THE IMPACT OF age effects is something that is becoming more prevalent in discussions of team performance across a wide spectrum of sports.

This is an area that we investigated before and found startling evidence that confirmed a person’s birth date heavily influences their chances of becoming an elite footballer.

With this in mind, and the ever increasing speculation of which 23 players will be on the plane to Poland, we decided to take a look at past World Cup and European Championships to see if evidence exists to suggest the age of a squad could improve the chances of teams at the finals.

We consider all European Championship and World Cup Finals tournaments from 1992 to the most recent World Cup in South Africa. This gives us a sample of 10 previous tournaments on which to base our analysis. While this research is still on-going, two aspects have been considered so far; the average age of the squad at the finals and the average age of the teams that lined out in the final. The number crunching is quite boring but once you trawl through the squads a pattern emerges.

Starting at squad level, since 1992 the average age of a winning squad is 27.01 years. The Spanish are the youngest victorious squad, with average age in 2010 of less than 26 years (25.91 to be exact!). The oldest squad to win a major championship in the past twenty years are the Greeks (2004), with an average age of 28.35.

However, a word of caution on squad level data.

As we know, lots of players go to major finals and never get near the pitch. To overcome this we examine birth dates of players to play in the final match from 1992 to 2010. The youngest team to appear in a final since 1992 were the defeated Czechs (1996), with an average age of just 25.82 for the 11 starting players. The oldest finalists were also beaten. This claim goes to the French team of 2006, who had an average age of nearly 30 (29.64)!

The average age of a finalist in the Euros has been 27.71 and with an age of 27.75 for a World Cup finalist. The average age of winning teams is 27.61 years with defeated finalist on average aged, marginal younger, at 27.58 years. No starting 11 has ever been victories in either tournament when younger than 26.09 or older than 28.91.

Trap’s boys

So what does this mean for Ireland? The good news is that the squad picked for the recent friendly against the Czech Republic had an average age of 27.8. That’s near perfect given the performance of teams over the past 20 years. The bad news comes when we consider the team level data. Assuming a starting 11 of Given, Kelly, O’Shea, Dunne, Ward, Duff, Whelan, Andrews, McGeady, Keane and Doyle (not an unrealistic starting line-up) our average age is 29.91.

The stats would suggest this is far too old; in fact, this competition has probably come two years too late for this Irish team.

A Moneyball analysis can be used to consider what the stats would suggest is our best chance. This is obviously going into the realm of opinion, and hence is highly questionable, but let’s suppose we replaced the three attacking players in our assumed starting 11, aged 30 or older (Andrews, Keane, Duff) with McCarthy, Long and McClean, the average age drops to 28.33. Swapping Coleman with Ward brings this down further to 28.

This is far closer to what the stats indicate will work. It might be time for Trap to considering this when selecting his starting 11 for the Croatia game rather than relying on loyalty.

Easier said than done however.

Robbie Butler, an Economics lecturer at University College Cork, has written extensively on soccer economics. Check out some that here.

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