The science of soccer at the FIFA World Cup

Yes, but there’s a lot of game theory underlying it, and plenty of science and economic principles that go into determining which teams stand a winning chance. Much the same theorising that happens in preparation for, say, penalty kicks — to decide if the goal-keeper should dive right or left — went into formulating nuclear strategy between India and Pakistan!

Let’s begin with the choice of Russia as the venue for the FIFA World Cup. Economists see it as a manifestation of a growing realisation within FIFA, the governing body, that democratic countries are increasingly proving to be imperfect hosts — unless they already have world-class stadiums, in the way that the US, Canada and Mexico, which won the 2026 bid, have.

Why is that?

Countries typically overestimate the economic benefits of hosting the World Cup (or the Olympics) and when the true cost-benefit analysis is made, and white elephants (disused stadiums) dot the countryside, democratic societies respond with street protests. Hosting doesn’t create an economic bonanza, and as authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski note in Soccernomics , FIFA is coming around to the view that it is “much easier to give the World Cup to dictatorships like Russia and Qatar (2022), where protesters are discouraged.”

A 2010 study by behavioural economist Georgios Kavetsos and sports management Professor Szymanski established that people in countries that host sporting events (such as the World Cup) report “increased happiness”: the “feel-good” factor associated with hosting football events is “large”.

The study noted that football tournaments reinforce community ties — in pubs and living rooms. In fact, in many European countries, World Cups may be the greatest shared event of any kind, write Kuper and Szymanski. This effect is more pronounced in the host countries. The authors of Soccernomics even established that in 10 of 12 European countries, suicides declined when the national team played in a big tournament, such as the World Cup. That’s because of the ‘social cohesion’ that happens around the sport.

Precisely.

Penalty kicks appear to exert a disproportionate influence in soccer outcomes, and have been analysed by economists for the underlying game theory principles. Even Freakonomics fame Steve Levitt has co-authored a paper on penalty kicks.

In a penalty kick, a score hinges on the strategies of two persons: the kicker (to decide where to kick the ball), and the goal-keeper (to decide where to dive). This is a zero-sum game: a victory for one is a loss for the other. In his book Beautiful Game Theory , economist Ignacio Palacios-Huerta has calculated the optimal mixed-strategy choices: a penalty-taker must hit 61.5 per cent of his kicks to his ‘natural side’ to maximise his chances of scoring; a keeper must dive to the kicker’s natural side 58 per cent of the time.

In the years when there was ambiguity about whether the two had the nuclear bomb, each country had to calculate the odds that the other had (or would have) the bomb, and respond accordingly. But the equilibrium of this game is for both nations to acquire the bomb. That’s just what happened.

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