"By my metrics , the top eight great powers in the world right now are the United States, China, Germany, Japan, Russia, Germany, India and Brazil."

First of all, you list Germany twice. Second, excluding France and the UK is insane.

Hmmm...I point you to this FP Passport post—from two days ago—linking to a 70-page report, which similarly addresses the matter, though with a more convincing explanation:

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/28/goldman_sachs_scores_with_2010_world_cup_research_report

While in the other countries there are other sports, some of those same sports are still practiced—and excelled at—by Germany and Brazil. How does this factor into the first explanation? Surely, claiming it's because the "best athletes" are gobbled up by any individual modality is somewhat of a stretch, no?

I think cricket is more suited to the Indian psyche of being a non-contact and a more thinking sport. Add the fact that the Indian masses have role-models and a multi-billion dollar cricket economy, the stranglehold become obvious.

Football/Soccer on the other hand requires hard running and greater physical exertion in the dusty and hot plains of India. It is a sport which requires shoving and pushing and the Indian psyche is not really in favour of such things. We are a bit of a wimpy people.

However, things will change. It will just take some time. A few role models playing overseas (begining to happen), better TV coverage of the local leagues (yet to happen), healthier population (also yet to happen) etc are bound to make an impact. But things will move at a glacial Indian pace.

The Post today has a story on the second-best African-American golfer, who happens to rank 1000+th in the world. To me the fact Tiger's example didn't lead to a lot of good black pros reinforces the idea that cultural and social forces are critical.

While cricket provides a tepid excuse for England, in India it explains everything.

And in general the history and climate of each country explains more about their sporting prowess than any economic or 'power' ranking. I know that country specific knowledge is not fashionable in the US foreign policy establishment but....

Anyway when you consider that the World Cup teams will largely be composed of the sons of below average income earners in their respective countries does economic weight matter? Brazil has been a footballing giant for much longer than it has been a regional player.

The US - a continental power which developed its own sports - 'benefits' from a high level of economic inequality which provides both 'poor' players and 'rich' fans.

Apologies for the gross generalisations but it pretty much goes with the question.

Oddly the whole sub-continent has always been lousy in soccer. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal: none of them can probably beat a US high school team in soccer (and not necessarily a boys' team).

First Some History ..

The national football team was quite successful until the 1970s, when it qualified for the Olympics.

The team qualified for the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, but could not appear as they still played bare feet at the time.

The Indian team also won gold medals in football at the 1951 and 1962 Asian Games, and finished fourth at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.

In August 2007, the Indian national team won the Nehru Cup for the first time in its history beating Syria 1-0.[3] In August the following year, India defeated Tajikistan 4-1 to lift the AFC Challenge Cup and in turn qualified for the 2011 AFC Asian Cup in Qatar.

In 2009 August, India again won the Nehru Cup beating Syria in penalty (6-5).

Opinion:

Indian Soccer has never been "physical", and it was always artistic ...

Soccer or Football has Changed for the "worse" -- It is officially now a "Full Contact" sport -- Unlike the 1950 - 1970s -- where the game was based on Skillset (dribbling, passing, etc etc). Today only Brazil has some dribbling skills but they have lost the "Pele" Magic ...

You can see similar trends in Field Hockey -- Once a game of skill, now it is a contact sport, with precision passing, and it no longer captivates a audience ....

In fact "Soccer" will decline if this "contact spirit" is not arrested ... Check with many Europeans, especially here in the US -- and surprisingly many Germans, Swedes, Hollanders, French even the English just have a passing interest in Soccer ...

I cannot contend that this defines primarily state of Sports in India, but a single answer could be 'corruption'. When Base Ball had corruption scandal in early part of the last century, we know what happened (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal).

Same way at present IPL Corruption is raging in India. Latest in that is, as expected, - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Pawar-Family-hold-16-in-IPL-bidder/articleshow/6009317.cms

The question will be, this is all fine; but what has that to do with the lack of popularity of Soccer in India. It is simple - if 'soccer' were to offer this many opportunities for a systematic looting / corruption; it will be popular too.

But obviously some will point out corruption in Cricket in India is a result of inherent popularity of the game and not vise versa. Response to that - is it really? Is it not the 'chicken & egg' issue as Richburg talks in WaPo about Chinese Soccer?

My contention - open the 'market for soccer' I mean open possibilities of 'corruption' in Soccer in India and then you will see the deafening buzz about Soccer in India.

In general, utter corruption and total disinterest by Indian Political Parties to 'clean the act' not only allows the mess of Cricket but in general does not allow any 'game' to get nurtured in India. The unbelievable level of corruption, sycophancy and personal fiefdom style running of sports of organization all that is responsible for that. This is the country which has heads of Sports organization who complain to PM when the court responds to a public interest litigation that sport organization chief cannot stay more than 12 years as per the law of the land. Routinely Sports Organization chiefs occupy these posts for 2 or more decades; institutionalizing corruption and looting of tax payers money.

