A Match Won by Popular Vote: More Democratic Countries Play Better Soccer
The world’s best soccer nations – Spain, Holland, Germany and Paraguay – are all strong democracies. China, the world’s most populous country, is ranked 84th, just ahead of Mozambique. Is this a coincidence?
Think about what makes a team play great soccer and some obvious answers jump to mind. Players matter and so does the coach, facilities, equipment and money for training. But where do great players come from? Will a better coach lead to victories on the field? How come some tiny nations, like Paraguay, prosper while gigantic ones flatter?
It seems reasonable that great players, like Brazilians stars Pelé and Ronaldinho, come from populous countries. With almost 200 million Brazilians to choose from, wouldn’t it be easy to find 11 talented players? It also sounds plausible that teams from rich countries will play better than those from poor ones, because money can buy better coaches, facilities and equipment. With its oil money, Saudi Arabia was able to recruit some of the world’s top coaches to build its national team.
But an analysis of performance in World Cup 2010 reveals a better predictor than population or money: democracy. A measure of how democratic a country is predicts achievements on the field with surprising accuracy. In fact, democracy is a better gauge of soccer excellence than either a country’s size or wealth.
To measure the impact of democracy, size and wealth on soccer performance, we collected data about the 32 teams that qualified for the World Cup. For each, we listed population, GDP per capita, and its democracy score, calculated by the Polity IV Project. We then used multiple linear regression to see which of the three measures best predicts the total points each team won at the end of the Group Stage on June 25.
The results show that democracy is the best predictor of performance out of the three. Population and wealth matter little, but some 35% of a team performance can be predicted just from the democratic qualities of the country it represents. Each additional mark on the zero to 10 democracy scale contributes 0.6 points of World Cup performance, on average. Such analysis could predict that tiny Uruguay (democracy score of 10) would do much better than larger Ivory Coast (democracy score of 5) or Cameroon (democracy score of 1).
So democracy predicts soccer performance better than population size or wealth. But what relates democracy to better soccer? How does it work? What do you think?
Thanks go to Mauro Guillen for the idea, and to Kok Hsien Yeo and Sharon Perez for finding and entering the data.
True democracy is all about perfect teamwork, which is putting the interest of the team over an individuals. Soccer too is about perfect teamwork. This is why perhaps, nations that are excellent democracies do so well in soccer for soccer too is all about perfect teamwork. The overriding national democratic culture naturally spills over in soccer as well.