The EconomistJune 9th 2018 International 5112 game, and for strength of opposition. Peru
gets extra credit for playing so often against
overachievers, for example. Finally, to re-
duce the distorting effect of hapless min-
nows like the Cayman Islandsand Bhutan,
we whittled down our results to the 126
countries that have played at least 150
matches since 1990.
Our model explains 40% of the var-
iance in average goal difference for these
teams. But that leaves plenty of outliers.
Uruguay was among the biggest, manag-
ing nearly a goal per game better than ex-
pected. Brazil, Argentina, Portugal and
Spain were close behind. West Africa and
the Balkans overachieved, too.
Sadly for ambitious autocrats, the data
suggest that China and the Middle East
have already performed above their low
potential. Cricket dominates Google
searches in the Gulf states (no doubt large-
ly because South Asian migrant workers
love it). Just 2% of Chinese played football
in 2006, according to FIFA, compared with
7% of Europeans and South Americans.
China and Middle Eastern countries have
occasionally managed to qualify for the
World Cup, but none has won a game at
the tournament since 1998.
The model’s most chastening finding is
that much of what determines success is
beyond the immediate control of football
administrators. Those in Africa cannot
make their countries less poor. Those in
Asia struggle to drum up interest in the
sport. Football’s share of Google searches
has been rising in China but falling in Sau-
di Arabia.
Nonetheless, officials with dreams of
winning the World Cup can learn four les-
sons from our model’s outliers and im-
provers. First, encourage children to devel-
op creatively. Second, stop talented
teenagers from falling through the cracks.
Third, make the most of football’s vast glo-
bal network. And fourth, prepare properly
for the tournament itself.
Start with the children. The obvious les-
son from Uruguay is to get as many nippers
kicking balls aspossible, to develop their
technical skills. Mr Xi wants the game
taught in 50,000 Chinese schools by 2025.
China might try something like “Project
119”, a round-the-clock training scheme for
youngsters, which helped to lift China to
the top of the medal table at the Beijing
Olympics in 2008. The trouble is that re-
lentless drilling “loses the rough edges that
make geniuses”, says Jonathan Wilson,
editor of the Blizzard, a journal covering
the game around the world. East German
players trained much harder than those in
West Germany, but only qualified for a ma-
jor tournament once.
The trick is not just to get lots of children
playing, but also to let them develop cre-
atively. In many countries they do so by
teaching themselves. George Weah, now
the president of Liberia but once his conti-
nent’s deadliest striker, perfected his
shooting with a rag ball in a swampy slum.
Futsal, a five-a-side game with a small ball
requiring nifty technique, honed the skills
of great Iberian and Latin American play-
ers—from Pelé and Diego Maradona to
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Neymar
and Andrés Iniesta. Zinedine Zidane was
one of many French prodigies who
learned street football, orballon sur bit-
ume. In an experiment that asked adult
players to predict what would happen
next in a video clip, the best performers
had spent more time mucking around aged
six to ten. Another study found that acad-
emy prospects who ended up with con-
tracts had put in more hours of informal
practice as children.
Such opportunities are disappearing in
rich countries. Matt Crocker, the head of
player development for England’s Football
Association (FA), says parents are now re-
luctant to let children outside for a kicka-
bout. Many social-housing estates have
signs banning ball games. Dele Alli, a mer-
curial England attacker, is unusual for hav-
ing learned in what he has called “a con-
crete cage”. The challenge is “to organise
the streets into your club”, say Guus Hid-
dink, who has managed the Netherlands,
South Korea, Australia, Russia and Turkey.Deutschland über alles
The Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB), Ger-
many’s national body, has done so zeal-
ously. In the early 2000s it realised that
Germany’s burly players were struggling
against defter teams. Our model reckons
Die Mannschaft, as the national team is
known, should surpass everyone else, giv-
en Germany’s wealth, vast player pool and
lack of competing sports. But between 1990
and 2005 it performed about a third of a
goal worse per match than expected.
So the DFBrevamped. German clubshave spent about €1bn ($1.2bn) on devel-
oping youth academies since 2001, to meet
250 nationwide criteria. Youngsters now
have up to twice as much training by the
age of 18. Crucially, however, sessions fo-
cus on creativity in random environments.
One exercise involves a roboticcage that
flings balls from various angles for a player
to control and pass. The men who won the
World Cup in 2014, writes Raphael Honig-
stein, a German football author, learned
through “systematic training to play with
the instinct and imagination of those
mythical ‘street footballers’ older people in
Germany were always fantasising about”.
Our model reckons that since 2006 the
team has performed almost exactly at the
high level expected of it.
England has followed, overhauling its
youth programme in 2012. Mr Crocker ex-
plains that players are encouraged to take
risks and think for themselves. Spanish
clubs have long excelled at this, by endless-
ly practising the rondo: a close-quarters
version of piggy-in-the-middle. But the
England under-17s thatthumped Spain 5-2
in last year’s World Cup final ran rings
around their opponents. Mr Crocker says
they devised their own tactics, with little
managerial help. England’s under-20s
won their World Cup, too.
Such self-confidence was lacking in
South Korea, Mr Hiddink recalls. When he
took over in 2001, the country was already
overachieving relative to our model’s low
expectations, given its 2% participation
rate. But the manager believed that his
charges had been held back by a fear of
making mistakes. “Deep down I discov-
ered a lot of creative players,” he says. With
some help from lucky refereeing decisions,
South Korea reached the semi-finals in
2002—making it the only countryoutside
Europe and South America to get that far
since 1930.Long-range goalsSources: World Bank; FIFA; Google trends; Mart Jürisoo; MedalsPerCapita.com; The Economist*Based on the criteria used
in The Economist’s modelAverage goal difference against team of median strength*, 1990-2018, countries with 150+ matchesPredicted average goal differenceActual average goal difference321012+1.5 1.0 0.5 – 0 + 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0UEFA(Europe)
CONMEBOL(S America)
CONCACAF(N America)CAF(Africa)
AFC(Asia)
OFC(Oceania)GermanyBrazil
Argentina
EnglandSpain
Portugal
CroatiaChinaSenegalUruguay
Saudi ArabiaQatarIvory Coast
United StatesLuxembourg
MyanmarVietnamCanadaHungaryDoing
better than
predictedDoing worse than predicted