Just going through your list and my list off the top of my head I can see a few differences in our methods: 1 - You've got guys who played for more than one team counted with each team, and, in effect, counted twice. I combined all the stats of players who played on more than one team into one "season" line for each player, and only counted him once. 2 - You've counted guys who didn't play any minutes. For my purposes, at least, I'm not counting anybody who didn't play a minute, partly because if I do that, I know I'm missing a lot of guys who may have been on a roster but didn't make it onto the USL website for some reason, but more importantly because I really don't care about a player if he doesn't play. It's not really that relevant if a team has a 30-year-old guy who is an orange cone or a 21-year-old guy who is an orange cone. The players who play (even briefly) are the meaningful ones to me. I'm not sure how big an effect that will have, but we'll see.
With serious thanks to ChrisE, I now have birthdates for 472 of the 476 players who played in the A-League in 2003. The average age of those 472 players as of July 1, 2003 was 25.39. Weighing the age for playing time, the average was 26.01. Makes sense. I would imagine the second level would be slightly younger than the one above it. And even if the PDL wasn't by mandate predominantly a U23 league, that average should be even lower. If anyone wants to try their hand at that study, be my guess. The PDL average is probably between 20 and 21. Just a guess. Number of players of each age: Age...# 18....2 19...13 20...10 21...19 22...63 23...59 24...54 25...53 26...56 27...31 28...16 29...24 30...19 31...14 32...18 33....5 34....9 35....4 36....3 The big clump was from 22-26 and then there was a significant drop. It makes sense that there would be a lot of 22-year-olds - that's usually the age at which you graduate from college. This is some valuable information that I don't think anyone has ever put together before - thanks to Chris and Phil for their work on this and the MLS age study.
Very interesting information...thanks guys. I wonder if, in the A League, the steep drop off at age 25, 26 is attributable to what I might call call the "career come to Jesus moment." You've been playing since you got out diapers, you've been a star at club, in HS, probably in college, but you've plateaued. There's never gonna be Europe for you, never a national team cap -- you look at the guys who are 30, 32 years old, maybe they've postponed kids, a real family life, and you say to yourself -- "Gee, enough already. Time to get a normal life, a real job." Anyway, just a thought.
There is also that moment when the team owner cashes in his chips. The A-League has been relatively stable the last couple of seasons (before this one), but has about a third fewer teams than it had at its peak. I wonder if marginal players go by the wayside when their teams fold, if they're not good enough to be in a reduced A-League. We'd have to check to see if those type players drop to D3, or if they give up the ghost, or go play in the MISL, or what.
This seems like as good a place to put this as anywhere else. I thought I'd take a look at who was joining MLS and who was leaving it - how the demographics were changing. I'm going to start just with 2003. This year, by my admittetly unreliable count, 68 players entered the league who had never played here before; four guys didn't play in 2002, but did in 2001 (Ching, Bardales, Burciaga, Cassar); I'm leaving them out. Meanwhile, coincidentally, 68 players departed the league. Of those 68, 21 appeared only in 2002. Of those 21, 10 were Americans. By nationality, you've got 43 Americans leaving (assuming Brian Piesner and Dustin Sheppard are Americans?) Of the remaining 25, 10 were latins, 6 were africans, 5 europeans, 3 from the caribbean, and 1 was canadian. Of the 68 joining: 45 were Americans, 10 latins, 7 Europeans, 5 Africans, 3 Caribbean, 1 Canadian, 1 Asian. Frankly, the balance we're keeping there is pretty amazing. Alternatively, the average age of the departees was (counting from June 1) 29.1, while the average age of the new blood was 24.2. How did these break down? Departees: 22 - 3 23 - 9 24 - 7 25 - 4 26 - 3 27 - 8 28 - 2 29 - 5 30 - 3 31 - 3 32 - 6 33 - 2 34 - 5 35 - 1 36 - 4 37 - 0 38 - 1 39 - 1 40 - 0 41 - 1 foreign departees: 23 - 2 24 - 4 25 - 1 26 - 1 27 - 5 29 - 2 31 - 1 32 - 3 33 - 1 34 - 2 38 - 1 39 - 1 41 - 1 Arrivals: 16 - 1 17 - 2 18 - 1 19 - 0 20 - 4 21 - 10 22 - 21 23 - 7 24 - 4 25 - 4 26 - 5 27 - 2 28 - 2 29 - 1 30 - 0 31 - 1 32 - 3 33 - 1 34 - 2 35 - 1 Of the foreign arrivals: 20 - 1 21 - 1 22 - 4 23 - 3 24 - 3 25 - 2 26 - 4 27 - 2 ... 31 - 1 32 - 2 33 - 1 34 - 2 35 - 1 By my count, the only player who departed because he was sold, last year, was Mamadou Diallo. Additionally, I believe only 3 more left for Europe - Luchi Gonzalez, Matt Jordan, and Wade Barrett. All four went to Scandinavia. Meanwhile, of the players we added, the league paid for (I believe): Jose Cancela, Hong Myung Bo, Toni Nhlecko, Amado Guevara, Jonathan Bolanos, and Galin Ivanov.
