If you didn’t make the first team at school, it may be due to the month you were born in (this has nothing to do with astrology)

By Les Tan

The month you were born in has an effect on whether you make your school’s first team. This has nothing to do with astrology, but with physical and emotional development.

Why is this so?

If you take two 10-year-old children, the one who is born in January has a significant performance advantage over the one born in December in general.

Here are some statistics of age group teams from around the world that make the point.

2007 Korean U-17 World Cup football team
Birth month: number of players (% of squad)
Jan-Apr: 10 players (48%)
May-Aug: 9 (43%)
Sept-Dec: 2 (9%)

2007 German U-17 World Cup football team
Jan-Apr: 15 (71%)
May-Aug: 6 (29%)
Sept-Dec: 0

2007 Argentinian U-17 World Cup football team
Jan-Apr: 14 (67%)
May-Aug: 7 (33%)
Sept-Dec: 0

2008 Iranian U-18 FIBA U-18 Basketball Championship team
Jan-Apr: 7 (58%)
May-Aug: 3 (25%)
Sep-Dec: 2 (17%)

2007 USA Men’s Basketball U-19 World Championship team
Jan-Apr: 7 (58%)
May-Aug: 4 (33%)
Sep-Dec: 1 (8%)

Youth coaches naturally pick players who have the maturity and physical development and so those born later in the year tend to get overlooked unless they have outstanding skill.

Also, those who end up getting picked also get most of the attention going forward and stay in the sport. Those who tend to get overlooked will naturally drop out of the sport because they don’t get the encouragement to continue.

Perhaps we may have lost some sports talents in schools along the way because they had the potential but were overlooked at a young age.