Determination and Comparison of Physical and Physiological Characteristics of Football Players in the U10-17 Categories

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine some motoric characteristics of children football players in the 10-17 age group and to compare them according to their playing positions.

The study was carried out with voluntary participation of a total of 190 licensed athletes in Turkey Football Federation "U" category playing in Çeliktepe, Aslantepe and Seyrantepe sports club (U10-U17).

The athletes participated in the study were divided into the 10-13 and 14-17 age categories, and further divided into three groups, namely defensive, midfield and forward player groups according to their playing positions. Demographic information about the age, football sports age and playing positions of the athletes were recorded. The research measurements were made during the first week of the preparatory period at the start of the season. All participants were subjected to motoric tests that measure speed, agility, horizontal jump, endurance and balance parameters, which are considered important for football branch. In the analysis of the data, the SPSS 23.0 statistical program was used. The Kolmogorov Smirmov test was used to determine whether the data showed normal distribution, and "One-Way ANOVA", followed by "Tukey HSD" were used for the parameters with normal distribution, whereas "Kruskal-Wallis" and "Mann-Whitney U" test were used for the data with non-normal distribution; and p<0.05 was accepted as the level of significance.

As a result of the analysis of the data, there were statistically significant differences between motoric test results in term of the playing positions of football players (p<0.05).

As a result, it was determined that some of the motoric performance differences, prominent in early periods among football players playing in different positions, decrease in the following years due to age, training and experience factors and that all football players in all positions have similar motoric performances in today's football. Thus, it can be said that it is important for players to have similar motoric parameters in the sense that they can compete with each other, considering that the players playing in different positions (forward-defense, etc.) come across during competitions.