ANALYSIS OF EFFICIENCIES OF YOUTH ACADEMIES OF TURKISH SOCCER SUPER LEAGUE TEAMS IN PRODUCING PLAYERS

The purpose of this study was to determine the percentage of domestic players produced by the youth academies of their recent teams playing in Turkish Football Super League. In addition, other domestic player sources of Turkish Super League Teams were determined. The official data about teams in Turkish Super League was obtained from the first period of the 2008-2009 football seasons provided by the Turkish Football Federation’s database. Number of professional soccer players and their mean age values, the number of foreign players, the number of domestic players and then the number of players produced by their teams’ youth academies, and teams’ league status in which other players were produced, were identified for 18 teams’ squad. For the descriptive statistics of the data obtained from 855 active soccer players in 18 teams’ squad, SPSS (Ver.11) program was used. As a result of this study, totally there were 855 active soccer players in the squad of the 18 teams of the Super League. Of the 855, 132 players were foreign nation-als, 723 players were Turkish. Domestic players of clubs’ squad were mostly provided from their youth academies (a ratio of 29,60%). However, only 19,16% (41 player) of those players played in at least one official match, the 80,84% (173 player) of those players did not play any official matches with their teams.