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What makes a country good at football?
- iamantee 8y agoThe model seems not to be a good one
- eliben 8y agoThis is a good opportunity to clarify HN's policy w.r.t. paywall articles; are they allowed? encouraged? discouraged? Only for "reached your limit" paywalls in case some readers didn't reach said limit?
- ISL 8y agoPractice?
- ducatdusk 8y agoEnglander here. Tell me when you find out.
- nkg 8y agoEngland's poor performance is a mystery to me.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI've often wondered if having so many strong club level teams is a disadvantage for the national team. Diverting resources and bringing in foreign talent may not help. Having said that I really no nothing about football :)
- narag 8y agoMaybe the fact that there is no UK national team? Edit: Frankly I don't care so much about karma, but this downvote is strange. I would have thought that this reason wasn't controversial at all. I've even heard british players say that. Anybody care to explain?
- jvln 8y agoEngland has an average team and only English don't agree with that. https://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-England-Germany-Australia-Destined/dp/1568584814 https://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-England-Germany-Australi...
- 8y ago
- nkg 8y agoWhat this article describes through statistics is what we would call Love for the game. If you want parents to take their kids to training sessions and sunday morning games supervised by quasi-benevolent coaches and referees, your best hope is to rely on the help of a fervent people.
- soroso 8y agoPoverty
- collyw 8y agoPlenty of rich nations have decent football teams. Germany for example.
- VeejayRampay 8y agoFrance, Spain, etc.
- pasbesoin 8y agoWell, I'll read this, but my first thought was of American football. And my first response thereupon was, "blind allegiance". Sounds snarky. But it is applicable, on so many levels. (And yeah, it is a bit snarky. I'm not very keen on the U.S., right now -- even though I'm part of it.)
- pasbesoin 8y agoAn initial downvote -- fair enough. For there are political and other tones to my comment. But, since the OP introduces the topic of sport, in the first place, some of the things I see in American football that lead to my comment -- and that cause my concern for the U.S.: - Players destroying their bodies (and, we increasingly know, minds) for the sake of the sport. - A willful blindness to the above, served at top levels by rampant commercialism and profit, for decades. Even the cognitive effects, probably for a couple of decades if not longer. - A fan base that spends an inordinate amount of time in such allegiance and paying fealty. Granted, there's a lot of socialization around this. But there's also a lot of... well, several words come to mind, but I'll sum it up with "aggression", often I find of a rather mindless and inconsiderate sort, at least from a minority but a minority having an outsized impact. - Most recently, when the "show" is co-opted to express another viewpoint: The protests. So much allegiance to the show and disinterest in paying attention to what the players, the participants who actually make the show possible, are rightly trying to point out -- something that belongs to many of their own backgrounds and experiences. Blind allegiance. Stop and think about the context. P.S. I know European football has a lot of violence -- those stories about fan violence and absurdity. But I don't feel qualified to speak to it, really. I also don't perceive the players as being quite so chewed up by the game, although I vaguely recall some stories of arthritis and significantly limited mobility. And headers are becoming increasingly suspect in brain trauma.
- redial 8y agoI think the downvotes most of all reflect the fact you didn't bother to read the article. The discussion is about soccer, not american football.
- 8y ago
- jotm 8y agoHaha, what is this... So, I have no interest in football, but a quick search for top clubs -> Everton FC players reveals around half of them are foreign. So what does this have to do with the country? A rich club can afford the best players from all over the world, plus the best training... and that's it...
- dmurray 8y agoThe article is about predicting the success of national teams, not club teams. National team players can't be bought or sold and in most cases people are only eligible to play for one or maybe two national teams.
- jotm 8y agoI see, I thought they're all the same.
- hibikir 8y agoYour lack of interest in football is already what makes the rest of your search fruitless: You are looking for information with little relevance to the article. The article is about international soccer competitions, not national or international club competitions. So England might have a strong league, with a lot of rich teams with wealthy owners, but when you get to the World Cup, the English team, made up only of English men, underperforms, while Brazil and Germany, which have far weaker club leagues, do far better. It's not just a matter of league quality either: Spain has both recent international success and perennially strong international clubs, despite having a weaker economy than the UK.
- phillc73 8y agoThe same question can be asked of other small nations which dominate or excel in a particular sport. Why are the New Zealand All Blacks so dominant in rugby union? Why is Austria so good at winter sports? Why does Ireland produce so many top class race horses? In each case I think it has something to do with a unique cultural and natural environment, which then leads to the best in class supporting structures being built.
- narag 8y agoWhen a velodrome was built in my hometown, people were outraged. The cost was around $600k of 80's money. And there was absolutely no tradition in the area for this sport. Less than ten years later, olympic gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Moreno_(cyclist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Moreno_(cycli...
- EwanToo 8y agoThe same could be said for the Manchester Velodrome, high quality facilities built in an area without much history of cycling and now we churn out Olympic medalists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Velodrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Velodrome
- lordnacho 8y agoThe reason for those is local tradition. But football is the only real global sport. There's a country on every continent where football is the main sport. What other sport can claim that? So dominating football is hard, because there's loads of other countries where local tradition is to train football.
- phillc73 8y agoYou make a good point about football being played in many countries globally. However, regarding the point about continents, football is not the main ball sport in Australia. It probably ranks third or fourth most popular (after Australian football, rugby league and possibly rugby union), although Australia will be at the upcoming football (soccer) World Cup.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoWatching Germany play Brazil is so beautiful - so fundamentally and obviously different, it's like you can determine the entire national character form just a few minutes of football.
- muglug 8y agoThis whole article imagines that football is only played by men. Part of the reason the US does "worse than predicted" is that they're only looking at the Men's game. US interest in the women's side (current World Cup champions) is arguably higher than in the men's.
