In the set of all games in 2024, the average age of the players who took to the field for the Seleção was 27.40 years old. Among the main European ‘powers’, only Germany has a higher average age.
The latest CIES Football Observatory study compares 144 senior men’s national teams in terms of the average age of the teams they fielded throughout 2024.
Among the 144 teams from around the world analyzed by the aforementioned study, Portugal appears only in 88th place in the world, in 33rd if we consider only European teams.
Portugal is behind most of the main powers in world football, such as Spain (27.03), France (26.79), Brazil (26.56), England (26.44) or Italy (26.34). Behind Portugal, among the renowned teams, only Germany (28.56) and world champion Argentina (28.89).
Leading the ranking, with the team with the lowest average age in 2024 are… the Cayman Islands, which had an average age of just 23.05. On the other hand, the oldest team is Peru, the only one with an average age above 30 years (30.38). In Europe, the “youngest” team is San Marino and the oldest is Montenegro, followed by Slovakia and Switzerland.
The study also presents the percentage of minutes by age group. In the case of Portugal, the most represented age group was 22 to 25 years old (38.8%). Players under 21 played just 12.2% of the minutes, still the 17th best record at European level, ahead of, for example, France and Italy, but below Spain, Germany or England.
Players over 30 years old, in the National Team in 2024, accounted for 24.3% of the minutes played by all players. In this age group, France and Italy stand out, with values below 14% in terms of the proportion of minutes on the field by players over 30 years old.
