There are countries that ought to have potential due to huge population and a love for the sport, but are going backwards instead due to poor infrastructure and extreme corruption - Nigeria and Mexico being the obvious two. Japan’s low birth rate means their population advantage over the traditional football powers other than Brazil is a bit of a mirage, and the enormous population countries like China and India don’t seem to be making progress on the pitch even though the sport is now very popular there. The USA is held back by people not playing the game until their teens (it’s not a coincidence that their best technical players are either children of former players or raised in Europe).
Basically, I think there are very strong reasons why the traditional two continents still rule, and that it will be a long time before we get a winner outside of them. As for which of these problems is most fixable or possible to overcome? I’m going to guess the first one, because it only takes a single high quality, high volume youth academy with aggressive recruitment of to overcome it - that’s what Morocco did to a substantial extent. As a result, I would give Nigeria and Mexico the best odds to be the first ones, but I’m doubtful we’ll see anyone outside Europe and South America win in the next half century.
Data on the ISL suggests that India has over 100 million football fans. Cricket is much much bigger, but the country has such an enormous population that they ought to be producing some footballers even though it’s a secondary sport. It’s a similar story in China.
The problem is most likely either that the surge in popularity is too recent for kids who got into football to have become top pros yet, or a lack of infrastructure and coaching. The former would be great news for them, but the latter is more likely I think
On the latter, India has actually been improving their domestic leagues pretty well in recent years. Taking a very different approach to China, Saudi etc. and doing it over the long term instead. They’re still a long way behind the best Asian leagues, but have improved significantly from what they once were. If they keep progressing like that the national team should slowly start improving too.
Sports is just not something most parents are interested in in China. I live in a city of about 1.5 million in China, which isn’t big by China standards and at least where I live there aren’t any youth sports programs I’m aware of. They would rather their kids be in some kind of academic setting than training for sports even if that training was for two hours a week.
There are countries that ought to have potential due to huge population and a love for the sport, but are going backwards instead due to poor infrastructure and extreme corruption - Nigeria and Mexico being the obvious two. Japan’s low birth rate means their population advantage over the traditional football powers other than Brazil is a bit of a mirage, and the enormous population countries like China and India don’t seem to be making progress on the pitch even though the sport is now very popular there. The USA is held back by people not playing the game until their teens (it’s not a coincidence that their best technical players are either children of former players or raised in Europe).
Basically, I think there are very strong reasons why the traditional two continents still rule, and that it will be a long time before we get a winner outside of them. As for which of these problems is most fixable or possible to overcome? I’m going to guess the first one, because it only takes a single high quality, high volume youth academy with aggressive recruitment of to overcome it - that’s what Morocco did to a substantial extent. As a result, I would give Nigeria and Mexico the best odds to be the first ones, but I’m doubtful we’ll see anyone outside Europe and South America win in the next half century.
Cricket is huge in India that’s why football hadn’t licked up much yet. About China, not sure what is holding them back.
Data on the ISL suggests that India has over 100 million football fans. Cricket is much much bigger, but the country has such an enormous population that they ought to be producing some footballers even though it’s a secondary sport. It’s a similar story in China.
The problem is most likely either that the surge in popularity is too recent for kids who got into football to have become top pros yet, or a lack of infrastructure and coaching. The former would be great news for them, but the latter is more likely I think
On the latter, India has actually been improving their domestic leagues pretty well in recent years. Taking a very different approach to China, Saudi etc. and doing it over the long term instead. They’re still a long way behind the best Asian leagues, but have improved significantly from what they once were. If they keep progressing like that the national team should slowly start improving too.
Sports is just not something most parents are interested in in China. I live in a city of about 1.5 million in China, which isn’t big by China standards and at least where I live there aren’t any youth sports programs I’m aware of. They would rather their kids be in some kind of academic setting than training for sports even if that training was for two hours a week.