- evgen 8y agoThe only reason the US is interested in the women's game is because it is the only one in which they compete, the men's team is a joke. The reason the US women are competetive is really pretty simple: title IX. Funding equality means that collegiate women have a lot of scholarship slots and team funding available for women's teams so they have a good pre-professional program. A woman who wants to play football looks to get a place on a US collegiate team in the same way a man hopes to get picked up by a U-21 junior squad -- you get better by playing against the best and in a competitive environment.
- lordnacho 8y ago> the men's team is a joke They didn't qualify this time round, but they are by no means a joke. They tend to do ok until they come up against real contenders. And they have a fair few players in the top leagues, though not so many at the very highest Champions League level.
- lvoudour 8y agothe men's team is a joke. Not American, but I think you're too harsh. It's certainly not top tier but lately it has fared much better than teams with bigger history and love for the sport
- saghm 8y ago> The reason the US women are competetive is really pretty simple: title IX. Funding equality means that collegiate women have a lot of scholarship slots and team funding available for women's teams so they have a good pre-professional program. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here; wouldn't the funding being equal imply that both teams should perform well? Or is the argument that other countries don't spend money on women's teams?
- forinti 8y agoMy not-to-be-taken-seriously theory is that Italian influence helps. If you look at the national teams of Uruguay, Argentina (should really be called South Italy), Brazil, and (obviously) Italy itself, you'll find a large number of Italian surnames. That's 13 titles between these 4 countries.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoI'm not sure why you are being downvoted, because there is a nugget of truth in what you are saying. Immigration spreads food, culture, and yes also sports. If Italy had been dominate in something like track and field at the point they immigrated to those countries, then guess what, they might be today skilled in that instead of soccer.
- ufo 8y agoSoccer is universally beloved in south america, it isn't just the italians. There was sizeable italian immigration to south america in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but I don't think they are particulary over-represented in football.
- foobaw 8y agoSadly, genetics like height/physique can no longer be an excuse in the Men's game since there are players like Messi (even as an outlier). This contrasts sports like basketball and American football. At least for the US, would it be possible to learn from their success(dominance over other countries) in baseball/basketball and apply the same structure to Men's football(soccer)? Is it possible that the genetic variance that the US has could be an advantage in the future? Or is it impossible due to culture? (Higher chance of making money in football/basketball, etc)
- jstimpfle 8y agoPhysique is extremely important. Soccer is just not as selective towards tall players like Basketball is. In fact, I think soccer is slightly selective towards smaller players. Height seems to be an extremely important factor for header ability, but small players tend to have advantages in mobility and they probably also better reflexes. Just look at the Spanish team. And Messi has an excellent physique, doesn't he? Ibrahimovic (at 1.95m) is one exception, but he has outstanding mobility and awareness.
- woodpanel 8y agoActually genetics should be one of the main reasons why football is more popular globally than American football or basketball: Except from the goalkeeper, most roles in a football team don't benefit from an extreme physique (e.g. being too tall has adverse effects in many situations). Edit: But to answer your question, I think culture stands in the way: - You can earn much more than your average NBA player but its much harder as an American to get to that level, because you need to get out of the US early on to become a contender (Infrastructure helps) - somehow football has been marketed as 'unmanly' in the US - American soon-to-become-athletes have many more options (NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB) whereas in most nations there's at least a clear no. 1 sport. - Not being American (but wearing my stuck-up hat), but could it be that there's also a race-connection (i.e. caucasians more likely to choose ice-hockey, african-americans more likely to choose American football/basketball, latin-americans more likely to play baseball or football)?
- addicted 8y ago
- lordnacho 8y agoLook to Iceland. The place is no bigger than a large city, yet they have now qualified twice for major finals. And they even beat England last time. How is this possible? Well basically it's because football talent isn't just some randomly distributed gold-dust. People there decided they would make a bunch of indoor halls to train in, and they got themselves coaching badges. They supply a lot of youth players to different leagues in Europe. Size and wealth are just poor correlates for the number of centres of excellence: places that by luck, tradition, or directed investment have the kind of people who pour their lives into training kids in football. One other thing to note is that size can also work against a country. You can only have one national team at each age level, so only so many players can gather experience at that level.
- pertymcpert 8y agoMinor correction, Iceland is pretty big. It takes a long time to drive around it, and I have. The population is less than a big city.
- m23khan 8y agoI may not know what makes a country good at football but for sure, I can tell a thing or two about what makes Pakistan amazing at making footballs! :-)
- spapas82 8y agoOne of the main reasons football (soccer) isn't that popular in the US (as opposed to the rest of the world) is that it's not as easy to marketize as other sports, i.e it doesn't have many adverticements opportunities. Take for example basketball: It has 4 periods with pauses in between, and a number of time-outs; on all these occasions adverticements can be played. Football on the other hand (usually) has only one 15 minute pause at the half-time. There won't be any other pauses to play adverticements, actually the 45 minute timer for each half never stops. Also, because of how the field is laid out usually the camera will be far away so adverticements in the field or in the players' clothes won't be easily visible. For women's football, it's more or less non-existant in the rest of the world so it can't be a proper measurement of success.
- jonkiddy 8y agoThe primary goal of soccer parents in the US is to get their sons/daughters a collegiate scholarship. I suspect the primary goal of most other countries is to play professionally.
- madshiva 8y agoUS generally hate football, say that's gay sports, so on, then they don't invest and have limited player because you didn't get the same paid if you work for american football or standard football. Same apply with each sports. If you don't invest you have not good people. Invest mean also promoting young, and have special dedication to people that will do sports instead of techies.