Not just Soccer, but no Sport has any future in India due to corruption (except some individual brilliance). This has nothing to do with abilities of Indian population or climate; all those can be overcome. Cricket is popular and there is some success; but it has been pulled down humongously by the roaring corruption too. Soccer in India has no chance to compete with Cricket in India as an avenue for corruption.

we suck at football (soccer for the US). often the number quoted is that we have a billion people we should find at least 11 players who are any good. The second part of the statement is true. There is a small problem with the 1st part according to a recent world bank report more than 50% of the 1billion earn less that $2 per day. These poor of India are not really going to play soccer are they.

we are left with 500 million. according to a the National Sample Survey Organisation 80% of the population spend less than 1000 INR (about $ 22) per month. I would say we should not really expect them to play football either. However it is true that in many countries have poor players that become great footballers. It is my opinion that this happens because 1> they want to emulate heros. 2> they can dream to earn money.

heroes in India come from Bollywood (our film industry) It makes the most amount of films in the world, and Cricket stars.

The most amount of money is earned by these two sports. so to sum it up
we have a bout 300million of the 1billion who can actually think about sports.

of this a huge number think about the Cricket and Bollywood. So the number of people that actually care about foot ball is very very very tiny. therefore we SUCK at football :)

i dont think we need to over analyze india's suckiness at football. theres a simpler explanation than corruption, poverty, "emulating heros" (?!)...

we just dont have that kind of space! a game of cricket requires a strip of land(in abundance), two sticks (in abundance) and a round object(in abundance). a rubber ball is usually lesser than 10 rupees. the whole neighborhood plays with one bat (the exchange of bat between ex-batsman and new batsman after each ball is known to kill 20% of all playable time :P)

compare that to football: a game of football requires an area considerably larger than one required for cricket (rare), it also requires a football (rare). the cheapest football i've ever found is 70 rupees. it lasted one game.

indians grow up playing cricket in streets, parking lots, even corridors in buildings. so much so that "gulli cricket" is a brand of its own now.

Isn't football the main sport in Kerala and other parts of South India? Perhaps tellingly, the Indian diaspora hasn't had great success at football either. There was that Mauritian Indian who was at the World Cup in one of France's squads, but with the exception of Michael Chopra I can't think of a player who's played in England's Premiership who has any subcontinental ancestory. It's not lack of interest as lots of south Asians play football and go to games.

I think the plain simple truth is that Asians basically lack footballing talent. We go to great lengths to come up with excuses but if we did have talent we would come up with players despite those excuses. The main arsenal for my argument comes from the fact that not a single player from Asia plays in any of the major leagues(excluding a couple of players from Korea). Also, Considering there is a large Asian population living in Europe which is devoid of any aforementioned excuses, have love, interest for the game, get the family support, see the economic benifits and do manage to play in C leagues, I think, is argument enuf that Asians are devoid of footballing talent.

Relating back to the very first comment, and while it doesn't really bear on the substance of the blog post's argument, the exclusion of France and the UK does make me wonder about your metrics, Dan...

The UK and France possess secure second-strike nuclear arsenals, maritime power projection capabilities second only to those of the US, UNSC vetoes, the world's 5th and 6th largest economies (rotating on the basis of the prevailing £/€ cross - note that this puts them ahead of three of your list), significant clout in IGOs (especially the ones where they mobilise the EU as a force-multiplier, like the WTO), the world's preeminent financial center (London), an independent reserve currency that's part of IMF SDRs (£) or significant influence over another (admittedly troubled) RC (€), global diplomatic networks, myriad globetrotting MNCs, intelligence services and assets that are both capable and activist worldwide (remember the Rainbow Warrior?), military technological sophistication that is again second only to that of the US, a network of overseas bases that is second only to that of the US (Ascension, Cyprus...and remember who owns DG), truly cutting-edge defense majors (BAE, Thales, Dassault)...the list goes on.

The UK sent 45,000 personnel, two aircraft carriers (albeit baby ones), TLAM-equipped SSNs - the works - to Iraq in 2003: what country in your list other than the US could have done so? Which other countries in your list could maintain a full division engaged in high-tempo COIN with all the attendant support in the most inhospitable province of a far-flung Central Asian country for years on end? For that matter, which non-US country in your list could fight to reclaim occupied territory - and win - against a moderately advanced mid-sized country (Argentina) equipped with (some) top-spec weaponry at 8,000 miles' range from home and with the nearest friendly land base 4,000 miles away?

