Supporting youth in a team sport can depend on many factors. Surely the two most important ones have to do, on the one hand, with culture, which influences considering the young and the expert as opposing profiles when it comes to performance, and, on the other hand, one more related to the way of financing, with championships whose business model is based on detecting talent or developing it, granting them opportunities, and obtaining a great added value by selling them to more powerful leagues.
To understand how much difference there is between one league and another among the main European leagues, we are going to cross four criteria. On the one hand, measuring under-20 players and under-18 players, to create two age barriers, two analysis criteria - starting lineups in each league and the percentage of average minutes played by under-20 and under-18 players - and 11 European championships - Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Primeira Liga of Portugal, Eredivisie, Jupiler Pro League of Belgium, Superligaen of Denmark, Eliteserie of Norway, and Allsvenskan of Sweden. This way, we can measure the same reality and concept (how much young players play and how much trust is placed in them in each country) differentiating between the confidence given to them from the start and the amount of minutes they play throughout a season.
Among the under-20 footballers, we find the Jupiler Pro League as the European championship that gives the most opportunities to young players. In the 2023-24 season, under-20 players totaled 688 starting lineups, with each under-20 player averaging 32% of the minutes. The championship where each under-20 player played the highest percentage of minutes was the Spanish La Liga, something that might sound strange at first. True to its culture and understanding of the competition, Serie A was the championship, among the 11 analyzed, that had the fewest starters and percentage of minutes played by all its under-20 players.
We found it interesting to apply a second age filter. For many years, the under-21 category hasn't fully reflected a competitive leap. Many under-21 or under-20 national teams have fully developed talents physically, many of them with over 50 matches in top divisions, so the truly young talent, the one that is still to be tested at the top level, could be situated at 18 years old, an age at which the player already has the ability to debut or grow but to which each championship grants a different level of trust.
This factor proved decisive in the data filtering and is where the physical component can be much more relevant. The Ligue 1 accumulated up to 102 starting lineups among players under 18. Ligue 1 is undoubtedly a championship for talent development and export, and the extraordinary physicality of French players helps their debuts happen earlier than in other countries and leagues. Ligue 1 doubles the next league in terms of starting lineups for under-18 players.
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