IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v88y2007i1p244-258.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Predicting the Comparative Strengths of National Football Teams

Author

Listed:
  • Garry A. Gelade
  • Paul Dobson

Abstract

Objectives. The aim of this study was to identify the chief social and economic factors predicting the strength of national Association Football (soccer) teams. Methods. A theoretical model was developed to establish an appropriate functional form for the relationship between team strength and the number of individuals available for selection. OLS regression was used to predict the performance ratings of 201 national teams. Results. The results showed that the strength of a nation's football team depends on the number of men who regularly play football, the length of its football tradition, the wealth of its population, the percentage of expatriate players in the national team, and climatic conditions. These factors explain 70 percent of the variance in international team ratings. Conclusions. Many of the factors that determine team strength are structural and cannot be manipulated by policymakers. Nations could, however, strengthen their teams by encouraging wider participation in the sport. Poorer nations could develop stronger teams by encouraging their best players to play professional club football abroad, although this might have negative consequences for domestic football.

Suggested Citation

  • Garry A. Gelade & Paul Dobson, 2007. "Predicting the Comparative Strengths of National Football Teams," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 88(1), pages 244-258, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:88:y:2007:i:1:p:244-258
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00456.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00456.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00456.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Hoffmann & Lee Chew Ging & Bala Ramasamy, 2002. "The Socio-Economic Determinants of International Soccer Performance," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 5, pages 253-272, November.
    2. Moonjoong Tcha & Vitaly Pershin, 2003. "Reconsidering Performance at the Summer Olympics and Revealed Comparative Advantage," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(3), pages 216-239, August.
    3. S Lozano & G Villa & F Guerrero & P Cortés, 2002. "Measuring the performance of nations at the Summer Olympics using data envelopment analysis," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 53(5), pages 501-511, May.
    4. Robert Houston & Dennis Wilson, 2002. "Income, leisure and proficiency: an economic study of football performance," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(14), pages 939-943.
    5. Daniel K. N. Johnson & Ayfer Ali, 2004. "A Tale of Two Seasons: Participation and Medal Counts at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 85(4), pages 974-993, December.
    6. Andrew B. Bernard & Meghan R. Busse, 2004. "Who Wins the Olympic Games: Economic Resources and Medal Totals," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 413-417, February.
    7. Lins, Marcos P. Estellita & Gomes, Eliane G. & Soares de Mello, Joao Carlos C. B. & Soares de Mello, Adelino Jose R., 2003. "Olympic ranking based on a zero sum gains DEA model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 312-322, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Butler & Robert Butler & Justin Doran & Sean O’Connor, 2018. "Explaining international footballer selection through Poisson modelling," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 45(2), pages 296-306, May.
    2. Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2022. "Protectionism, Competitiveness and Inequality: Cross-Country Evidence from Soccer," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(2), pages 171-192, April.
    3. Roberto Gásquez & Vicente Royuela, 2016. "The Determinants of International Football Success: A Panel Data Analysis of the Elo Rating," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 97(2), pages 125-141, June.
    4. Norbäck, Pehr-Johan & Olsson, Martin & Persson, Lars, 2016. "Talent Development and Labour Market Integration: The Case of EU Football," Working Paper Series 1126, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 14 Mar 2018.
    5. Frank Daumann & Florian Follert & Daniel Hamacher & Lasse Plöhn, 2023. "The early bird catches the worm: The impact of first‐mover advantage on long‐term elite team sport success," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(3), pages 1465-1475, April.
    6. David Pastoriza & Jean-François Plante & Nadjib Lakhlef, 2021. "Are Foreigners at Disadvantage in a Global Labor Market?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(6), pages 615-638, August.
    7. Kin-Man Wan & Ka-U Ng & Thung-Hong Lin, 2020. "The Political Economy of Football: Democracy, Income Inequality, and Men’s National Football Performance," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 981-1013, October.
    8. Berlinschi, Ruxanda & Schokkaert, Jeroen & Swinnen, Johan, 2013. "When drains and gains coincide: Migration and international football performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 1-14.
