The Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) relative age solutions project-part two: an adapted e-Delphi study

Area of Science:

• Sports Science
• Youth Sports Development
• Talent Identification

Background:

• Relative Age Effects (RAEs) in sports create disadvantages for younger athletes within the same age cohort.
• Lack of widely implemented interventions to mitigate RAEs in youth soccer.
• Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) initiated a call for solutions to address RAEs in youth soccer.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate potential solutions for overcoming Relative Age Effects (RAEs) in youth soccer.
• To assess the effectiveness and feasibility of proposed RAE mitigation strategies.
• To build consensus among experts on viable RAE solutions in youth soccer.

Main Methods:

• A two-round adapted e-Delphi study was employed.
• Fifteen international experts (researchers and practitioners) participated.
• Solutions were rated on direct/indirect mitigation of RAEs (Round 1) and implementation feasibility (Round 2).

Main Results:

• "Rotating cut-off dates" was rated most effective for RAE mitigation but low on feasibility.
• "Cueing differences in age" was rated most feasible but less effective for RAE mitigation.
• "Cueing differences in age" was identified as the most viable solution overall (5.8/9).

Conclusions:

• Solutions highly effective in moderating RAEs were perceived as more challenging to implement.
• Disagreement among experts highlights the difficulty in achieving consensus on RAE solutions.
• Future RAE interventions require practical design, implementation, and evaluation of effectiveness and feasibility.