About this Research Topic

Background

In recent years, professional football clubs and national football federations across the globe have intensified their work on identification and development of tomorrows football stars. Development of home-grown youth players is interesting not only for financial reasons, but also for game-specific and cultural reasons, as self-developed players are potentially more likely to enter, adapt and perform under a known football context.

Performance optimization and development of young footballers involves the interaction of a wide range of football-specific technical, tactical, physical, and mental factors, in addition to a variety of biological, sociological, and cultural conditions. A footballer's youth development in an elite environment is typically long-lasting (6 years or more) and involves a series of transitions between teams depending on age groups and levels. During this period, physical demands and mental strain, performance requirements, and internal and external pressures intensify as the player approaches the final transition from youth to adult level.

Youth elite footballers are typically monitored intensively on the pitch during both training and matches as well as off the pitch. The development of new technologies and the easy availability of monitoring data enable the effective identification of key performance indicators and risk factors that can contribute to both the optimization of training and the selection of players. An increased knowledge on youth elite player performance and the characteristics, which signifies talented players at different stages of youth development, would significantly facilitate and support the development of adolescent players as they move through the selection process and, in addition, support them through biological maturation as well physically and mentally demanding periods of training and competition.

As such, the aim of this Research Topic issue is to build on the existing literature on male and female youth football and further explore development, monitoring, training, testing, and performance at the elite level. We welcome a range of submissions, including Original Research, Reviews and Perspective pieces, and specifically (but not limited to) papers that address:

• Identification of key performance indicators within youth elite football.

• Performance analysis and testing in elite male and female academy players.

• Training interventions and programming youth elite player performance development.

• Application and validation of technologies to monitor youth elite football performance.

• Player transition from junior to senior squads.

• Injury monitoring and prevention.

• Biological maturation, bio-banding and elite player development.

• Sociological aspects of youth elite player development.

• Mental characteristics of the youth elite player.

• Aspects on international (national team) level youth players.

Keywords: Youth elite football, Performance, testing, training, development

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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