CUE Research · Study 8

Premier League Footballers

Every player registered in the 2024/25 Premier League: nearly a thousand verified birthdays.

The question: Does England’s school-year cut-off shape who becomes a top-flight footballer?

What stands out

  • Clear difference · Birth quarter

    Born in England: Apr–Jun appears only 68 times against about 104.9 expected.

  • Clear difference · Birth month

    Born in England: Sep appears 58 times against about 34.6 expected (1.68×).

Worth watching, not enough to claim

  • Birth month

    Born in England: Jun appears only 16 times against about 34.6 expected.

  • Birth month

    Born in England: Oct appears 54 times against about 35.7 expected (1.51×).

  • Birth month

    Born in England: Aug appears only 18 times against about 35.7 expected.

  • Sun sign

    Born in England: Gemini appears only 18 times against about 35.7 expected.

  • Birth month

    All players: Jan appears 111 times against about 83.9 expected (1.32×).

  • Birth month

    All players: Aug appears only 57 times against about 83.9 expected.

All players: nothing clear. Jan–Mar is worth watching (284 against about 244.4 expected) but not strong enough to call.

All players Expected, random birthdays 1983–2009 Clear difference Worth watching

Context What explains it

English youth football groups children by school year, which starts on 1 September. A child born in September can be almost a year older than a teammate born in August.

If the relative age effect found in hockey applies here, English-born players should be born disproportionately in the autumn, and players born abroad, under other cut-offs, should show it less. Compare the birth-month view for the two groups.

Source The data

  • Premier League players, 2024/25 season. Retrieved 2026-09-27. View source
  • Every player registered with a Premier League club for 2024/25, with birth dates from the league’s own player records.
  • Verification: 989 of 1075 included. A player is included when a Wikidata footballer with the same surname records the same birth date.
  • Expected values: every day of the years each group was born in, weighted by how many people were born in each year, run through CUE’s engine. Weighting matters for Chinese signs and Life Paths, which depend on the year.
  • A difference is called clear only in groups of 50 or more and at least three standard errors from expected. Because each study tests about a hundred values, a clear difference needs 3.5 standard errors; 2.5 to 3.5 is only “worth watching”.

Reproduce it: the raw data snapshots and build scripts are in CUE’s code repository (scripts/data and scripts/build-*-study.mts).

Further reading

  • Premier League, official player records
  • Helsen, van Winckel & Williams, “The relative age effect in youth soccer across Europe”, Journal of Sports Sciences 23 (2005)