Somatotype and Body Composition in Young Soccer Players According to the Playing Position and Sport Success Cárdenas Fernández, Víctor Chinchilla-Minguet, José Luis Castillo Rodríguez, Alfonso Soccer players undergo an evolution in their body composition throughout the growth and passage through the different base stages, that is, childhood, puberty, and adolescence. The aim of this study was to analyze the morphology and body composition of U14, U16, and U19 soccer players, taking into account in addition, their sport success endorsed through the regularity participation and their relation with the different playing positions occupied during competition (goalkeeper, external defender, central defender, midfielder, and forward/extreme). For that, a total of 174 male young soccer players were evaluated anthropometrically. Dominant somatotype of the players was, according to their playing position, meso-endomorphic in goalkeepers, central for external defenders, balanced ectomorph in central defenders, balanced mesomorph in the case of midfielders, and meso-ectomorph in forwards/extremes. Taking into account that sport performance is directly mediated by the body composition of athletes, the differences found suggest a marked specialization between the goalkeepers and forwards, establishing significant differences between them. Further studies would be needed to evaluate the influence of individual maturation development vs. sports training on the conformation of a certain anthropometric profile of a soccer player and its relation with the different playing positions occupied on the pitch during the game. 2025-01-27T07:34:03Z 2025-01-27T07:34:03Z 2017 journal article Published version: Cárdenas-Fernández, Víctor1; Chinchilla-Minguet, José Luis2; Castillo-Rodríguez, Alfonso3. Somatotype and Body Composition in Young Soccer Players According to the Playing Position and Sport Success. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 33(7):p 1904-1911, July 2019. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000002125 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/100369 http://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000002125 10.1519/JSC.0000000000002125 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional National Strength and Conditioning Research