A Goldfish extra, reflecting on the role of opportunity in soccer and health
This piece was co-authored by Mohammed Abba-Aji, and also appears here, on his new Substack.
I have quite been enjoying watching the men’s soccer world cup the past few weeks. The FIFA World Cup, perhaps the most prominent worldwide sporting event has not disappointed—it has had great games, some sublime individual performances, and more impressively excellent teams. One of the central stories of this World Cup has been, of course, the USMNT crashing out to Belgium in a performance as uninspired as the start to their campaign was inspired. This has occasioned substantial reflection, with blame apportioned—depending in my estimation on the apportioner’s biases—on the coach, the federation, the players, the referee. Just about anyone but the structural forces that really bring about such outcomes.
I have previously written on the history of the game and the way small perturbations shape complex systems. I return to it now because it has been hard to avoid as one has watched and reflected on this year’s World Cup. In the US context, how could a country as large, wealthy, and athletically engaged underperform as it does in soccer? American athletes lead the world in basketball, in track and field, in swimming, in gymnastics. But not in soccer, the most widely played game on earth. In this sport, the US remains an also-ran, as we were painfully reminded during this World Cup.
The explanation that usually follows is that soccer arrived late here and that the game needs another generation or two to bear fruit. While this explanation is comforting and assuring, it is only partly true. Consider for example, Japan, a country that did not professionalize its domestic league until 1993. Japan now qualifies for every World Cup and regularly advances. Or Croatia, a nation of under four million people, which reached a final and a semifinal in successive tournaments. Or Morocco with a fraction of America’s resources, which reached the quarter finals of the World Cup and the semifinal in 2022 (and played impressively at this World Cup). Clearly a country’s wealth, its footballing heritage, and its population size matter. But neither are enough to explain its success or failure in soccer. So, what, then, is at work in ours?
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