Science says: this is how your child becomes a professional footballer

When I read which zodiac signs dominate the Dutch national team, and which two are completely absent (you read everything here), I drifted away from what the article was actually about. Instead of thinking about our footballers, I thought of something I once came across: tactical birthing.

It sounds a bit vulgar, but it simply means that future parents consciously plan when their child is born to increase the chances of success later in life. This is not something conceived by people who let their decisions depend on Mercury being in retrograde again. Economists, educators, and sports scientists are on the side of these type-A planners.

Because as crazy as it sounds: a child born in the right month actually has a greater chance of playing for Oranje later on.

Why January beats December

This has everything to do with something researchers call the relative age effect. Here’s how it works: children are usually grouped by birth year in football. A child born on January 2 is therefore in the same cohort as a child born on December 30. On paper, that’s less than a year apart, but in practice, it can make a world of difference at a young age. That’s also why mothers (to the great frustration of all of TikTok) continue to express their child’s age in months long after the first birthday: “She is 38 months.” No Janneke, she is three. But mama Janneke has a point. An eight-year-old who will turn nine in two months is often bigger, stronger, and faster than a peer who just turned eight. Handy qualities in a future professional footballer, and trainers and scouts know that too. Children who carry those extra months are more often selected for talent teams, receive better coaching, and spend less time on the bench at the sidelines. So if you dream of a child who will one day give a Ballon d’Or speech, you might want to do a little math first.

Even the teacher falls for it

The advantages of a relatively “old” child don’t stop at football. The same effect can be seen in hockey, tennis, ballet – actually everywhere children are selected at a young age. But even in school, those extra months turn out to be surprisingly valuable. Older students within their class more often receive higher grades, are seen as smarter more quickly, and more often move on to higher education levels. A child who is just a bit further along in math, reading, or sitting still is quickly seen as a strong student. While a younger classmate may just need a few more months.

For those who are just a bit late

For the parent who hasn’t thought about tactical birthing but still wants to get the most out of their toddler, there is fortunately an alternative: academic redshirting. The phenomenon originally comes from the American sports world. A redshirt was a student-athlete who didn’t participate in competitions for a year to train hard first. Those athletes often wore a red shirt during training, hence the name. Now the term has found a second life among ambitious parents, mainly in the United States. Academic redshirting means that parents let their child start kindergarten a year later, so the child is the oldest in the class. The idea is that extra time for social, emotional, intellectual, or physical development pays off later.

So when should you give birth?

That is of course the question everyone is secretly waiting for. If you purely look at what science says about age advantages, then being born early in the year seems to offer benefits in sports and education. But before everyone grabs their calendar: those advantages are ultimately small compared to factors like talent, health, upbringing, motivation, and simply luck. Otherwise, all January babies would become professional footballers and all December children would end up on a recreational indoor team in sports hall De Bunders.

Maybe in the end, it’s not the stars that determine who will play for our country next week. Maybe some mothers just had exceptionally good timing.

SOURCE: The University of the Netherlands