Where do the best footballing nations lie? No prizes for guessing that they are in the higher GDP (gross domestic product) based countries. Money is one of the single most important aspects of football. An average game at Arsenal Football club, will cost you about £36-£98 whereas an average game in Warsaw FC will cost you about a tenner, and the seats often are left vacant.
Tickets cost money and if you don’t have it, you cannot watch your team play, simple. With more fans coming to the ground, more revenue can be made from ticket sales and money can be spent on improving your club.
It helps if your population can afford the high prices of football, because if more people are going to watch football, then more sponsorship deals with flow in, bringing the big cash. Football leagues are like developing countries.
The more you invest, the better rewards you will receive. For example, PSG is the perfect case study in this situation. A poor club with a pretty useless record, the last time they reached the last 8 of the Champions league final was over 16 years ago.
Following the investment of a Qatar based group, their revenue has soared. More fans want to watch the team because of the talent on display and more businesses are looking to pay huge money to sponsor the team, with David Beckham joining their ranks.
If you invest in a developing country you will see progress and the same will always apply to football. It helps if your fans can afford the ticket prices and therefore, the GDP of a country is vital in establishing yourself as a footballing Nation, for sure.
No country with a GDP lower than 25,000USD per year is in the top five footballing countries. A fun fact, is that the only Eastern Europe team to have won the Champions League, is Steau Bucharest in Romania. This surely can’t be a coincidence.
Here’s another interesting fact. Altitude seems to have an effect on success (AC Milan altitude 121m, Barcelona 12m, Real Madrid 667m, Bayern Munich 453m). None of the top 5 teams have an altitude higher than 667m above sea level and none have a mountain range within a 10 mile radius.
Relief effects football. The only top 15 team with a mountain range close by is Juventus, who actually had to rebuild their stadium due to accessibility issues. If a club is near a mountain range, fans may have difficulty commuting to get there and therefore the club cannot afford to run effectively.
Weather can also play a real part in Football and a countrys standing in the fifa world rankings. 2 out of the 10 best national teams in the world are not European, the rest are, and the 2 are from South America. Brazil has the highest number of wins of the world cup in history, but most of these players come from the south, where the weather isn’t actually that hot most of the year.
So can the heat play a real part in the development of football teams. Could it be just that Money is controlling football. Africa do not have very much, Europe does, but then surely Brasil would not be as good as they are with a lower GDP that European countries but still they triumph over and over again.
This could actually prove football can in fact influence football, colder areas are better at football simply due to the playing surfaces being easier to play on and practice on, directly influencing football.
All this just goes to show – there are a lot of determining factors when it comes to footballing success – money not being the least of them.
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