Why top talents ever are only from Brazil and Argentina?

I disagree with this ranking and the strength of the assumption, but most of this is just a function of the (young) population as well as them not not as good in many other sports. Furthermore, in Europe you have a thing called 'mandatory schooling'.

In the same way, the relative uptake of Spain and France in the past half century (in comparison to Italy and Germany) cannot be separated from the population factor.

Population increase per World Bank between 1960 and 2020:


Everything else being equal (which is not the case), Brazil has about a six times higher chance for finding an adequate player on each position as Germany. If you go by their young population difference.

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr55/en/

One can think of other important structural factors as well (the 1960s preparation advantage, the effect of WW2 on continental europe), but the (young) population - and the competition from a young age - is a good start and a more rational one than the "samba on the beaches".

Another thing is that above list is full with expansive dribblers, and one might well think Europe (for good reasons) has focused less on that (one can argue or think the Low Countries has appreciated it well enough, if you see how high up Hazard, Robben, Scifo, Cruijff and others are for the OPTA world cup data - in particular next to the other Europeans).

P.S. Spain their age pyramid show a nice overlap with when they had their "golden generation" (which is, again, not the only thing - naturalizing the odd Brazilian for 2008 and 2012-14 also helped for making the homegrown generation a golden one).

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Argentina

The population structure of Argentina (a G20 country) is, as far as I can tell, quite favorable.

Yes, the population is lower as a few of the big European countries but the young population is not. It has been like that for a long time.

In comparison to Brazil it can be said that a lower amount belongs to the desperately poor, as in too poor to kick a football (even Maradona wasn't poor in the way Biafra was poor; his family had a television at home per Balague his book). The wealth in Argentina is more equally distributed.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.UMIC?locations=AR

 

This is for South America, same timeframe (1960 to 2020) and same source



Brazil has gone up with 200% since 1960.

Post above had the wrong link (for Argentina's wealth). Should be this one.

 

Another thing to look at is the monthly ESM inclusions (not the votes, as the number of voters change, even within a year).

Sure, Brazil is number one there by country of birth. But are they still top level on a per capita rate?

Copied from another thread:

Inclusions per million 1995 - 2019 (minimum 15 inclusions)

Uruguay - 12.6
Portugal - 10.0
Netherlands - 7.9
Spain - 6.9
Wales - 5.8
Belgium - 5.2
Serbia - 4.3
Argentina - 4.2
Italy - 3.7
France - 3.4
England - 3.1
Sweden - 2.6
Czech Republic - 2.5
Germany - 2.4
Brazil - 1.5
Ivory Coast - 1.1
Cameroon - 0.8
Ukraine - 0.4

In some cases there can be an outlier (Cristiano Ronaldo who takes 49% of Portugal's inclusions; Eto'o responsible for 94% of his country inclusions). When excluding the top ranked player, then this happens:

Inclusions per million 1995 - 2019 (excluding top ranked player)

Uruguay - 7.7
Netherlands - 7.1
Spain - 6.4
Portugal - 5.1
Belgium - 4.2
Italy - 3.3
France - 3.1
England - 2.7
Wales - 2.6
Argentina - 2.5
Germany - 2.2
Serbia - 2.0
Brazil - 1.3
Czech Republic - 1.2
Ivory Coast - 0.7
Sweden - 0.6
Ukraine - 0.2
Cameroon - 0.04

Belgium will move higher if you take just their northern regions. Denmark will be high when the period just before 1995 gets drawn in.

Brazil is on a per capita rate not levels above the other big countries. It is not perfect of course (Rooney more inclusions than Ronaldo can be debated; Bergkamp only two is bad; people as Baggio and Makelele never received one) but in the main it shows the benefit of sheer size. This is part of the reason why Brazil and Germany are #1 and #2 in Elo since the 1960s (followed by a group with Italy, Netherlands and others). Players with only limited caps for their country like Filipe Luis or Angloma can receive a string of inclusions as well, so it does reward depth a fair bit.

 

This is a good point.
I'll take number of players included by country, instead.

 

As it stands now (minimum 10 inclusions):

Spain - 79 different players
Brazil - 73
France - 65
Italy - 64
Germany - 63
England - 52
Netherlands - 38
Argentina - 30
Portugal - 24
Belgium - 18
Uruguay - 9
Croatia - 8
Russia - 8
Denmark - 7
Colombia - 6
Ivory Coast - 6
Serbia - 6
Morocco - 5
Poland - 5
Sweden - 5
Yugoslavia - 5
Czech Republic - 4
Senegal - 4
Wales - 3
Austria - 2
Cameroon - 2
Finland - 2
Ukraine - 2
Egypt - 1
Slovenia - 1

It must be said that this is not by country of birth. Jorginho is Italian, not Brazilian. It disadvantages France too.

