Forgive me for writing my third soccer related post within one week. I promise the pattern will last only up to July 9. So please bear with me.
A few days ago, I wrote about the new realities playing out on the soccer field due to globalization. Today, Franklin Foer at The New Republic has an analysis of the relation between the prevailing political system of a participating country and its relative chances of success in the World Cup. It is quite funny and is true for the most part only because Foer has the benefit of hindsight and fitting facts to theory. But he plays cute in the end and takes the easy route. (Since TNR requires registration, I will summarize Foer’s findings.)
"There have been revolutions to create socialism, democracy, and authoritarian dictatorship. But humankind has yet to fight a revolution to guarantee one of the most vital elements–if not the most vital element–of the good life. That is, a winning soccer team. If we were to take up arms for this reason, what kind of government would we want to install?
Political theory, for all its talk about equality and virtue, has strangely evaded this question. But, after 17 World Cups, there’s now a mass of empirical data, and, using the most sophisticated methods available, we can now determine the political and economic conditions that yield soccer glory."
According to Foer:
- Communism creates great players but never championship teams. Examples: Hungary, Poland, the erstwhile USSR.
- When fascism is a world power, fascist countries do well. Exmples: Germany, Italy, Brazil in the 1930s
- When the fascists’ powers are on the wane and/or they are engaged in genocides, fascist countries don’t do well. Blood lust drains winning lust on the field. Examples: Germany in 1938 and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
- Military juntas are superb for championships and winning matches. Brazil and Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s. Also true for straggler junta nations like El Salvador and Paraguay.
- Social democracies do well. Examples: Western Europe and now EU.
- Colonizers still win over the colonized.
- Oil producing nations underachieve. Examples: Russia, Nigeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Norway and Gulf nations.
I will add one of my own to Foer’s list. " Being a huge, diverse, multicultural, overly religious democracy is bad for winning in soccer. Examples: India and the US."
Now the most important caveat to all the above political theories.
"There’s one iron law that overrides all the others. The political reality most likely to produce a Jules Rimet trophy at any given moment in history: whatever form of government has taken up residence in Brasilia that week."
Ha! Agreed.
Accidental Blogger 
4 responses to “Soccer & Political Theory”
Interesting!
Yugoslavia had great players and bad teams throughout its communist history.
In 1990, the year in which Yugoslavia was at its best in history with its liberalization of economy, Yugoslav team was one of the strongest in the World and Belgrade’s Red Star team wan the European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.
Starting with 1991 and decline into war, the luck turned – the best individual players went to play for Real, Barcelona or Manchester United; the Yugoslav team broke up into 5-6 smaller national teams each having a smaller pool of available talent to pick from, not to mention that the guys of the right age and physical fitness were unavailable by virtue of being on frontlines or dead. The sanctions prevented the national teams from gaining international experience.
Now, there is a sign of slow recovery in all national teams, two of which (Croatia and Serbia) have managed to qualify for the World Cup. Although they lost their first games, they played very well against much stronger opponents (Brazil and Netherlands, respectively), receiving only one goal each.
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Coturnix:
That’s a pretty good wrap up of Yugoslavian (now Croatian, Serbian/MT) soccer. Russia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia have always had an impressive presence in the world of soccer.
I wonder if during my life time there will be a World Cup winner from outside Europe or Latin America. And even more unlikely, whether India (historically a soccer playing country) will ever qualify!
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Soccer and the World
Via Accidental Blogger, come these truly amazing photos of Hindu ascetics playing soccer. I wish they qualified for the World Cup! On only slightly more serious note, Ruchira Paul has an interesting post on Soccer and Political Theory. Dou you…
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Our UFO has landed quietly last night in a densely populated coordinate at a region humans refer to as “Germany.” This particular congregation was generating so much noise we were compelled to study the anomaly.
As we approached the boiling source of haphazard frequencies, our superb training took over. We were well-trained to investigate any unusual source and level of human commotion and report immediately back to our ZX-879 headquarters. Turning on our invisibility shield helped us get really close to the subject of examination without being detected.
As we reached the egg shaped concrete container filled with 100,000 or so human subjects, the noise level rose to such unimaginable heights that we had to shut down our frequency analyzers for fear of damaging their sensitive circuitry.
When we cleared the top of the concrete structure we were blinded with thousands of light-emitting radiation sources.
Then we saw them — 22 voluntary humans darting back and forth in alternating sequences of random and seemingly-goal-oriented sprints. We have checked our central computer to decipher the modal characteristic of such kinetic outbursts and we were advised to locate the focal source of coordinated agitation.
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