    9. Pehr‐Johan Norbäck & Martin Olsson & Lars Persson, 2021. "Talent development and labour market integration in European football," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 367-408, February.
    10. Vicente Royuela & Roberto Gásquez, 2019. "On the Influence of Foreign Players on the Success of Football Clubs," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(5), pages 718-741, June.
    11. repec:lic:licosd:26510 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Vasilakis, Chrysovalantis, 2013. "Globalized Market for Talents and Inequality: What Can Be Learnt from European Football?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1034, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pedro Garcia‐del‐Barrio & Carlos Gomez‐Gonzalez & José Manuel Sánchez‐Santos, 2020. "Popularity and Visibility Appraisals for Computing Olympic Medal Rankings," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2137-2157, September.
    2. Kavetsos, Georgios & Szymanski, Stefan, 2010. "National well-being and international sports events," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 158-171, April.
    3. Michael A. Leeds & Eva Marikova Leeds, 2009. "International Soccer Success and National Institutions," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(4), pages 369-390, August.
    4. Wladimir Andreff & Madeleine Andreff, 2015. "Economic prediction of sport performances from the Beijing Olympics to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa: the notion of surprising sporting outcomes," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01244495, HAL.
    5. Leeds Eva Marikova & Leeds Michael A., 2012. "Gold, Silver, and Bronze: Determining National Success in Men’s and Women’s Summer Olympic Events," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 232(3), pages 279-292, June.
    6. Frank Daumann & Florian Follert & Daniel Hamacher & Lasse Plöhn, 2023. "The early bird catches the worm: The impact of first‐mover advantage on long‐term elite team sport success," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(3), pages 1465-1475, April.
    7. repec:lic:licosd:26510 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Franklin G. Mixon Jr. & Richard J. Cebula, 2022. "Property Rights Freedom and Innovation: Eponymous Skills in Women's Gymnastics," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 23(4), pages 407-430, May.
    9. Jie Wu & Zhixiang Zhou & Liang Liang, 2010. "Measuring the Performance of Nations at Beijing Summer Olympics Using Integer-Valued DEA Model," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(5), pages 549-566, October.
    10. Eiji Yamamura, 2012. "Effect of Linguistic Heterogeneity on Technology Transfer: An Economic Study of FIFA Football Rankings," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 40(1), pages 85-99, March.
    11. Li, Yongjun & Liang, Liang & Chen, Yao & Morita, Hiroshi, 2008. "Models for measuring and benchmarking olympics achievements," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 933-940, December.
    12. John Manuel Luiz & Riyas Fadal, 2011. "An economic analysis of sports performance in Africa," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(10), pages 869-883, August.
    13. Vagenas, George & Vlachokyriakou, Eleni, 2012. "Olympic medals and demo-economic factors: Novel predictors, the ex-host effect, the exact role of team size, and the “population-GDP” model revisited," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 211-217.
    14. Roberto Gásquez & Vicente Royuela, 2016. "The Determinants of International Football Success: A Panel Data Analysis of the Elo Rating," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 97(2), pages 125-141, June.
    15. Schlembach, Christoph & Schmidt, Sascha L. & Schreyer, Dominik & Wunderlich, Linus, 2022. "Forecasting the Olympic medal distribution – A socioeconomic machine learning model," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    16. Vicente Royuela & Roberto Gásquez, 2019. "On the Influence of Foreign Players on the Success of Football Clubs," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(5), pages 718-741, June.
    17. Wu, Jie & Liang, Liang & Yang, Feng, 2009. "Achievement and benchmarking of countries at the Summer Olympics using cross efficiency evaluation method," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(2), pages 722-730, September.
    18. Joshua Congdon-Hohman & Victor A. Matheson, 2013. "International women’s soccer and gender inequality: revisited," Chapters, in: Eva Marikova Leeds & Michael A. Leeds (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports, chapter 16, pages 345-364, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Caroline Buts & Cind Du Bois & Bruno Heyndels & Marc Jegers, 2013. "Socioeconomic Determinants of Success at the Summer Paralympics," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(2), pages 133-147, April.
    20. Julia Bredtmann & Carsten J. Crede & Sebastian Otten, 2014. "The Effect of Gender Equality on International Soccer Performance," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 065, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    21. Marcus Noland, 2016. "Russian Doping in Sports," Working Paper Series WP16-4, Peterson Institute for International Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:88:y:2007:i:1:p:244-258. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.