Study on the Relationship between the Performance of the National Team and the National Youth Team on Football in Asia

Abstract

    The purpose of this paper is to clarify the linkage between performance of the national team and that of the national youth team on football in Asia and make suggestions which should be useful from the operational viewpoint of the member associations of the Asian football confederation (AFC) .
    This paper examines the linkage between them for the 39 member associations of the AFC which participated the AFC under 19 championships between 1994 and 2008. Statistical analysis was made by means of correlation analysis and single regression analysis.
    With regard to correlation analysis, Spearman’ s rank correlation coefficient was found to be 0.763 and Kendall tau rank correlation coefficient was found to be 0.559. Both results show that there is correlation.
    With regard to single regression analysis, R-square was found to be 0.58. This shows that the performance of the national youth team was linked with the performance of the national team with regard to football in Asia to some extent.
    In the meantime, member associations of AFC were divided into four groups, based on performance of the national youth team and performance of the national team, and regression formula and practical suggestions were made for each group.