On the Ball

AuthorStefan Szymanski
Positionthe Stephen J. Galetti Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan.

The soccer World Cup in Brazil will be the biggest sporting event of 2014, likely dominating the news and lives of fans for many months. For some of the players, this will also be the defining moment of their careers.

Attention will focus on established soccer stars such as Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and whether they can do as well for their countries as for their clubs (Barcelona and Real Madrid, respectively).

The World Cup will also create several new millionaire players—players currently working for small clubs in places like Costa Rica, Croatia, Greece, or Japan will earn lucrative contracts with mega clubs such as Bayern Munich and Manchester United on the back of star performances in Brazil. Almost every player’s ambition will be to play at the highest level in Europe.

Thanks to fundamental changes in the regulatory regime and other factors, international mobility in Europe’s soccer labor market has increased markedly in the past two decades. Today, the size of the expatriate labor force in European soccer (at more than one-third of the total) far exceeds that in the wider European labor market, where foreigners comprise only 7 percent of the labor force (Besson, Poli, and Ravenel, 2008; European Commission, 2012). This internationalization is a key factor in Europe’s soccer success.

Early evolution

Soccer was first organized in England in 1863 and spread rapidly to the rest of Europe. It was one of the first manifestations of globalization, with the World Cup, which started in 1930. Today the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s world governing body, has more national members than the United Nations.

But if soccer is the world’s game, it is also true that the biggest teams and markets for playing talent are in Europe. According to FIFA’s “Big Count” survey published in 2006, there are approximately 113,000 professional soccer players worldwide, of whom 60,000 work inside the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the European governing body (Kunz, 2007). UEFA calculated that in 2011 the total income of European soccer was €16 billion, of which €6.9 billion was paid out as wages. European football is successful in that it has the biggest clubs, the best national teams (only Brazil and Argentina rank alongside European nations such as Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain), the largest national leagues, and the biggest competitions.

Labor mobility has played a significant role in maintaining Europeâs dominance. In the early days, players bid away by higher wages would frequently change teams within the same season. But the clubs banded...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT