Say, if a country like Ivory Coast or Algeria were to unexpectedly win the world cup or get into the top 2.
One one hand, the huge success will probably unify and stabilize the country, while on the other hand the excessive celebration that will surely follow will probably reduce productivity… What do you think?
I think they’ll have a party, and then get on with things. Why would you expect otherwise? Are third-world countries more heavily invested in sport as a means of national self-affirmation than first-world or second-world countries?
How do you define “Third World”?
Many people, certainly, regard Brazil as a Third World country, and they’ve won several World Cups. Has that changed life for most Brazilians?
Not really. It’s a source of excitement and pride, but it doesn’t really change things. When the national team wins, Brazilians are happy and have big celebrations… then life goes back to normal.
I can’t see why it would be any different for a country like Cameroon or Ghana.
According to Piers Paul Read (admittedly in the 1970s) Uruguayan’s considered their 1950 World Cup win to be among the country’s greatest achievements, especially as the win came against Brazil in Brazil.
And Brazil considers that loss to be a national disaster.
What would be the net effect of a great world cup success for a third world country?
I’d say “Meh” in hushed tones.
There’s probably be some economic benefit, some minor sports tourism, some extra sales of souvenirs. It’s a little like a U.S. city’s team winning the Super Bowl. It brings in some money.
In both, the bigger money is in hosting the game.
Hosting is very costly in its own right- more often than not, hosting a Super Bowl is a reward to a city for paying $500 million to build the local NFL team a new stadium.
Taxpayers pay $500 million, and don’t get back anywhere near that much. A few hotels and restaurateurs make money, but not many other people do.
It depends a lot on the country. In countries that have are working on their sense of national identity, soccer can definitely be a strong uniting force. To give an example, if you walk down the street on an average day in Cameroon, I’d say about 1/15 people will be wearing a Lions jersey. That’s 6% of the country, at any given time, wearing one. In a country with 200 languages and ethnic groups, 3 major religious mindsets, and terrain that ranges from deep rainforest to outright desert, that’s a pretty strong unifying force.
And national identity is well known as one of the keys to peace. Basically, if people identify as COUNTRY first and whatever other criteria ETHNICITY, RELIGION, RACE, ETC. second, your country is more likely to be peaceful. I don’t think football can do all the heavy lifting there, but I’m sure it helps.
But in a country that doesn’t have that problem, like, I dunno, Cape Verde, I don’t see a big World Cup win doing much more than maybe temporarily boosting tourism.
I’ve seen some wildly conflicting and contradictory “bottom line” analyses. Some say that a Super Bowl profits a city hugely, even with stadium expenses (and police overtime, trash clean-up, vandalism, etc.) Others say it’s a net loss. I wish I knew which version of this was the truth.
(By circular reasoning…there must be some advantage to it, or cities just wouldn’t be interested…right? Would you bid thousands to have a stampede of bison in your living room? But if someone offered you enough moola…)
Not soccer, but winning the '95 Rugby World Cup, at home, with our president Nelson Mandela wearing a Springbok jersey, did wonders for our nationhood. See the movie Invictus for some reasonably accurate details
My first thought is to agree, and to think people in modern western countries probably underestimate the value and importance of this kind of thing.
My second thought is that Yugoslavia fielded several world-class sports teams. As you say, it can’t do all the heavy lifting.
So, to use one current example, IF Nigeria’s national team were to win the World Cup, would that actually lead to greater unity among the Muslims and Christians of Nigeria?
It’s hard to imagine, but I’m open to persuasion.
AT best, I’d see it as a distraction- the kind of distraction the first Ali-Frazier fight supposedly provided during the worst of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. (Whether it’s true or not, it’s been widely reported that ONE huge confrontation was avoided in Belfast because both the Catholic goons and the Protestant thugs headed to the pubs to see the fight.)
Some of them, apparently. Didier Drogba was able to leverage his celebrity in Cote d’Ivoire to more or less single-handedly end a civil war. And that was just because the team had qualified for the World Cup.