Physical and perceptual demands of youth international team match-play in traditional and aged-matched future teams for biologically late maturing soccer players.

Background: Given the rapidly increasing interest in national futures programmes, and the associated significant increased resource investment, there is a pressing need for data specific to futures programmes to inform practice across world football.

Aim: To investigate the differences in the physical and perceptual demands of match-play using Global Positioning Software technology and Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) in traditional youth international team and age-matched international future teams for biologically late-maturing players over one in-season period.

Subjects and methods: A total of 18 U15 future team (FT) players and 21 national team (NT) players were examined.

Results: The results showed that FT players performed 9% greater total distances (p = 0.008, Cohen's d 1.29) and accumulated 20% greater total player loads (p < 0.001, Cohen's d 1.88) than NT players during matches. In contrast, NT players covered 113% greater sprinting distances (p = 0.033, Cohen's d 0.63) and performed 62% more high-intensity accelerations (p = 0.015, Cohen's d 0.90) than FT players. There were no differences in high-intensity and very high-intensity running distances, number of accelerations, number of decelerations or high-intensity decelerations, or match-play RPE. When accounting for biological maturation, the adjusted marginal means were not different between FT and NT players in any physical metric except for total player load (p = 0.046) and high-intensity accelerations (p < 0.030).

Conclusion: We conclude that while several physical performance metrics differ significantly between FT and NT match-play, the most robust differences after controlling for maturation are in sprint performance and high-intensity accelerations.