Great stuff Chris. My gut has told me that the MLS is turning into a "young player's league" -- I would bet more than any other 1st division professional league worldwide. That 46 of the 68 players who entered the league were 23 yoa or younger would seem to suggest that this is the case. Or course, it would be helpful to compare such "entry" ages to other leagues, probably modified somewhat for the effects of promotion.
Thanks Karl. I think we're becoming more oriented towards young players (clearly), but I think you may be overstating things a little bit. I took a look at Cruzeiro's website, considering that, since they're the Brazilian champions (I believe) they would probably be one of the older teams. Maybe they're not, but I don't think there's any reason they would be particularly young. The average age of the players on their first team roster is 21.9! They don't list minutes played, but they do list games played; if you weight the ages by games played, the age rises to a geriatric 22.5. I don't think that MLS is ever going to get to that point, and I don't think there's any reason to really hope for us to. Cruzeiro Estatisticas
I absolutely agree with you. Interesting look at the Brazilian league which essentially an all out feeder league for Europe. In terms of discussing a 'youth movement' it'd be interesting to look at the average age in the Brazillian leagues over the past 5,10,15 years, or whatever other point might be good to look at how econmics have affected that league visa vie average ages.
I just gona love this..... I really hope to see this very soon, what about some movement on the coaching staff???
I did my best to figure this out, beineke, and it looks like you're right. I used as my sample all US players who played 500 or more minutes in a season (I'd defined US-players as guys who significantly developed in the US, so Preki, Dooley, and maybe some others were left out). For the first seven years (not six, surprisingly), the average of this group stayed pretty much the same. However, every single year until 2002, the standard deviation increased (I know I should have adjusted this for sample size, but don't know how). Anyway, here is how things went: Code: [size=1] Year Age N St. dev 1996 26.21 124 2.92 1997 26.37 122 3.30 1998 26.55 142 3.62 1999 26.46 143 3.78 2000 26.39 149 4.11 2001 26.43 137 4.21 2002 26.49 116 3.93 2003 25.60 121 3.98 [/b][/size] The drop in average age in 2003 is very very impressive. I made histograms of each year, but unfortunately bigsoccer doesn't have graph capabilities, so you'll have to settle for yet another chart: Code: [size=1] 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 16 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.7 0.0 0.8 17 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.7 0.9 0.9 0.6 18 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 1.5 0.6 3.5 19 0.0 1.2 0.0 1.0 0.3 1.8 1.3 1.7 20 0.0 1.8 4.2 2.1 3.5 0.9 2.8 4.1 21 4.8 3.5 7.2 6.3 5.7 6.8 3.9 7.6 22 9.1 10.0 