What is the best country with only one or zero inclusions? I would say Switzerland, by a margin possibly (some Swiss born inclusions have another flag behind their name..).

 

Here the direct comparison with Brazil:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.UMIC?locations=AR-BR

Argentina at their lowest point was (approximately) not worse of as Brazil. Brazil around 1980 had many more people below 5 dollars (up to 70% of population). In 1983 one third of Brazil was living with less than 2.15 dollars a day (link shows comparison with Argentina, less than 1% for them).

This while Brazil sees a higher wage share of GDP (also because of saving less money, and less flowing into retirement funds, I guess).

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-share-of-gdp

It begins with the (young) population size I'd say. That has been a constant throughout the decades.

 

I think Puck has a point about population but I guess I’d articulate it slightly differently. Rather than talking about the percent increase in population (which depends of course on the initial denominator), I’d say the relevant thing here is just the number of children born in a given time period. All other things being equal, a country that has more people of footballing age will be more likely to produce very top players. And, while I don’t have the numbers in front of me, my guess is that Brazil and Argentina have been ahead of European countries in this regard for a while, since European countries have had significant decreases in total fertility rate.

Of course, there’s other factors at play as well. One big one is a country’s focus on a sport. If a country cares less about sports in general and/or has another sport that they care about a lot or maybe even more, then you’d expect that country to potentially miss on naturally talented individuals who don’t end up playing football (or do but don’t really care about it enough to fulfill their talent at all). There probably is also a gap here with regards to Brazil and Argentina vs. other countries, though I doubt there’s any way to objectively measure this.

The final factor is a question of resources. You can produce a great talent who does focus on football, but if they don’t have access to good training, facilities, coaching, etc. then they very likely won’t be able to become great. In this regard, we’d expect Brazil and Argentina to lag behind, since they’re poorer nations than most of Europe. But, for one thing, I suspect that the nationwide focus on football in Brazil/Argentina mitigates this a lot (as in, they may be a poorer country but they care about football more and may therefore nevertheless invest similar amounts of resources into it). And to the extent this *is* an issue, it’s largely mitigated these days by the fact that very top talents can get discovered and sent to Europe at a young age if their country’s lack of resources is going to be an issue (see, for example, Messi).

 

I didn't say something different. I showed the percentage increase for other reasons. I said above the answer begings with the (young) population size.

Another thing is here how football has become a 'black sport' in many countries. Here both Brazil and Argentina show an outlier position (too?): over half of Brazil's population identifies themselves as 'black', and also 'objectively' it is higher as any European country (France is definitely #1 of entire Europe). Argentina in the meantime displays the other extreme. A few (poor) articles have been written recently about their lack of black players representing the national team.

But the question of racism aside, what does enhance your potential more? The 10% of your population making up 50% of your squad or the 90% of the population making up 99% of your squad? This 'Argentina math' can even be applied to Spain (although they have no qualms in naturalizing a Donato, Diego Costa or Marcos Senna).

Belgium and Croatia have some of the world's best players - but are they the markets to be scouting if you're not an elite club? @OmarChaudhuri uses our Player Model to assess the production line of different countries https://t.co/fTxZak4Ns1 pic.twitter.com/xJVbFWSnR0

— Twenty First Group (@TwentyFirstGrp) October 11, 2018

This shouldn't be underestimated and money is not the only thing at work (not to mention sport careers are always uncertain when you're 16 years old or so). There are some indicators to measure interest in football and the performance in sports, but I do not doubt it is hard (that website I linked to in the first reply tries to measure this). It is illustrative how low Brazil and Argentina score at the Olympics and they never had Wimbledon winner for instance (which is by some measures a top 3 sport, but again, it's hard). The single winner countries all had another losing finalist as well (Czechoslovakia and successors, Croatia and Netherlands - and I can tell you it is a small sport here).

I'll give two examples of athletes. Roger Federer could have been a footballer. Only a select number of tennis players in the world can live from their sport. But football is not as big a thing in Switzerland to begin with and even if you have a golden generation, the chance to win the World Cup is very small (even if your FIFA president is Swiss). Besides, born (and raised) footballers as Rakitic, Di Matteo and Neuville went on to play for other national teams.

