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How western Europe became a formidable football factory

Simon Kuper · 13 Jul 2026

Read the piece on ft.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece ↓

Simon Kuper did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Football is geometry — about creating space when you have the ball, and shrinking it when you don’t.
  2. Letting everyone play benefits the national team.
  3. Countries succeed in World Cups by helping every six-year-old develop.

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