Soccer Relative Age Analysis Project

Overview

This project investigates the existence of the Relative Age Effect, a known bias in the selection process of youth athletes, within Uruguayan soccer. The analysis spans both male and female players in Youth and Professional teams from 2013 to 2022.

Data Sources

The data was obtained from the following sources:

1. Uruguayan Football Association (AUF): Data for players in Youth (U14 to U19) and Professional teams. Website
2. Health Authority in Uruguay (MSP): Births data for comparative analysis. Website
3. Transfermarkt: Additional dataset for male players born in specific years. Website

Files Description

• analysis.ipynb: Main analysis notebook. Implements logit and hazard models to evaluate the impact of birth month on player dropout rates.
• scrap_auf.ipynb: Python script to scrape data from the AUF's website using Beautiful Soup and Selenium libraries.
• scrap_transfermarkt.ipynb: Python script to scrape data from Transfermarkt. Focuses on male players born in specific years.
• process_nac.ipynb: Processes birth data from the MSP for distribution analysis.
• extra_cleaning.py: Python script for cleaning datasets for use in analysis.ipynb.

Contact

For inquiries, please contact: guillelezama [at] pitt [dot] edu