In cycling, the current world champion (and Tour of Spain winner) Evenepoel could have been an international footballer for Belgium. He was a fixture in their youth national teams, and scoring/creating goals against rival national teams (Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Portugal). His dad was a professional cyclist himself. Would he be the equal of De Bruyne as a footballer? Likely not, but I'm also sure those choices aren't only down to money.

On the last sentence: I have doubts about the idea that at the age of 12 you can see 'talent' (as in: becomes one of the best of your country).

On resources: it helps that there is a large ocean between Europe and South America. This mitigates the migration movements for non-footballers (the youth trainers and the like).

Brazil has something like eight top division clubs with annual revenues above 100 million dollars. It's not all enormously well managed, and it does depend on state aid too, but it shows again how sheer size and marketing power functions (as well as that Portuguese is not a small language).

 

So here a try to do this by capita (the WB data, used by Google when you search for it).

One caveat is the population isn't constant between 1995 and 2022. I have decided to use 1995 this time around since that does South America and the latin countries more favors, and you can argue it takes time before population gets transformed into footballers. In the same way, Italy's 1995 population is perhaps more relevant as the recently reduced population number.

Another is that this is not by country of birth (or where they were raised - which this previous link did). Laporte is counted as Spanish, not French. Deco, Pepe, but also a lesser name as Liedson are Portuguese, even though they weren't raised there (someone as Bosingwa, who moved at a very young age, is something else). Poor articles and videos like this are annoying (none of these players, except one who moved as a toddler, were born there).

Third, some countries had extensive former colonies (that are into football, with large populations), thus making their potential larger as what the population size suggests (Portugal, for example).

Fourth, I didn't know what to do with Yugoslavia (the population in 1995) so I excluded them. It has (sometimes) times happened that one country delivered eight players in one month.

Finally, the ESM representatives for some countries are quite bad (with Netherlands in the top regions imho). But the total numbers are I think not too far off and largely match with other sources.


ESM footballers per million (minimum 5 different footballers)

Uruguay 2.81
Netherlands 2.45
Portugal 2.4
Spain 1.99
Belgium 1.78
Croatia 1.74
Denmark 1.35
Italy 1.13
France 1.09
England 1.07
Argentina 0.85
Serbia 0.79
Germany 0.77
Sweden 0.57
Brazil 0.45
Ivory Coast 0.42
Morocco 0.19
Colombia 0.17
Poland 0.13
Russia 0.05


Croatia had recently a world cup squad where seven players were born abroad (Kovacic for example, effectively raised in Austria). But it applies to only one player who received an ESM inclusion.

Crucially, what it illustrates is how Brazil's size works through, and this doesn't even factor in the very different age structure.

 

Even from an ethnic point of view this makes no sense, since for example Rijkaard, Gullit, Van Dijk are offspring from mixed marriages and (for example) Aron Winter is ethnically of Indian/Asian origin.

The Athletic is promoting an agenda where these minority players should play for Suriname, Morocco, United States etc. - how sad!

I'll run this down later and then connect it to (very plausible) factors helping them to 'produce' all these players. Hint: economically it wasn't as poor a country as someone might think.

 

This is a bloody crap shit story. Surinam hasnot produced anyone. The players mentioned arenot worldclass because of their "roots", but because of the environment in where they got their football education. After Surinam was given their independence in november 1975, but many of them didnot want that so up till 1980 about 150 thousand Surinam people moved to the Netherlands. Unless one believes everybody with top football genes moved to the Netherlands, it doesnot make sense to think those 150,000 were able to produce so many top players while the remaining 500,000 in those years produced shit. Hell, they're now recruting rejects from Dutch football= those not good enough for the Orange Squad. If this screenshot was to bear any truth, why would they need to do that? Those talents owe shit to Surinam, but owe everything to Dutch football development that made them great.


This is such a blatant AngloSaxon shit attempt to falsify history, with in this screenshot such an incredible lie that in that sentence itself is exposed by this imbecil who produced this piece of shit.
Talent owes to a country that hasnot got a professional league itself. Where did they learn their trade then? Natural born players? If so, why doesnot those 500,000 produce more stars than those 150,000 in the Netherlands.
Imbecils donot get the truth football stars come from selecting and nurturing. It isnot nature, but nurture.
Imbecils donot get/understand/have the knowledge before the Surinam invasion we were in two World cup finals, won the European champions cup 4 times, the UEFA Cup 3 times and the Cup winners Cup once or twice.
Yet this imbecil claims for Dutch football they were:

AngloSaxon fake news and AngloSaxon fake history.