6.2 12.8 11.2 7.7 8.8 8.3 23 12.9 9.4 9.2 9.4 12.8 8.6 7.5 8.1 24 10.3 9.8 9.0 8.2 8.2 11.9 10.1 8.1 25 11.1 10.7 10.0 7.7 8.2 10.8 13.6 11.0 26 8.5 13.1 7.6 8.9 6.9 8.2 12.5 13.0 27 13.3 7.0 11.6 7.2 6.7 5.5 6.3 7.9 28 11.5 8.6 7.2 9.8 5.9 5.3 5.2 4.8 29 7.5 7.6 8.6 4.2 6.9 4.7 5.6 5.2 30 4.6 7.0 6.0 7.7 4.2 7.7 4.1 4.5 31 2.2 4.9 5.8 5.2 5.9 4.6 6.5 2.5 32 3.2 2.0 2.8 5.1 4.0 5.3 2.8 5.2 33 0.6 3.1 1.1 1.9 4.7 2.7 2.8 1.2 34 0.4 0.2 2.6 0.7 1.8 2.7 1.5 0.8 35 0.0 0.0 0.5 1.0 0.7 0.7 3.2 0.6 36 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.3 1.0 0.7 0.0 0.6 37+ 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.0 [/b][/size] And another chart, with ages divided into three groups: Code: [size=1] 16-20 0.0 3.1 4.2 3.1 5.2 5.8 5.6 10.7 20-29 88.9 79.7 76.6 74.5 72.5 69.3 73.5 73.8 30-36 11.1 17.2 19.2 22.4 22.3 24.8 20.9 15.5 [/b][/size] It's quite clear that the teenage set has become vastly more important to MLS over the last 8 years; what's more surprising, in my opinion, is that the 30+ crowd actually played a more important role in MLS in 2003 than they did in 1996.
Thats some pretty compelling stuff Chris. I really liked the way you broke it down. You can see wheer that average age drop in 2003 happend, MLS added twice as many young players while reducing the number o older players by 25% or so. Why do you think that 2001 would be the year with the fewest middle aged players? Obviously they're still predominate, and the drop isn't hugely signifigant but why 2001?
Well, if you notice (and this is only a guess), 20-29 year olds decreased every year from 96-01, and it was at a pretty steady 2% clip from 98-01. I'd guess most of the gain had to do with contraction, as older players got pushed out, and younger players found themselves with more competition.
Actually, this is ok -- standard deviations are like averages; you can compare them without adjusting for sample size. BTW in light of your data, I think it's worth looking again at the repercussions of 1998. That was the expansion year, as well as the first year of Project-40. In the five subseqent seasons, only three age groups have topped the 10% mark in your measure: players who were 21 in 98 (they did it in all five years), players who were 20 in 98 (in three of five), and players who were 22 in 98 (in two of five). I think those youngsters benefited from the added opportunity. Also, up through 2001, every generation of players shrank from age 23 to 24. On average, the drop was by over 12%. In sharp contrast, players who were 23 in 2001 contributed 17% more as 24-year-olds in 2002, and players who were 23 in 2002 contributed 8% more in 2003. To me, this indicates a rapid shift from a seller's market to a buyer's market. Players used to be given the opportunity to play before they had established themselves as MLS-quality. (Why else would they be getting phased out at age 24?) Today, players have to work their way in ... this means that reserve teams would be an increasingly useful addition.
