International Soccer Success and National Institutions

Abstract

A growing literature has examined the causes of success in international soccer. We build on this literature by constructing a model of international success, as measured by the number of ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) points'' a national team has earned and by the resulting rank. We generate testable hypotheses about the impact of a nation's political regime, colonial heritage, and institutions on its soccer performance. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) and negative binomial regressions, we show that our proxies for these variables affect soccer performance. Specifically, we find that the international success of a country's club teams positively affects the national team's success.

When Drains and Gains Coincide: Migration and International Football Performance

“…in Gelade and Dobson (2007), while others (Macmillan and Smith, 2007;Leeds and Leeds, 2009) try to overcome this problem by including dummies for former republic or communist members. 13 We do not include 2006 and 2010 World Cup appearances in order to avoid endogeneity.…”

“…Recent empirical contributions have found new explanatory factors, such as linguistic heterogeneity (Yamamura, 2008), national institutions (Leeds and Leeds, 2009) and the level of health expenditures as a percentage of national income (Luiz and Fadal, 2010).…”

Is Football an Indicator of Development at the International Level?

“…Several studies (Hoffman et al, 2002a and2002b;Houston and Wilson, 2002;Jiang and Xu, 2005;Leeds and Leeds, 2009;Li et al, 2009;Monks and Husch, 2009;Rathke and Woitek, 2008;Condon et al, 1999) have analysed success in football or at the Olympic Games as a dependent variable, and have included several explanatory variables, such as GDP, in an attempt to explain what sporting success is dependent on. These studies conclude that development may indeed have an influence on sporting success, and argue that as more developed countries are able to allocate greater resources to promote sport, they are more likely to be successful.…”

“…According to Leeds and Leeds (2009), FIFA began to rank its members in 1993 on the basis of their accumulated points, i.e., simple eight-year averages of their annual performances in 'A' matches, which were determined by applying a complex calculation that involved the average number of points awarded per game. In 2005, and in response to criticisms of its ranking system, FIFA simplified these calculations.…”

“…The method for calculating the current FIFA rankings is shown in Annex 1. 6 The FIFA ranking has been used by Hoffman et al (2002b), Houston and Wilson (2002), Leeds and Leeds (2009) and Macmillan and Smith (2007) to analyse the relationship between the success of national football teams and economic development. The FIFA ranking is available at http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/rankingtable/index.html…”