52 International The EconomistJune 9th 2018
2 The second lesson for ambitious offi-
cials is to make sure that gifted teenagers
do not fall through the cracks. The DFBreal-
ised that many had been overlooked by
club scouts, so it set up 360 extra regional
centres for those who missed the cut. One
of them was André Schürrle, who provid-
ed the pass that led to the cup-winning
goal in 2014. In South Korea Mr Hiddink
noticed that some ofthe best youngsters
played for the army or universities, where
they were sometimes missed by profes-
sional scouts.
When Russia bid to host this year’s tour-
nament in 2010, Mr Hiddink implored his
then-bosses to create a nationwide scout-
ing programme, to no avail. The Russian
team has declined since then, failing to win
a game at the European Championship in- Russia nowhas one of the World
Cup’s oldest squads. Such short-sighted-
ness has harmed America, too, which
failed to qualify for this year’s tournament.
Our model reckons it should be one of the
strongest countries, even accounting for
the popularity of other sports such as base-
ball and basketball. But few players get se-
rious coaching in the amateur college sys-
tem, and those who are not drafted to
Major League Soccer cannot be promoted
from lower divisions.
Centralised schemes are easier to estab-
lish in small countries. Every Uruguayan
Baby Football team has its results logged in
a national database. Iceland, which has
qualified despite havingonly 330,000 peo-
ple and 100 full-time professionals, has
trained over 600 coaches to work with
grassroots clubs. Since 2000 it has built 154
miniature pitches with under-soil heating
to give every child a chance to play under
supervision. Such programmes are unfea-
sible in Africa. Abdoulaye Sarr, a former
Senegal manager, says that the pool of tal-
ent is huge but barely tapped. Money that
could be spent on scouting is lavished on
officials instead. In a conspicuous waste of
scarce resources, Senegal is sending 300 of
them to Russia.
Belgium poaches elephants
West Africa has, however, taken ourthird
tip by tapping into sport’s global network.
Western Europe is at the centre of this net-
work, since it has the richest clubs, where
players get the best coaching. Ivory Coast,
which failed to qualify this time but is Afri-
ca’s biggest overachiever, exported a gener-
ation of young stars to Beveren, a Belgian
club. Many of them later thrived in Eng-
land’s Premier League. When Senegal beat
France, the reigning champions, in 2002,
all but two of its squad members played
for French teams.
Senegal could have used its resources
even more effectively. Patrick Vieira, who
left Dakar for France aged eight, was play-
ing for the former colonial power. He was
one of several immigrant Frenchmen whowon Les Bleusthe World Cup in 1998. His
home country had never contacted him.
Today Senegal is more astute about recruit-
ing its diaspora, and has picked nine for-
eign-born players for the tournament. Our
model reckons the country has performed
about 0.4 goals per game better since 2002
than it did before.
The 21st Club, a football consultancy,
notes that among European countries the
Balkans export the highest share of players
to stronger domestic leagues. Since 1991,
when Croatia’s 4m people gained inde-
pendence, none of its clubs has advanced
far in the Champions League, Europe’s
leading club competition. Yet Croatian
clubs have sold lots of players to Real Ma-
drid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Mi-
lan, and those émigrés carried Croatia to
the semi-finals in 1998. These export pipe-
lines can become self-perpetuating, thinks
Mr Wilson: “once a team does well at a
World Cup, and some of its players do well,everybody wants to buy them.”
Some countries are less adept. In the
past 15 years Mexico’s under-17s have out-
performed those from Brazil, Argentina
and Uruguay. But a third of Mexico’s senior
squad plays in itsdomestic league, com-
pared with just two or three players for the
others. Dennis te Kloese, the national di-
rector, says that the Mexican diaspora
boosts viewing figures and revenues for
domestic clubs, who can pay high enough
wages to keep talented locals in the coun-
try, rather than venturing to unfashionable
European leagues. This domestic bias
helps explain why Mexico is one of the few
Latin American countries to perform as
well as expected, rather than better.
Exporting players is not the only way to
benefit from foreign expertise. Mr Wilson
says that much of South America’s foot-
balling education came from Jewish
coaches fleeing Europe in the 1930s. Today
there is a well-trodden circuit of interna-tional gurus like Mr Hiddink, who was
among the first of a dozen former Real Ma-
drid bosses to have worked in Asia. Yet Mr
Szymanski of the University of Michigan
has shown that few managers can do
much to improve mediocre teams. He also
finds that teams outside Europe and South
America are no closer to catching up than
they were 20 years ago. The data suggest
that South Korea has fared slightly worse
since 2002 than it did before.
Mr Szymanski believes these countries
are experiencing a kind of footballing
“middle-income trap”, in which develop-
ing economies quickly copy technologies
from rich ones but fail to implement struc-
tural reforms. A clever manager might
bring new tactical fads but cannot produce
a generation of creative youngsters. China
is said to be paying Marcello Lippi, who led
Italy to victory in 2006, $28m a year. Un-
less he is supported by youth coaches and
scouts who reward imaginative play, and a
generation of youngsters who love the
game, the money will be wasted.
Our final lesson is for the World Cup it-
self: prepare properly. For starters, make
sure you can afford it. In 2014 Ghana
brought in $3m of unpaid bonuses by cou-
rier to avert a players’ strike, while Nige-
ria’s squad boycotted a training session
over wages. Fabio Capello, Russia’s former
boss, went without his $11m salary for
months after the rouble collapsed. Navi-
gating dressing-room politics is trickier.
Winning players from Spain and Germany
have described the importance of breaking
down club-based cliques and dropping
stars who do not fit the team’s tactics.
The hardest decisions fall to the players.
England’s results from the penalty spot
have been woeful, losing six of seven
shoot-outs in tournaments. Video analysis
shows that players who rush tend to miss
penalties; the English are particularly
hasty. So the under-17s, who won a shoot-
out in their World Cup, have worked on
slowing down and practising a range of
premeditated shots.
The bane and the delight of the World
Cup is that decades of planning depend on
such fine margins. A country could plan
meticulously and still be thwarted by an
unlucky bounce of the ball or a bad deci-
sion by the referee. “If something goes
wrong, everybody wants to rip up the
book,” says Mr Wilson. For spectators,
however, this randomness offers a glim-
mer of hope. Teams from Asia, Africa and
North America remain the underdogs, but
ought to have had more fairytale runs like
South Korea’s in 2002. The 21st Club reck-
ons there is a one-in-four chance a first-
time champion will emerge this year. For
one intoxicating month, fans around the
world will forget the years of hurt and be-
lieve that their history books, like those in
Montevideo’s museum, could be about to
add a glorious new chapter. 7