In short, only 1 out of 2000 active soccer players becomes a professional footballer What are the odds for a professional footballer to get selected for their national team & get to play in the World Cup? Lets look at Denmark - with a population of 6 mil people and reported by FIFA to have 390 pros, selecting the best 11 out of those 390 is equal to selecting the top 2.8% of all the pros in that nation. This means that even if you become a pro, you still have less than 3% chance to become a starter for your national team. https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/a59132e138824c1c/original/jlr5corccbsef4n4brde.pdf However the number looks a bit more opstimistic for those who want to be included in the squad of a national team with 5.6% chance for a Danish pro to get called up for international duty. The negative interpretation from this 5.6% number is that being top 6% of all the pros in your nation does not guarantee you a spot in the national team. Overall, a soccer player would have about 0.000026% chance of getting selected for World Cup duty. So to phrase it in another way, only 1 out of 34000 active soccer players becomes an international footballer