В рубрику "Классики и современники"
No, the explanation for Russian footballing mediocrity is much more banal, and can be summed up in this one map of January isotherms.
Needless to say, footballing requires a lot of skill.
To develop skill, you have to play a lot. Preferably year round. This is very hard to do when temperatures are substantially below freezing (correlating to the blue parts of the map). You can play in smaller spaces indoors, but it’s just not the same thing. You can theoretically have heated stadiums, but its very expensive and AFAIK nobody actually consistently bothers with it. Furthermore, even if you train your best players in heated stadiums (or abroad) during the winter, national football teams are drawn from (and discarded back into) a huge talent pool. Providing everyone in this category with elite climate controlled facilities is impossible.
The Soviet Union, which was consistently much more successful at football than Russia ever was, proves the rule: A large percentage of its star players were drawn from Georgia and southern Ukraine - that is, the parts of the USSR with the least hostile winter climate. Even today a highly disproportional share of elite Russian footballers come from the Kuban, the only parts of Russia with a winter climate that is at least somewhat comparable to that of Germany. Nowadays Georgia is considerably lower than Russia, but that is on account of a very low population of less than 3.7 million and virtually no money. Meanwhile, Ukraine, with three times fewer people and about ten times less money, is ahead at 16th globally.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/why-russia-bad-at-football/
- Рады, что козлотура отменили? - спросил я его, когда он разлил пиво по стаканам.
- Очень хорошее начинание, - согласился Илларион Максимович,-- только за одно боюсь...
- Чего боитесь? - спросил я и взглянул на него. Он выпил свое пиво и ответил только после того, как поставил стакан.
- Если козлотура отменили, - проговорил он задумчиво, как бы вглядываясь в будущее, - значит, что-то новое будет, но в условиях нашего климата...
- Знаю, - перебил я его, - в условиях вашего климата это вам не подойдет.
Needless to say, footballing requires a lot of skill.
To develop skill, you have to play a lot. Preferably year round. This is very hard to do when temperatures are substantially below freezing (correlating to the blue parts of the map). You can play in smaller spaces indoors, but it’s just not the same thing. You can theoretically have heated stadiums, but its very expensive and AFAIK nobody actually consistently bothers with it. Furthermore, even if you train your best players in heated stadiums (or abroad) during the winter, national football teams are drawn from (and discarded back into) a huge talent pool. Providing everyone in this category with elite climate controlled facilities is impossible.
The Soviet Union, which was consistently much more successful at football than Russia ever was, proves the rule: A large percentage of its star players were drawn from Georgia and southern Ukraine - that is, the parts of the USSR with the least hostile winter climate. Even today a highly disproportional share of elite Russian footballers come from the Kuban, the only parts of Russia with a winter climate that is at least somewhat comparable to that of Germany. Nowadays Georgia is considerably lower than Russia, but that is on account of a very low population of less than 3.7 million and virtually no money. Meanwhile, Ukraine, with three times fewer people and about ten times less money, is ahead at 16th globally.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/why-russia-bad-at-football/
- Рады, что козлотура отменили? - спросил я его, когда он разлил пиво по стаканам.
- Очень хорошее начинание, - согласился Илларион Максимович,-- только за одно боюсь...
- Чего боитесь? - спросил я и взглянул на него. Он выпил свое пиво и ответил только после того, как поставил стакан.
- Если козлотура отменили, - проговорил он задумчиво, как бы вглядываясь в будущее, - значит, что-то новое будет, но в условиях нашего климата...
- Знаю, - перебил я его, - в условиях вашего климата это вам не подойдет.