Is It True That Dictatorships Are Awful at Football (Soccer)?

Aarhus University's Jørgen Møller challenges the Economist's idea that “dictatorships are rubbish at football” (soccer) 

“How to win the World Cup” (June 9th) presented the heartening conclusion that “dictatorships are rubbish at football”. It would be neat if the beautiful game could only thrive in democracies. But this conclusion, which is based on data for the period between 1990 and 2018, is mistaken. Italy won two World Cups during Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in the 1930s (beating an authoritarian Hungary in 1938). Latin American countries, such as Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, have had excellent international sides both in democratic periods and when under military dictatorship.

Countries in communist east Europe, including Hungary, whose “Golden Team” lost just one match between 1950 and 1956 (the World Cup final in 1954), Czechoslovakia (World Cup finalist in 1962), Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (four-time finalist in the European Championship), were an equal match for any national team in democratic Western Europe. Spain under Francisco Franco won the European Championship in 1964 and produced the most dominant club team of any period, the formidable Real Madrid side that won five consecutive European Cups in the 1950s.

A study of the relationship between democracy and football performance based on data after 1990, when communism had broken down in east Europe and military dictatorships had fallen in Latin America, suffers from selection bias. The countries that do well today are by and large the same countries that did well in the interwar period and in the decades after the second world war, namely countries in Europe and southern Latin America. They have dominated football irrespective of their political stripe. Dictatorships are, alas, not necessarily rubbish at football. But the countries that are still dictatorships today are.

PROFESSOR JORGEN MOLLER
Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark