Bio-banding in elite academy football

Elite academy football players are traditionally grouped by age for the purpose of training and competition. Players of the same age can, however, demonstrate marked variance in biological maturation, with some individual’s maturing in advance or delay of their peers.

The timing of biological maturation has important implications for talent identification and development, and the matching of youth for competition. While a selection bias towards advanced maturity exists in football, many early developers fail to meet expectations for their ability, as adults, due to an overreliance on their physical strengths. Conversely, many talented yet late developing players are at risk of deselection – and are often released from the academy system – due to their physical and athletic disadvantages.

The practice of bio banding, the matching of players on the basis of biological maturation, has been advanced as a strategy to address some of the limitations associated with age group competition.

The project

The aim of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of a 12 week bio-banding intervention, whereby players’ training and competition programmes will be matched relative to their stage of biological maturation, rather than their chronological age.

Using a combination of both qualitative (focus groups, interviews) and quantitative (GPS, performance analysis) methods, this project seeks to understand the various mechanisms through which bio-banding can be used to optimise the challenge and development of early and late developing players.