Yesterday I blogged about competitiveness in world soccer. I argued that international soccer is actually quite competitive; there is reasonable variation in who wins Word Cup tournaments, in who makes quarterfinals, and in how national teams are ranked over time.
Just because world soccer is competitive does not mean that every nation is competitive, however, or perhaps ever will be.
Think about it: 120 of over 200 nations and territories have never qualified for the World Cup finals tournament. And only 4 new nations made the tournament in the three events since 2006 (Slovakia, Bosnia, Panama and Iceland--the latter two will be appearing in 2018 for the first time). This shows that there is an incumbent bias in world football--where most positions in World Cup finals tournaments go to nations that have already been there.
This tells me that over 120 nations will never really be competitive, even though they are invited to compete. They are really just participants to increase the size of the competition.
The nations that are competitive are also all commonly wealthier than others. I noted yesterday, for instance, that the countries rising up the ranks include the likes of Poland and Switzerland. We don't see nations like the DRC forcing their way into contention (even though they had a better qualifying run than before). Simply put, money matters.
Nations cannot really be strong competitors in world soccer if they don't have money--and the conditions that money provides. Just ask the DRC team from 1976 (formerly Zaire) or the Ghanaian or Nigerian squads from more recent World Cups, whose players arrived at the World Cup finals tournament wondering who would pay their hotel bills, or how they would travel between cities. No one in the German squad has to worry about that. This matters when one is trying to be competitive.
So, just because a competition or sector is competitive does not mean everyone in that competition is competitive. And many developing countries are simply not competitive. Tomorrow I will discuss why this is not just an issue in world soccer.
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