Football vs Education

How does the development of football in a country influence, specifically in the efficiency of its education, the degree of connections, concentration, periphery and distance to the nucleus of football in Western Europe?

Rural areas around the globe are emptying, people tend to find themselves living in the bigger cities despite the fact that, more often than not, these urban landscapes prove themselves dirty, overcrowded and expensive places to live in. Why? Social networking and integration. Rural is synonymous to isolation so by mere opposition, these urban social networks offer useful and promising contacts.

In the same way the brain works by establishing new connections between nerve cells with each synopsis generating a new thought, individuals find the need to position themselves right in the middle of a cluster in a way that makes for more connections.

It is likely that one of the more serious problems football faces in many countries is this very -socially prohibiting- isolation in relation to the development of the sport.

Up until the 1930s, the UK exported knowledge of football through its trainers. Between 1930 and 1970, Brazil and Uruguay would win the majority of the World Cup Championships. In 1970, this reign of superiority starts to make its way across to western Europe. Since then, it has become home to the most efficient global football network.

In the German World Cup of 2006, Europe’s footballing dominance is made clear. With a population of approximately 400 million, the continent accounts for 6% of the world’s inhabitants. During this tournament, there was only one Western European team that lost to a foreign continent’s team (Switzerland to Ukraine, by penalty shootout). That year, not even Brazil was a match for what the old continent had to offer. Argentina hadn’t beat a single European team, in an open match during a World Cup, since 1986, when they lost to Germany, up until 2010. Great countries foreign to this continent like Mexico, Japan, USA and Poland couldn’t do anything to win when faced by smaller Western European countries like Portugal, Holland or Sweden.

Western Europe has a warm and wet climate, allowing for fertile land that lets hundreds of millions of people inhabit a relatively small piece of geography which subsequently allows for the creation of networks. You could have breakfast in Barcelona, lunch in Paris and dinner in Rome in the very same day: more than twenty countries in less than two hours on a commercial flight. Twenty cultures, languages, play styles, but with very similar common grounds concerning associative football that facilitates constant interchanging of knowledge between European trainers and players. It is the densest network in the world. Isolation is somewhat notorious in places like America, Asia and Oceania.

The European Union (EU) ended international borders and it became the most integrated region in history. Many European footballers find work in countries foreign to their own because their aptitudes are publicly displayed to football technicians and managers across Europe.

The Champions League turned the old continent into a unique player market and wove a dense web of sheer talent. This let football in Western Europe become the best of its time, a fast paced sport practiced by athletes that would rarely keep possession of the ball for more than two seconds at a time, keeping the game alive with near immediate passing and a very restless ball. It might not be the most spectacular team sport (effective dribbling will always put on more of a show) but it might just be the most efficient. Proof of this can be found in the fact that today’s most successful teams choose to play this way. Even Brazil adopted this approach in the 90s. They have the upper hand in terms of skill but came to the conclusion that they would need a more European pace.

It all seems to point towards the fact that being outside of the footballing connections Western Europe has to offer is clearly detrimental to a country’s opportunities concerning their progress in the sport.

• The five leading Western European countries collectively won 12 championships including European Championships and World Cups.
• Countries situated in the outermost geographical margins of Europe such as England, former countries of the Soviet block, Scandinavia, etc. collectively won a single tournament.
• Belgium, situated in the nucleus of the Western Europe, played in as many finals as the UK, Ukraine, Poland and Turkey combined.
• Every single country in Western Europe from Portugal (west) to Slovenia (east) with a total population exceeding 1,000,000 classified for the 2010 World Cup; the countries that didn’t make classification are located, mainly, in the outskirts of the continent: the nations of the British isles, Scandinavia, all of the former nations of the Soviet Republic, and most of the remaining nations from the eastern borders of Europe as well as Turkey.
• It looks like the countries located furthest from this “central hub” aren’t in touch with the European football that is at the forefront of progress in its time. Many of these peripheral countries have shown approaches to football that are very native and somewhat dysfunctional. The Turks, for example, dribble excessively. Adversary, the British play at long-distance passes and a lot of running.

https://marcetfootball.com/en/marcet-investigation/#1519145592063-8a5cbb2c-805d