 

Simple answer: The Latin style is overall more geared toward technical side of the game. The players are trained to express more free-flowing and individually. The European style focused more on discipline, tactical side of the game, etc. So when it came to be individual recognition, the Latin players stand out more. You also left off Beckenbauer who was as good as all of the players mentioned. His playing style was less of individual flair than Maradona or Messi, but his influence on the playing field might be greater than the players you just mentioned. Let's say people remember Maradona's goals in 1986 rather than Beckenbauer's dominance in the World Cup Finals of 1966 and 1970.

CR7 is also Latino even through he is an European, btw.

 

Hmm, although I am English Puck as you know, I think you'd possibly have a good point if you asked a journalist promoting any such agenda if Lewis Hamilton should be considered a racing driver from Grenada lol! Jean Tigana was actually part French/part African in terms of his own ethnicity I believe wasn't he too? It's interesting how mixed race a lot of people/players are now though:


On the main topic, I don't say my list would be definitive or 'correct' but on the technique thread when I tried a top 10 for purely all-round technical attributes I had this:
Zico (Brazil - family of Portuguese origin)
Zinedine Zidane (France - parents both from Algeria)
Diego Maradona (Argentinian - parents origin mixed with South American(Paraguayan? or Argentinian Guarani?)/Spanish and Italian/Croatian elements if going back just as far as them
Dennis Bergkamp (Dutch, with northern European hair/skin)
Ronaldinho (Brazilian - African origin)
Glenn Hoddle (English - 'Anglo Saxon'?)
George Best (Northern Irish - Scottish and possibly Cypriot(?) ethnicity it seems)
Alessandro Del Piero (Italian)
Michael Laudrup (Danish)
Dragan Stojkovic (Yugoslav-Serbian but not really dark haired so maybe some 'Northern European' background somewhere? - not sure exactly)

After that I had these too:
Roberto Baggio (Italian)
Pele (Brazilian - African, and Portuguese, origin)
Johan Cruyff (Dutch - you may know more details Puck re: family history?)
Gheorghe Hagi (Romanian - mother with Greek ethnicity)
Lionel Messi (Argentinian - Spanish and Italian origin)
Francesco Totti (Italian, with relatively light hair colour but no links to Scandanavia that I have seen)
Eric Cantona (French - Spanish and Italian origin)
Marco van Basten (Dutch - you may know more details Puck re: family history?)
Gianni Rivera (Italian, but again not as dark haired as some especially when younger)
Enzo Francescoli (Uruguayan - Italian origin)

Of the next 3 I named two were not Italian by nationality (but Belgian, and French), but had Italian family background (Scifo, Platini) and another had a French sounding name but seems more 'Anglo Saxon' perhaps in ethnicity (and played for England - Matt Le Tissier).

I think players like George Weah and Roger Milla did have something of the Pele-esque way of moving with the ball and manipulating it.

I think overall talented players can come from anywhere and have any racial profile, just like talented players in any sport. What is true I think is that South American (certainly Argentinian/Brazilian) football culture has always valued the technical side of the game, though that could also be said of Dutch football going back quite a long time now probably I think, and Italian football too, even though the team tactics have more emphasis on defense typically, and the number of 'fantasista' players in a team is normally limited (but they are still valued highly). France particularly values both flair and technique I'd say too, but obviously a lot of their best and most talented players have been from immigrant families (that was true in 1958 for example, not just starting from 1998 or whatever - though there was more European and particularly Polish background back then, although with the 13 goal scorer having African nationality in theory although Spanish and indeed French family ethnicity apparently).

Of course talent is not only technical though as physical attributes (not only related to power or even speed) also contribute to football capabilities, as well as the brain of course.

 

Puskas of course had German (Danube Swabian) background, but certainly grew up as a Hungarian, in the Hungarian football system, itself influenced by Jimmy Hogan, a British coach who did favour a more technical and constructive game style than many other prominent English coaches of that time). Like Beckenbauer (whose own technique was part of his array of attributes that made him a top player, including physical ones) he had relatively dark hair though, I would guess as a child too.

 

Some other interesting names in terms of being top technical players or top general football talents in the early part of the 20th century....

Arthur Friedenreich - Brazilian (born in Sao Paulo, Brazil) of mixed German-African ethnicity.

Giussepe Meazza - Italian - both parents with typical Italian names....maybe about as clear cut a case as there can be....?

Rinaldo Martino - referred to as Argentinian/Italian but maybe because he played in Italy and even for Italy, when Juventus bought him...but I guess maybe Italian family background too?

Juan Schiaffino - Uruguayan - parents Italian, and Paraguayan.

 

I think the Surinamese part is relevant in the way it was by 1975 one of the richest parts of South America (number two behind Argentina, per head) and had the lowest percentage in South and Middle America living in (extreme) poverty. Also one of the lowest child mortality rates.