I realize that I didn't really provide as much information as I should have. Because those numbers are focused specifically on the US nats pool (and spec. the US players who got 500+ minutes), it's not exactly possible to interpret trends about MLS in general using them. So, here's a little bit about how the Nats pool compares to the total MLS population: Code: [size=1] Year lg min nat min >500 min US % >500 US% 1996 315981 215559 205413 0.682 0.650 1997 316037 218495 211293 0.691 0.669 1998 378028 251416 240246 0.665 0.636 1999 378670 259794 248453 0.686 0.656 2000 387215 273969 265458 0.708 0.686 2001 318993 221996 214674 0.696 0.673 2002 282540 199340 193148 0.706 0.684 2003 306758 222986 215486 0.727 0.702 [/b][/size]
Bumpage I just finished the numbers for the 2004 A-League season. With a reduction of the A-League from 19 teams to 16, there were (not surprisingly) fewer players in the A-League in 2004. 476 players played at least one minute in 2003 (25.1 players per team), and 386 played at least one minute in 2004 (24.1 players per team). (The interesting thing is that, as near as I can tell, only about half---200 of the 386---played in the A-League in 2003 as well as 2004. I have to explore that a little more deeply, but it's interesting.) Anyway, the average age of the 386 players on July 1, 2004 was 26.3. Weighted for playing time, it was 26.7. Both figures are slightly higher than last year. You see the list above of the number of players of each age in the A-League in 2003. Here is the 2004 list, with percentage of the total: Age...#....Pct. 18....4...1.0% 19....6...1.6% 20....7...1.8% 21...12...3.1% 22...21...5.4% 23...55..14.2% 24...41..10.6% 25...42..10.9% 26...45..11.7% 27...31...8.0% 28...24...6.2% 29...17...4.4% 30...19...4.9% 31...13...3.4% 32...13...3.4% 33...12...3.1% 34...11...2.8% 35....7...1.8% 36....3...0.8% 37....1...0.3% 38....2...0.5% Tot.386 Another way of looking at this is at the number of players in certain age ranges from 2003 to 2004: ..........2004..........2003.... Age......#....Pct......#....Pct. <22.....29....7.5%....44....9.3% 22-26..204...52.8%...285...60.4% 27-31..104...26.9%...104...22.0% 32+.....49...12.7%....39....8.3% Total..386..100.0%...472..100.0% The percentage of players age 22-26 was up, and the percentage of players age 32 and over was down. I have to explore this further and see what's happening as far as what percentage of each age played in the league both years (and simply aged a year) and who was pushed up and out. Comments?
Re: Bumpage Actually, I've just discovered there are some rounding errors there, folks, so disregard that for the moment while I re-do the numbers using Absolute Values.
I actually was doing this last night, too, kenn (though I've still got a 3 or 4 unknown birthdates). These are, by my calculations, the ages (using your 7/1 cutoff) for the last three A-league seasons: Code: 2002 26.27 2003 26.51 2004 26.69 We've seen a pretty steady escalation which, in my opinion, is a product of the increasing stability of the league. The average age for the 13 teams that played both in 2003 and 2004 actually fell - 27.0 in 2003, 26.8 in 2004. The real change came in the loss of six teams - Calgary Storm, Charlotte, Cincinnatti, El Paso, Indiana, Pittsburgh - only one of whose average ages were above 27.0 (Charlotte, 27.1), and who in total had an average age of 25.4. These teams were replaced by three expansion teams, PR, Edmonton, and Calgary Mustangs, whose average age was 26.1, and obviously the more established teams bore more of the burden.
I have all the birthdates, Chris. Let me know who you need, and I'll supply it since you've done the research more thoroughly than me.
Hey Kenn, Since you're volunteering, here are a few that would help fill out my records (all I keep are birthyears). Paul Marcoullier Randy Merkel Michael Richardson Thx.
I have Merkel as 3/20/76, and Michael Richardson as 10/8/68 numerista. I guess the website has foundered, but I think it would be a good place to locate a comprehensive list of US-based soccer birthdates.
I certainly wouldn't say that, kenn. If you like, I'll obviously send you what I've got (I don't think anyone has ever actually taken me up on that). I'm also trying to get nationality information, which was pretty simple for 2004, but gets a lot harder further back. Anyway, players I'm missing: Domingo Gomes Carmalo Rago I guess that's it for ages, although I'm missing several nationalities. If you're willing, I'd like to see whatever database you're using.
Thx Chris, While we're on this subject, I find it interesting that starting in the birthyear 1976, there seems to have been considerable fluctuation in the number of American MLSers per year. 1976 and 1977 were high, presumably spurred by expansion, and then 1978 and 1979 were low, which may suggest that opportunities were dwindling even before 2002 contraction ... was there a reduction in roster size in 2001? Since then, things seem to be on the rise, indicating that the Development Player program is doing its job. (Sorry I don't have data handy.) Viewed in conjunction with the Transitional International program, it appears that the league's front office has developed some good strategies for growing its talent pool.