Football is universally loved. It’s played all over the world, and can inspire in its fans passion like nothing else. It truly unites (and often divides!) people across languages and cultures.
In the top flight of football, you can see players from all over the world, playing all over the world. In England alone, we’ve got players hailing from everywhere from Albania (Armando Broja, Southampton) and Australia (Sam Kerr, Chelsea) to the USA (Tobin Heath, Arsenal) Zimbabwe (MarvelousNakamba, Aston Villa).
Around the world, there’s Argentinian Lionel Messi, playing at Paris St Germain, Frenchman Kevin Benzema of Real Madrid and Ivory Coast national Sébastian Haller of Ajax. On the women’s side, there’s Norway’s Caroline Graham Hansen (Barcelona), Chile’s Christiane Endler (Lyon) and Canada’s Ashley Lawrence (Paris St Germain), to name but a few.
But what truly makes a footballing country great? Is it the number of top-flight players? Is it the number of international championships won? Is it the amount of money in the sport at the top levels? Football coaching franchise company We Make Footballers would argue it’s a mixture of all these things and more: the history, culture, climate and lifestyle all come into play too.
The Top 10 Footballing Countries in the World
We Make Footballers set out to determine which country is the best to play (and coach) football in. They looked at a whole range of different criteria, including FIFA rankings, the World Happiness Index, the number of domestic clubs, stadium capacity, climate and revenue and assigned each a value out of 10. Then they totalled these up (out of 100) to come up with the ultimate league table of top footballing countries.
At number 1? England!
Narrowly pipping Germany (its longtime footballing rival) to the post, England may not lead the way in terms of international titles, FIFA ranking or (unsurprisingly!) climate, but what it does have is an unsurpassed footballing culture and heritage. As the country where football was born, it’s the home of some of the oldest clubs in the world, and football really is part of the nation’s DNA. Combined with the country’s actually-pretty-good FIFA rankings (both men’s and women’s) and fantastic national stadium capacity, it’s clear to see why England comes out on top!
The Best of the Rest
The age-old football rivalry continues. Germany closely follows England with a score of 80.8. While not scoring as well as England in terms of stadium capacity, number or age of clubs, or men’s FIFA ranking, Germany excels in terms of the FIFA women’s ranking and the cost of living compared to England.
Germany is also the joint-second-happiest nation in our top 10, coming in behind the Netherlands along with Australia and Canada. Meanwhile, Australia knocks the rest of the top 10 into a cocked hat when it comes to climate and lifestyle, with the highest number of sunshine hours and best average salary. England doesn’t even feature in the top 10 for climate, but, being hardy sorts, we English don’t let a little thing like the Great British Weather stand in our way (if we did, we’d never get anything done)!
In terms of actual footballing performance, it should come as no surprise that Brazil leads on the men’s FIFA rankings, and the USA on the women’s. Germany is up there too for the women’s game, while France comes in second for the men’s.
So there you have it – the ultimate top 10 footballing nations in the world. And with plenty of talent coming up through the England ranks, the momentum shows no sign of slowing down. Maybe we can boost our score even further with a World Cup or European Championship in the next few years…