Of course, China and India will soon be at the very top (i.e. US-level) table, given their rates of economic growth (and barring some fundamental internal disruption). But if potential power is a metric, it's worth noting that both UN demographic projections and all sorts of economic forecasts see the UK overtaking Germany as Western Europe's principal power in the next 20-30 years, and that Japan's debt and demographics mean it is unlikely to grow ever again. Sure, Brazil will probably be a somewhat bigger (while still much less advanced) economy than the UK and France in the not-too-distant future, but it's never going to act as a 'true' great power (with all the military trappings) as long as Uncle Sam feels the way it always has done about the Western Hemisphere. By contrast, the UK and France will remain major powers in a strategically-vital region of the world - a region that is still the world's largest economic bloc, and yet which will increasingly be less US-dominated as Washington's focus shifts to East Asia, leaving more scope for independent power/influence.

So to summarise... Very entertaining blog post. But let's not allow the unending hype over the ascent of the BRICs to obscure the facts that, (a) "IC" are in an entirely different league to "BR", and (b) the actual global distribution of military, economic and diplomatic clout is not changing as quickly as the headlines might often have us believe.

China and India might have a low score on FIFA rankings but China has lots of money invested in its sports program and given the billions of renmimbi's it invested, it would only a matter of time before it too becomes a soccer powerhouse. It is ALREADY considered a strong player within the East Asian region. India is also considered a strong player within the South Asian soccer league as well.

The two countries are still ranked much better compared to another supposedly rising BRIIC's power, Indonesia. China's rank of 84th and India's 133rd are higher than Indonesia's 137th. Indonesia has not won a major soccer tournament (even regional ones) within the last decade and the last time it entered the World Cup 's final round was about 50 years ago (Melbourne 1960 I believe). For the 2009's qualifying round, it was beaten by teams such as Laos and Cambodia, which it would have beaten easily a decade ago. Four-decades of neglect, mismanagement, and corruption has taken its toll for the Indonesian soccer team, which is why for the past decade or so most Indonesians would even root for its rival teams rather than the home team. So, cheer up you Chinese and Indians, there's more teams that are sucker in soccer than you are :-(.

They talk about this in depth, if you account for some factors like the number of people above 5'9 (which is generally the cutoff for international soccer) and the number of children who play soccer, you can explain the data fairly well.

There are some other factors, like this great article in the NYT the other day that talked about Ajax's approach to player development. They don't play as many games, there's more focus on practice and improving players than having teams that win. Also, the amount of coaching knowledge your country has is a huge factor - there's a first mover advantage because the best coaches will develop the best players and strategies.

Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport

I don’t have a full explanation, but couple of things stand out about India, other than the policy aspect that the article mentions with respect to China.

In the 1950s and 60s India did field a semi-decent soccer team…..won the Asian Cup couple of times in those years. This I think was a function of sheer numbers. Then India still had a population of 600 million. Now with 1.1 billion people I doubt it ranks in the Top 20 in Asia in soccer.

As population exploded out of control in the 1970s and onwards……….health care and thereby physical attributes of sheer strength, stamina, agility and speed (key characteristics to do well in most sports) suffered. Average life expectancy in India is still low at about 62. Where skills are equally or more important than the above physical attributes (e.g., in sports like Cricket or plain simply Chess - current world champion) India is a powerhouse.

While strategy, intelligence and judgment are required in all sports at the international or world cup level it is required a lot less at school/university/city/county level of play in most sports. Higher the level of game the more of these are required, except maybe in Cricket or Chess where these skills are required in high amounts even when playing at the school/university/city/county levels.

Another example is Formula One Racing. No Third World country has come close to producing F1 drivers, while India has already produced two, with one currently a rookie in the 2010 season. They don’t represent the Force India team rather European teams. Rifle shooting, archery and billiards are some other sports were India has done well at the world level competition, again less need of physical attributes. India has done well in squash, which I am unable to fully explain why as this sport needs those physical attributes a lot more than skill.

What do all most of the countries that are best in Soccer mentioned in this article have in common? A fascist, or at least a neo fascist/military dictatorship in their recent history. In a lot of these countries, governments got into soccer or general athletic promotion as a way of covering up bigger problems at home. See: The great Brazilian teams of the mid century, Argentinas 1978 World Cup Team, German success in the Olympics in the 1930s.

India is useless at soccer. While it is true Indians are crazier about cricket, the secondary interest in soccer is still more than what you have in a bunch of countries that outrank them in the world, including the U.S.

Forget INdia as a whole. Just consider the states of West Bengal and Kerala alone where soccer is played in leagues like crazy with fans showing more interest than US fans in their soccer leagues,. Each state has a population greater than some European countries. You wonder why those two states alone can't produce some world class players. Maybe India is producing MANY decent players, but very few top quality players? I am probably being kind by saying India is producing many decent players.

