An Exclusive Club: The Astonishing Numbers Behind World Cup Players
Watch the report by Idan Koivler, Walla Sport correspondent to the World Cup / Walla Football editorial team
Football is the most popular sport in the world. About 5 billion people love the game, watch it or follow it. According to FIFA, between 220 million and 240 million people play it entirely as amateurs, and another 40 million are registered with various associations at different levels. If we add to those numbers all the coaches, managers, referees and staff who make the matches possible, we reach about 270 million people around the world involved in the sport, not always for pay.
According to the global players' union FIFPro, there are about 130,000 footballers in professional club frameworks, but 85% of them are not paid because they are still youth players or amateurs. In other words, of everyone who lives and breathes the game, only a small minority actually earns from it.
Out of the hundreds of thousands who have played professional football throughout history, only 8,500 to 9,000 reached the World Cup as squad players in all editions of the tournament, from 1930 to 2022. Of those, only 6,500 to 7,000 actually stepped onto the pitch at the World Cup. The exact number is not known, because only since 1966 has there been a systematic and complete record of all players and lineups.
In the end, only the very best out of hundreds of millions who have played the game reach the biggest stage of all. Even after expanding the tournament to 48 national teams, which opens the door to teams such as Haiti, whose past squads had almost no players born in the country, or Curaçao, whose players are mostly Dutch, it is still an exclusive club reserved for the elite.
Research and data show that only 0.5% to 1% of players who enter an elite youth academy in Europe will ever sign any professional contract. That means that out of 1,000 children in a given age group, only five to ten will become footballers. Even among those who already hold a professional contract at ages 16 to 18, only 17% (about 1 in 6) will continue playing beyond age 22.
According to data from the English Football Association, 98% of all 16-year-old boys training in academies of the country's top clubs will never play in one of England's top five leagues. Looking more broadly at Europe, fewer than 1% of all children who begin playing in organized football will sign a professional contract.
A recent study published at the University of Essex found that among all players who were in top academies in Spain at ages 13 to 18 over the past decade, only 4% managed to make an appearance in the first division. Another 6% played in lower divisions, while the remaining 90% did not develop any career in the sport.
The reason is that academies operate on a volume model, they evaluate thousands of children in an attempt to identify the rare few talents who can truly break into the senior team. As a result, the vast majority of graduates find themselves in their early twenties already looking for an alternative career path, whether in coaching, sports science or completely outside football.
And of all these children who dream big, only about 0.015% (and perhaps even less) will reach the level that allows them to represent their national team. And as already noted, most national teams do not even qualify for the World Cup. So now that you understand just how rare the athletes you will see on screen over the next month really are, you can start enjoying the game.
