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Cambridge
asks how globalization reshapes wealth and opportunity
around the world. Is it mainly a force for good, enabling
poor nations to lift themselves up from poverty by taking
part in global markets? Or does it create vast opportunities
only for a small minority?
To answer
these questions, look no farther than soccer. Ever since
European clubs loosened restrictions on the number of
foreign players, the game has become truly global. African
players, in particular, have become ubiquitous,
supplementing the usual retinue of Brazilians and
Argentines. Indeed, the foreign presence in soccer surpasses
anything that we see in other areas of international
commerce.
Arsenal,
which currently leads the English Premier League, fields 11
starters who typically do not include a single British
player. Indeed, all the English players for the four English
clubs that recently advanced to the final eight of the UEFA
Champions League would hardly be enough to field a single
team.
There is
little doubt that foreign players enhance the quality of
play in the European club championships. Europe’s soccer
scene would not be half as exciting without strikers such as
Cote de Ivoire’s Didier Drogba (Chelsea) or Cameroon’s
Samuel Eto’o (Barcelona). The benefits to African talent are
easy to see, too.
African
players are able to earn much more money by marketing their
skills in Europe, “not just the top clubs in the Premiership
or the Spanish Primera Liga, but the countless
nouveau-riche clubs in Russia, Ukraine, or Turkey.” To
be sure, soccer players’ international mobility has
increased the earnings gap between stars such as Drogba and
Eto’o and their compatriots back home.
This is
part and parcel of globalization: enhanced global economic
opportunities lead to wider disparities between those who
have the skill or luck to take advantage of them and those
who do not. This kind of inequality is not necessarily a bad
thing. It makes some people better off without making others
worse off.
But
soccer enthusiasts care about country as well as club, and
here the consequences of the global mobility of talent are
not as straightforward. Many fear that the quality of
national teams is harmed by the availability of foreign
players. Why invest in developing local talent if you can
hire it from abroad?
England
once again provides an apt illustration. Many blame the
country’s failure to qualify for this summer’s European
championship on the preponderance of foreign players in
English club teams. There is also a broader backlash under
way. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, soccer’s global
governing body, has been pushing a plan to limit to five the
number of foreign players that club teams would be allowed
to have on the field.
The
impact of soccer globalization on African countries appears
to be just the opposite. On the one hand, it has increased
the quality of many African national teams relative to
European national teams, with countries such as Cameroon and
Cote de Ivoire now fielding teams that include some of the
top players in European clubs. On the other hand,
globalization probably has reduced the quality of Africa’s
domestic leagues relative to European leagues.
If you
are a resident of Yaounde, the decline in the quality of
domestic play may not be a big deal if you can afford a
cable connection that allows you to tune in to the English
Premier League. But otherwise, you are entitled to feel that
globalization has left you out in the cold.
The 2008
Africa Cup of Nations, held in Ghana during January and
February, revealed the two-way interdependence that soccer
globalization has created. Many European clubs were left
without their star players, who were recalled to
national-team duty. For their part, African players grumbled
that their absence from Europe reduced their commercial
opportunities during a crucial period of league play.
But the
most important lesson revealed by the Africa Cup is that
successful nations are those that combine globalization’s
opportunities with strong domestic foundations. For the
winner of the cup was not Cameroon or Cote de Ivoire or any
of the other African teams loaded with star players from
European leagues, but Egypt, which fielded only four players
(out of 23) who play in Europe.
By
contrast, Cameroon, which Egypt defeated in the final,
featured just a single player from a domestic club, and 20
from European clubs. Few Egyptian players would have been
familiar to Europeans who watched that game, but Egypt
played much better and deserved to win. Nor was it a fluke:
Egypt is consistently the most successful national team in
the Africa Cup tournament, winning it five times previously.
The
lesson is not that embracing globalized soccer is a bad
thing. If that were the key to Egyp’s success, Sudan, which
has no players in Europe, would have done well. Instead,
Sudan (along with Benin) was the tournament’s least
successful team, losing all three games that it played.
The real
lesson is that taking full advantage of globalization
requires developing domestic capabilities along with
international links. What makes the difference for Egypt is
that it has a strong domestic league, which fosters depth of
talent and coherence as a national team.
It is
with globalization’s champions in other arenas. What sets
apart the Chinas and Indias of this world is not that they
have laid themselves bare to the forces of globalization,
but that they have used those forces to enhance their
domestic capacities. The benefits of globalization come to
those who do their homework.
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