are selected from their birth years according to performance. Those born earlier in the year are often physically more developed than their team-mates born later in the year. ‘These short-term advantages mean that a particularly large number of players from the first few months of a year are admitted to the youth performance centers (NLZ) and then promoted. As a result, many talented players from the second half of the year fall through the cracks because they are initially underestimated,’ says Mechtel. ‘This could be remedied with a more balanced selection. Every single club that sells players from the NLZs could realise higher proceeds. They would then be worth an average of 1.7 to 2.2 million euros over the course of their career instead of 1.3 million euros.’ However, if all clubs were to do this,prices could also fall again somewhat.

The study shows that 44.6 per cent of the promoted players among the U-19 players in the NLZ were born in the first quarter of the year,instead of around 25 per cent as a proportion of the age group. 71.5 percent are from the first half of the year, instead of 50 per cent. However, the few players from the second half of the year have more talent on average, as they develop much better later on and achieve higher market values. ‘This is a clear sign of faulty selection processes,’ says Tohoff. ‘The long-term consequences are serious. Players just a few months older are favored, even though they don't necessarily have more talent. Conversely, players born later in the year have to be much better to be selected at all. This continues right through to the Bundesliga and the German national team.’

The study examined 2,383 former U15 to U19 players from the 17 most successful centers in Germany. The players were born between 1988 and 2001.

Full Study: ‘Fading Shooting Stars - The Relative Age Effect, Ability, and Foregone Market Values in German Elite Youth Soccer’, by Lukas Tohoff and Mario Mechtel, forthcoming in: Journal of Sports Economics
Link: www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tohoff-Mechtel-JSE-accepted-paper.pdf