And if you consider the rest of India, the fans may not be into soccer as much, but they follow it and play it enough to be able to put up a decent team. Indians lack power and endurance. The lack of enough power is why tiny Pakistan is usually on competitive terms with giant India in cricket. THe lack of endurance is probably why Indians can't play soccer that great.

Look at cricket. India's cricket fans and players outnumber Australia's by a wide margin - probably 50-1? Yet, Australia has dominated India in several outings in the past. Even England where people hardly follow the sport that much and with a tiny population was able to have its moments recently.

Ever notice how the majority of the world's countries that don't favor soccer are former British colonies? And ever notice how the majority of the world's countries that DO favor cricket are also largely from the family of former British colonies?

Why? Who's to say! I think there's a great book or PhD thesis in examining it. I do think, however, that given the startling overlap in the non-soccer and cricket communities, there's something irresistible in the sociology of colonization as a possible explanation.

I'd guess that soccer, being the people's game of the imperial homeland, was rejected by the people of the colonized, seeking as much cultural distance as possible. Meanwhile, cricket, being the aristocrat's game of the imperial homeland, was emulated by the aristocrats of the colonized, seeking as much cultural mimicry as possible.

I'd like to see if the research bears this idea out.

Sport just isn't a valued part of Indian culture. Most Indian kids are encouraged to spend their extra-curricular hours pursuing other worthwhile endeavors. Another reason may be the lack of proper facilities. Unlike most American high schools, most Indian schools don't have a gym or a soccer field.

general the history and climate of each country explains more about their sporting prowess than any economic or 'power' ranking. I know that country specific knowledge is not fashionable in the US foreign policy establishment but....

Anyway when you consider that the World Cup teams will largely be composed of the sons of below average income earners in their respective countries does economic weight matter? Brazil has been a footballing giant for much longer than it has been a regional player.

The US - a continental power which developed its own sports - 'benefits' from a high level of economic replica TAG inequality which provides both 'poor' players and 'rich' fans.

Apologies for the gross generalisations but it pretty much goes with the question.

When you talk about the worlds most popular game, please don't reduce it by making it inferior to your own national game. It is called football because it is played with the feet. Soccer is just a nickname.

What you call football should be called handball because you play it with your hands.

Now that is out the way lets turn to the substantive. Football is a simple game that was once part of the ruling classes of the British Empire, however, the poor took it over and the ruling classes ran to rugby and cricket hence in India and the West Indies its the sport of the ruling class that is played.

In South America becuase it made popular by rough and tough speculators out to make a few quid exploiting natural reserves and building railways football became the preferred option as it was very easy to play and the rules not complicated.

In the US you decided to continue the 'Revolution' and create a sporting culture which reflected your rather nerdy nature which made you a great empire but rubbish spectating sports

Considering I'm an Indian,it pains me to say that but its true.We often hide behind a facade by saying that cricket is really popular and that's the only sport we play.Unfortunately we are not very good at that either.The last world cup we won was way back in 1983,which was a kind of a fluke win anyway as we downed the then favorites West Indies.In fact to further emphasize that it was a fluke India immediately lost the test match series and the tour to the same team and then to England.Even now teams like Sri Lanka and Pakistan and even sometimes Bangladesh continue to beat India regularly in their supposed forte.Indians talk about Sachin Tendulkar.I agree that he is top class but it was only due to him that India was not relegated to playing 2nd division cricket throughout the late 90's.

Another excuse is that we are poor and don't have facilities.Untrue again.How can countries like Ghana get into the world cup and India cant.Their medal tally in the Olympics is also terrible.Except for a few cases of individual brilliances,the standard of sport in India is pretty poor.
Last excuse is corruption in the Government.Again not true.I mean there is corruption but still there is a lot of opportunity.A club form Bengal called Mohun Bagan had won the AFC(Asia Cup in soccer) and were awarded 1000k $ by the central government.If thats not incentive what is?Also the cricketers are spoilt rich,yet they have so few successes to boast of.

My reasons as to why is manifold.Firstly India has a strict policy of reservations in their team composition according to region,caste etc.This dilutes the merit.Also there is not much of a sporting culture in India.People like to play sports but not professionally.Also the fact that we are a poor nation makes every person who is worth something want to rush out of the country to somewhere he/she can succeed both professionally and monetarily.Thus the creme of the talent pool is lost and we are left with a bunch of mediocres who believe that playing for their state or at least representing their country is more than they could ever hope for.Lastly and most importantly is the lack of self belief.Maybe the colonial attitude has lingered on,maybe we still feel we are not that good.We are regularly bullied militarily by countries half our strength and size.