The rationale for the BIO-AGE project:

Football is the world’s most popular ball game in the world. Simple in its principal rules and essential equipment, the sport can be played almost anywhere and by anyone. Being played in every country in the world, football provides dozens of superstars. No wonder youngsters want to play football from an early age. Most professional clubs have a programme for youth players, and this is commonly known as an Academy.

The main goal of club Academies is to produce their own players for the senior team. Player development is the key driver at Academies, partly because developing their players is usually cheaper than buying in quality from elsewhere, but also because selling senior players can generate huge incomes. In reality, each child might have the potential to become the greatest athlete in history by age 18. But one might never find out. Some children are early bloomers who enjoy success in sports because they develop faster, not because they have more raw athletic talent. Some children – even if they appear to only be average athletes or lag behind their peers – may be late bloomers whose athletic talent will only become apparent later when they are teenagers; they may ultimately be more gifted athletes.

The unfortunate fact is that, in a society and youth sports culture that places such a heavy emphasis on winning, early bloomers enjoy advantages that may continue long after peers have caught up and, in many cases, passed them in terms of skill proficiency. As a result, late bloomers will be put at a significant disadvantage in getting the attention of coaches and the playing time they need to develop their skills and may get so frustrated that quitting the sport becomes the only viable option.

In just about every major football league in the world there’s a noticeable trend where there are more players born in the first two quarters after the age cut-off than the last two. Our partnership sees the consideration of the biological maturity level as a possibility to break up existing structures and go new ways in child-oriented development.