The determinants of national team performance in European soccer

Abstract

Understanding sports performance has always been one of the interests of researchers. Growing soccer industry has led to more scientific studies regarding the differences between successful nations and the others. However, none of these researchers presents an effective and efficient model that is valid all the time regardless of the scopes and data sets used. Rather, they serve as general assessments of nations’ success potentials in soccer. This study aims to identify the main determinants that affect nations’ soccer performances and introduce a model which is developed with the aspects that have never been used in this field before. Results show that worth of national team players is more effective in explaining national team performance than generally accepted determinants such as nation’s wealth, population, geography, being of Latin origin and having hosted FIFA World Cup. Therefore, this study may become pioneer not only in its field but also in other sports and give future researchers a new direction.