Age eligibility for YNT tournaments is something of a FAQ on this board. Here's a quick reference guide for the next round of official tournaments. Please correct me if anything's wrong here. If not, maybe this could be a sticky. Tournament Year Born -------------------------------- Olympics* 2008 1985 U-20 2009 1989 U-17 2009 1992 U-20 2011 1991 U-17 2011 1994 Olympics* 2012 1989 -------------------------------- * Plus overage. Sorry -- ugh. I don't know how to format on BigSoccer. "Born" means the player has to be born on or after Jan. 1 of the given year. A player cannot be too young for a tournament that I know of; only too old. There are no official tournaments for the U-18s, so I left them off.
I guess it's time to update this thread. For the following competitions (or cycles) players must be born on or after the following dates to be age-eligible: 2016 Olympics (U23) - 1/1/93 2013 U20 WC - 1/1/93 2015 U20 WC - 1/1/95 Current U18 cycle - (though it's more like a guideline) - 1/1/95 2013 U17 WC - 1/1/96 2015 U17 WC - 1/1/98
None that play in official FIFA competitions. Everything's relative to FIFA competitions. The U16s are the U17s a year before the U17 Youth World Cup, so they're simply called the U17s throughout the cycle. The U18s are the U20s eligible for the next U20 YWC 2 years after the present cycle, even though they're not 18 yet but will be at the time of this cycle's U20 YWC. Some countries do it differently so you could get confused when our U20 team is playing in a U19 tournament a year before the U20 YWC, though they're all the same age. The U14s/U15s are just used for talent evaluation and eventually are used to help choose players for Bradenton, but not to prepare for an actual FIFA Tournament. These actually switch from year to year. The U14s that had been training all year are now the U15s, the USSF just brought in the next group of U14s that will be at that age group until next summer, and the U15s that had been U15s over the past year are now part of the present U17 YWC cycle. Yeah, it's confusing
Is it time to re-sticky this thread, and update it for future tournaments? Maybe we can also update it with info for the teams that don't have an official FIFA competition: U-14, U-15, U-16, U-18, U-19. As quasi-official teams presumably even Morgan Freeman is age-eligible for them, although maybe the various tournaments they play in do have age rules. If I understand correctly (questionable!), they work on the same 2-year cycle as the U-17 and U-20 teams. So the U-15's are all under 15 on Jan 1 of odd-numbered years; i.e., for 2014-2015 they are under 15 on Jan 1 2015, meaning born in '00. I'm not sure when any of these teams transition from one 2-year cycle to the next though.
Personally, I wouldn't add new (younger) categories unless, as you suggest, there are age-limited tournaments for which they are eligible. Presumably the U15s will have such a thing at some point if they don't already. But we're definitely due for an update soon in any case. I guess it would look something like this: 2016 Olympics - 1/1/93 2015 U20 WC - 1/1/95 2015 U17 WC - 1/1/98 2017 U20 WC - 1/1/97 2017 U17 WC - 1/1/00 2019 U20 WC - 1/1/99 2019 U17 WC - 1/1/02 2020 Olympics - 1/1/97 If the U15s are to be held every two years (is that correct?) we could add: 2015 CONCACAF U15s - 1/1/00 2017 CONCACAF U15s - 1/1/02 2019 CONCACAF U15s - 1/1/04
After a bit of poking around, I gather the transition between cycles is basically in the fall. Not possible to pin it down more precisely than that since it depends on when they appoint coaches and schedule camps, what set of players they want to train with the various teams, etc. As I understand it, in 2015, the non-FIFA-competing teams basically correspond to: U-18: 97's U-16: 99's U-15: 00's U-14: 01'sThis is probably either completely wrong or common knowledge. I'm only writing this down so when someone complains about including 00's on a trip with a group of mostly 99's, I can understand what the hell they're talking about. U-19 is still vaporware at this point, looks like. Didn't even realize Concacaf U-15 was a thing.
Probably because we didn't participate in 2013! However, I just remembered this thread, which confirms a 2015 tournament in August (and our participation): http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/concacaf-u-15-championship-august-9-23-cayman-islands.2016872/