Making a Maradona: Meat Consumption and Soccer Prowess
ideas.repec.org
ideas.repec.org
At 27 years old in 1988, and at the very height of his abilities and fame, the Napoli playmaker would lower himself to the following “physical programme”.
Sunday: Serie A match.
Sunday night to Wednesday morning: continuous cocaine binge.
Wednesday morning to Saturday evening: “cleanse”, and sweat it all out.
Sunday: Serie A match.
That said his affinity for cocaine, alcohol and partying in general undoubtedly blunted and stunted his career, which is mindblowing considering the success he had. What a player.
I suspect that if you come from a poor, vulnerable ubringing and you're thrust suddenly into this world of plenty and wealth where you are basically a god then you're going to fly off the rails somehow. It's happened quite a few times by now.
> "Our outcome of interest is Soccer Prowess, which counts the number of players, born in a given country, nominated to the Ballon d’Or in the period 2016 to 2019"
An extremely small population.
> "The estimated coefficient on Meat Consumption is smaller when we include the full set of control variables, but remains positive and statistically significant."
Doesn't mean anything?
They somehow also conveniently ignored all the players who eat meat and don't make it. And the cocaine.
I am not sure what this is about.
Causation is obviously false, footballers mostly came from poverty and at least in Brazil meat is not so frequently consumed by them because of the cost.
https://globalsportmatters.com/health/2019/06/10/veganism-no...
The Dominican Republic is vastly over-represented in the population of pro baseball players. I think you could easily find countries in Latin America to use as a control (same income level, same population, etc.)
The answer is most likely not diet, but the first-mover effect: a lot of Dominicans became baseball players, so American teams started scouting them more, pouring more into player development, etc. Young kids started seeing it as a way out of poverty.
I think American Samoa is also over-represented in the population of NFL players.
This will be biased in favour of Brazil, but it seems like a plausible idea that more meat can be correlated to better athletic development
At a club level there’s no contest - our domestic leagues are usually ranked higher in the UEFA coefficient than Croatia’s and traditionally we’ve had greater success in Europe. We are at a slight disadvantage re our restricted ability to field emigre players (ie had Eduardo Da Silva signed for, say, Dundee United rather than Dynamo Zagreb he would not have been eligible for Scotland so easily) but I do not believe this has impacted us significantly. Though we are losing players to Ireland due to stupid self-inflicted eligibility rules at schools level - James McCarthy and Aiden McGeady opting to play for Ireland still saddens me to this day.
I've heard talk of poorer countries turning out better players because at a crucial age (14-18) when you're choosing to commit to professional football you're basically choosing between rolling the dice at a professional career in football, or a more realistic longer term career through learning a trade or heading to university. And in this situation, it could be that the risk/reward is higher in somewhere like Croatia, Brazil or Argentina. But this doesn't explain why other small high-income countries like Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland are routinely competing at a higher level than we are.
If I was a director at the Scottish Football Association I’d be closely studying what these countries are doing differently because there’s something we are desperately missing. I have my thoughts, but I'm just another armchair analyst with no power so it makes little sense to share them :)
If Scottish club football is the pinnacle for Scottish players then this may be a factor?
That said, you may have a point. Many Scots boys grow up idolising Celtic or Rangers. It could be that many get signed for their boyhood club and choose to remain there, even if a club who is better for their long-term development is interested.
Croatia has basketball, but the talent pools for basketball and football do not overlap. Then, we are talking here about national teams. At the club level, the performance of teams from Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland is far from that of teams from the most, football-wise, prestigious countries.
[0] - I actually read a while back that Cricket had more registered players than Rugby in Scotland, but I take this with a pinch of salt. But make no doubt about it, our sporting focus is roughly similarly focussed on Football to Croatia's.
Two other did not follow said died because they didn't come from the same area.
That's a drastically different conclusion
Maybe they were special otherwise? Super stars? I.e. this may well be coincidence. At a sample size of two any conclusion is a tad hard to support.
There is overwhelming evidence for meat being consumed rarely in most western cultures until very recently. Excavations of food pits mostly.[1]
The link I posted is just one example.
[1] My brother is an archeologist. I take his word for this.
There are a ton of professional athletes who don't eat meat and apparently get plenty of protein.
I think you mean wealth right?
How many can you name?
Or, since that would be anecdotal: what surveys have been done of professional athletes' diets?
And if there are any, is the percentage of vegetarians higher than a comparable group in the same age bracket?