Squad lists are here http://images.fifa.com/u20/2003/WYC_2003_sl-latest.xls A few notes... Convey is the only player with more than 6 senior caps, and he has a whopping 18. At 210 pounds, the US's Knox Cameron is listed ~10 pounds heavier than any other player at the tournament. The shortest player is Panama's Rodrigo Tello, at 5'1. Canada has six players in US colleges, the US has nine. In total, Canada has players who are based in eight different countries, the most of any team. I counted 246 players with birthdates in 1983, 173 born in 84, 41 in 85, 16 in 86, 2 in 87, and 1 in 89. (I must have missed someone.) ------------------------------ Birthdates by Month ------------------------------ Jan 69 Feb 57 Mar 47 Apr 48 May 49 Jun 33 Jul 33 Aug 39 Sep 34 Oct 28 Nov 26 Dec 17 So we've got two phenomena: (1) As a whole, the kids born in 1984 have almost caught up to the kids born in 1983. (2) The kids born late in the year have not caught up to the kids born early in the year. Taken in combination, these two effects are clear evidence of institutional bias in favor of kids who were born early in the year.
This is talked a lot about in the Youth forums. Would you mind for the uninitiated explaining what's the rationalization behind this precieved bias?
The Age Effect On the whole, an 16 1/2 year old is a bit better than a 16 year old. So if you have a bunch of "born in 1987" candidates available to select you'll pick more of the older ones than the younger ones. This effect gets exacerbated because the older kids who are "tracked" into elite programs like ODP or national youth teams then receive an additional advantage by getting better training and competition. The effect is surprisingly powerful and is not confined to the U.S. Pretty much holds for all ages in youth national teams across the world.
JohnR put me onto this academic article about what the authors call a "systematic discrimination" against kids born later in the competition year. http://www.psychologie.uni-bonn.de/sozial/forsch/ageeffx.htm The authors studied professional leagues in Germany, Brazil, England, France, Australia, Japan and found that an abnormally large percentage of the current professionals were born in the first few months of their youth age group, with an abnormally small percentage born late in the year. Why is this the case? The reason is simple. Coach looks at a group of little kids, says I'm going to pick the best players out there because they are the "prospects." They tend to be fairly old for their age groups, because a few months make a big difference among little kids. These chosen kids not only retain their relative age advantage throughout their youth soccer years, but they get the better coaching, positive reinforcement, etc. so that the early decision to label them as "better players" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It shows up everywhere. Look at the '88 pool for the next U17 cycle. This phenomena show up dramatically there, where the skew to early in the year birthday is marked. Of this group 12 were born in first quarter in 1988, 8 in second quarter, 2 in third quarter, and just 2(!) in fourth quarter. There is even a (slight) tendency toward older kids within each quarter! Five January birthdays, 4 April birthdays, etc. As JohnR put it, the FIFTH best 15 year old in the country born after June 1 was NOT as good as the 21st best player born BEFORE June 1st!! THAT is goofy. But that's the age bias effect at work! Take any ODP state team, or Regional team, and you will almost certainly find the same skew to older kids.