
What makes a country good at football? - dsr12
https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/09/what-makes-a-country-good-at-football
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sonnyblarney
Watching 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.

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muglug
This 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.

~~~
oh_sigh
Why is it that the US women are consistently the best in the world, and US men
are consistently middling? Do women in other countries just not play as much
soccer as US women?

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MisterBastahrd
Womens' soccer gets the US' best athletes. There are plenty of stadiums open
on Friday nights with 10-30K fans watching boys play American football. You
would be lucky get get 100 to watch soccer.

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ghaff
>Womens' soccer gets the US' best athletes.

I'm not sure I agree with that. US women do well at the international level in
a fair number of sports. But it's probably true that women in the US are more
likely to seriously play soccer growing up, including at the collegiate level,
than women in other countries are.

And, of course, the US Women's national basketball team is utterly dominant.
Though given the relative popularity of basketball in the US compared to other
major countries, that's not exactly a fair comparison.

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phillc73
The 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.

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narag
When 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_(cycli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Moreno_\(cyclist\))

~~~
EwanToo
The 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)

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ducatdusk
Englander here. Tell me when you find out.

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nkg
England's poor performance is a mystery to me.

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narag
Maybe 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?

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nkg
Not downvoting, but I think England on its own has what it takes to do well.

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narag
Of course, but a joint team would minimize luck's role. England won World Cup
once anyway, didn't it?

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spapas82
One 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.

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lordnacho
Look 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.

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pertymcpert
Minor 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.

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nkg
What 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.

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foobaw
Sadly, 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)

~~~
woodpanel
Actually 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
I really doubt genetics has anything to do with the lack of popularity of
football and basketball in the vast majority of the world. The actual probable
reason is equipment. If you’re playing a tackle sport why would you choose a
complicated one such as football over rugby? And basketball requires the
installation of a net, a good flat surface and a high quality ball that
bounces well off the ground. Soccer on the other hand can be played with
basically anything.

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forinti
My 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.

~~~
ufo
Soccer 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.

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jonkiddy
The 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.

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m23khan
I 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! :-)

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iamantee
The model seems not to be a good one

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ISL
Practice?

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eliben
This 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?

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detaro
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

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jotm
Haha, 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...

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dmurray
The 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.

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jotm
I see, I thought they're all the same.

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pasbesoin
Well, 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.)

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pasbesoin
An 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
I 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_.