To an extent this was their own achievement and built up by themselves. By the late 19th century there wasn't much mutual trade any more with mainland Europe.

I should deal with this in more detail later, and connect it to the subject of the thread.

 

In my opinion Robin van Persie dwarfs several of your first ten choices.

 

That's fair enough mate - we will all have slightly different choices. For sure his shooting technique could be spectacular and very effective. I was taking quite a wide view of technical qualities as per the discussion on that other thread, so comfortably keeping the ball under control when dribbling, quality and variety of passing technique etc come into it (especially for the first one of those I think he wouldn't be such a stand out).

 

If Robin was only an effective shooter, he never would be in my top 10. His technical abilities were one of the best ever in football.

 

I think he was good at feinting and at manipulating the ball past a player or two, but in terms of higher speed pure fluid dribbling not so much (although I know that that depends not only on technical skills but also on physical qualities, and maybe he was a bit better in that respect as a young Feyenoord player even?). Anyway, I understand your call.

 

Cruijff his background is from Friesland (the 19th century) and further back Belgium as well (around/after the fall of antwerp in 1585). The other two I don't know exactly. Bergkamp his parents and grandfathers have all been Catholic, the other two are mixed protestant and secular (Cruijff his father was secular for sure).

In general, 98% of the population has origins outside the country. If you go back to 1648 (but it has always been a point of contention whether this is the start of the country; some mention earlier dates like 1581 or further back with the Burgandian Netherlands; as you might guess, the protestant historians and people from Holland prefer the year 1648). So say over the last 500 years the lands abroad have delivered 98% of the population. The Dutch nationality as such only exists since 1850 and 1892 (definitely not before 1850).

Many people died prematurely. It is only since the mid 19th century that cities show a natural rate of increase in population. Before this the cities (and large cities in particular) had an automatic decline if it was not for continuous streams of newcomers. A place like Dordrecht had in the 18th century a clean reputation (by outsiders) but nevertheless lost about 5% of their population, each year (the usual mega-cities had at times an infant mortality rate of 40%).

 

There are many things wrong with that video (Davids publicly insulting his team-mates and manager is called a "disagreement") but just to keep it within the confines of the thread, as a start:

1) All those players, except Seedorf (who moved to mainland Europe as a two years old), have been born on Dutch soil and with a normal Dutch passport. Yes, the players Winter, Davids, Hasselbaink, Menzo (and others) have been born in Suriname. But that was before 1975. They were free to move anywhere in the kingdom, and they did.

Compare that to Germany. Already in the 'golden age' players like Wimmer and Bonhof have been born abroad, born with a foreign passport (Bonhof started to play for Germany before he had attained German nationality; just like their FIFA 'licence to dope' another special perk and privilege they had). Wimmer or later Klose have been born abroad and with foreign nationality.

But that is an angle e.g. The Athletic will never take. Germany has had plenty players that were actually born abroad (not as obvious as Spain and Italy), and that includes, technically, Sammer and Kroos (born in what was then still the GDR). Of course, secretly they still think significant parts of Poland (and other countries) belong to them. It's not for nothing a survey by 'Pew Research' (and their own Ministry!) still shows 40+% of the Germans agreeing with the statement their territory should be enlarged.

And to put this even stronger: if you like to wipe out entire nations (mass genocide in Namibia, killing 90%; or the several mass famines in India, each time causing millions of deaths) then of course those territories will not produce players for you.

2) Also from an ethnic perspective there is a lot to contend with. Gullit, Rijkaard, Davids, Winter or later Van Dijk and Wijnaldum are childs from mixed marriages. Edgar Davids his mother is white and Jewish. Aron Winter is Indian. Rijkaard is as much Surinamese as he is a white Amsterdammer.

3) The favorable economic conditions in Suriname (in 1975; what happened after 1975 is a story itself) and also the culture there is not entirely irrelevant (language and state religion wasn't forced on them). There is something to be said about an own idea being formed there, which was then taken to the polders.

"The photo of the bicycle kick has become an “icon”: a symbol for what Surinamese flexibility added to the wooden, down-to-earth power football of our polder competition [in the 1950s]. Mijnals was the first international of Surinamese origin, "he was Brazilian", contemporary Hans Kraay knows. “And that picture went all over the world. That was such a great action, we Dutch defenders didn't do that, we couldn't. And if we accidentally tried, we would have to be taken away with a hernia.”
https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/604/De-omhaal-van-Humphrey-Mijnals


(Maybe I add something more later)