Football Empires: Simulating the Effects of Colonialism on the 2026 World Cup

Lucas Paulo da Silva, Thomas Schincariol and Morgan Wack
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Lucas Paulo da Silva: Trinity College Dublin
Morgan Wack: University of Zurich

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Abstract: European empires extracted vast resources from their colonies and continue to benefit from these legacies today. We examine an under-researched domain of this advantage: international football. Drawing on the literatures on colonial labor extraction, the "muscle drain" in global sports, and cumulative causation, we argue that colonial migration pipelines channel football talent from former colonies to former imperial powers, generating self-reinforcing competitive advantages. We test this argument using approximately 1,500 simulations of the (currently upcoming) FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament in Football Manager under three roster conditions: actual rosters, rosters with colony-background players redistributed to their ex-colonial "heritage nations," and rosters with colony-background players removed entirely. We identify 49 colony-background players across six European teams. All four pre-registered hypotheses find support. Former colonizer countries perform significantly worse without colony-background players and formerly colonized countries perform significantly better when they receive them. We also predict the World Cup 2026 results under each condition. France has the highest probability of winning the tournament with actual rosters in our simulations. However, it fields 17 colony-background players and sees its World Cup win rate nearly halve under redistribution of these players, while Brazil's prospects double. Former colonizer teams collectively account for over three-quarters of simulated tournament wins under actual rosters but lose more than 20 percentage points of that share when colony-background talent is redistributed. This study demonstrates that colonial legacies continue to shape competitive outcomes in international football, with consequences for the financial rewards, cultural prestige, and soft power that accompany World Cup success.

Date: 2026-06-10
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:awy9x_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/awy9x_v1

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