Part 2 Here
In recent years UEFA has tried to increase the importance of international football. Such measures include the spreading out of European championship qualification fixtures over a week period rather than just a couple of days and more recently the introduction of the Nations League. The Nations League aims to decrease the number of meaningless friendly games as well as reduce the number of one-sided matches often shared between nations. Except for fans from smaller countries, who are keen to see big names such as Harry Kane, or Antoine Greizman, nobody benefits from seeing a nation like England or France beating San Marino 7-0. The Nation League aims to pit countries of similar standings against each other, by putting them into small groups. On top of this, these groups will have promotion and relegation and can be used as a way for nations to qualify for the next European Championships. Football fans can now look forward to seeing gigantic fixtures such as England vs Spain and Germany vs France. While Irish fans will look forward to seeing the boys in green get their chance to get revenge on Christian Eriksen and Denmark, the cause of the nation's most painful footballing night since that Thierry Henry handball.
With International football potentially becoming more relevant alongside club football again, the purpose of part 1 of this article will be to ask questions such as; Does a strong domestic league automatically mean a strong national team? What national teams are outperforming their domestic league and vice versa? Is there any correlation between the success of a national team and the number of foreign players playing in that country’s, top domestic league? Part two will examine if the economic welfare of a country has a bearing on the standard of football in a country? On top of this I will examine if there is any correlation between the population of a country and the strength of the national side and national leagues. Finally, I will finish with conclusions from both part one and two.
For this study, I am going to use UEFA club coefficients as the base value for Europe’s top 14 countries, as their accuracy of the standard is less questioned than FIFA International rankings as they are measured over a five-year period and do not see dramatic changes after a few surprise results. The top 14 leagues in Europe are as follows:
Do National Teams Do As Well Compared To Their National Club Leagues?
Two national teams that stand out automatically are England and Italy. England sits in 16th place and 11th overall in the FIFA rankings excluding teams from outside of Europe. This is a dramatic drop when we consider that the Premier League is the second strongest league at the moment. The Italian national side is also struggling sitting in 14th place. On top of this, the Azzurri have failed to qualify for their first World Cup in 60 years. A game which was the catalyst for an earlier than expected international retirement of Juventus stopper Gianluigi Buffon. In 6th space, the Spanish national team is also slightly underperforming in comparison to La Liga, but perhaps the Spanish national team can be forgiven for taking the foot off the gas somewhat having won 3 major tournaments in recent times. Finally, the Ukrainian national team is struggling to stay on a par with the Ukrainian National League regarding international standing. The Ukrainian national team has a current FIFA ranking of 35th while the Ukrainian National League sits 8th with UEFA rankings. Much of this can be explained by the success of Shakhtar Donetsk who continually do well in Europe by buying talented Brazilian players and selling them on for big profits. Players such as Willian (Chelsea), Fernandinho (Manchester City) and Douglas Costa (Juventus) are notable examples.
There are also many national teams that are out performing their national leagues on the club scene. These countries tend to be small but have big talent pools of players who play abroad. The most obvious example is Belgium. The Belgium national team currently sits 5th in the FIFA rankings and has held 1st in recent times. But thanks to the Premier League, in particular, many of their stars such as Eden Hazard (Chelsea), and Kevin De Bryuan (Manchester City) play weekly at the highest level. While the Premiera League in Portugal is more competitive than the Belgian league on the European stage. Although it is important not to forget to impact the outlier, that is Cristiano Ronaldo. Even with the five-time Ballon D'or winner in their ranks, few gave Portugal a chance of winning the 2016 European championships. The Polish national team, like Portugal, can owe their high ranking to one player in their shape of Robert Lewandowski, meaning they could be an outsiders choice to go all the way this summer in Russia.
Part 2 can be found here.
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