On the night of July 14, 2024, millions of Colombian football fans went back to their homes asking the same question. Why is it that we, as a footballing nation, can’t win titles? Why do we collapse in the crucial moments? A whole generation missed out on watching their country be Champions of America by a goal scored in the 112th minute of the game, against World Champion Argentina.
The data, however, says that the country’s self-flagellation is mathematically wrong. According to models used by world-leading sports economists and authors of Soccernomics, Kuper and Syzmanski, Colombia is not a giant waiting to wake up; instead, La Tricolor is actually overachieving, punching above its weight class.
Now, another World Cup looms on the horizon for Colombia, and expectations of what Nestor Lorenzo’s side can or cannot achieve will start to dominate talk on the streets and in the media. Entering the tournament, it is not hard to see that there is a narrative installed in the general Colombian psyche, in which the national team is always millimeters away from glory, but mentality keeps La Tricolor from reaching footballing pinnacles.
Wealth, health, infrastructure, stability, and talent pool are the makings of world champions
Kuper and Syzmanski’s models, in essence, are simple. National footballing success is largely deterministic, and can be calculated by a specific formula: Population + GDP + Experience. When viewed through these lenses, Colombian football is not failing to deliver success.
To win the World Cup, Colombia will have to compete against 16 European teams to win the tournament. The economic disparity between Colombia and European footballing powerhouses like France, England, and Germany is staggering.
The average citizen in those nations generates close to 600% more economic output than the average Colombian, with a GDP per capita of roughly US$52,000 compared to Colombia’s US$8,000. This advantage translates into elite nutrition programs, advanced sports science labs, and heated pitches that exist in European football but are absent in Colombia.
Within South America, Colombia operates at a significant structural deficit; Argentina, despite its macroeconomic instability, generates a GDP per capita roughly 70% that of Colombia’s, while Brazil has a population advantage that creates an aggregate economic engine for sports that is simply not comparable to Colombia’s.
The models show that expecting Colombia to consistently compete against these nations should not be a baseline expectation, but the fact that La Tricolor sometimes does is a statistical anomaly.
Colombian football has another significant disadvantage. The national team has a profound Experience Gap, a concept the Soccernomics model identifies as a critical predictor of tournament success.
England played its first international match in 1872, while Argentina made its debut in 1901. Colombia did not play its first official international match until 1938, setting the national team back almost 70 years when compared to other major footballing nations, who used the time to build an institutional memory of the game and develop a tactical culture.
By the time Colombia played its first game, Uruguay and Italy had already won the World Cup, and tactical knowledge networks in Europe were already present.
Despite these historical and economic disparities, the data also vindicate the current Colombian setup. The 2022 edition of Soccernomics explicitly lists Colombia as one of the world’s top-10 overachievers between 2010 and 2019.
The model predicts that a country with Colombia’s GDP profile and lack of footballing pedigree in the 20th-century should rank significantly lower in the FIFA hierarchy, yet the data shows that Colombia converts rather limited resources into borderline elite results with considerable efficiency, constantly challenging the economic power that rules over world Football.
This model would argue that Colombia does not lose on the big stage because the players lack mentality or desire, but because the national team performs above its expectations, and consistently outperforms its poverty to compete with nations that are structurally designed to win tournaments such as the World Cup.
‘Lucho Diaz,’ the embodiment of Colombian overperformance
To truly grasp the magnitude of Colombia’s overperformance, we must go back to the arid landscapes of Barrancas, La Guajira, the town that saw Premier League Champion Luis Diaz grow into the global footballing superstar he is today.
While his European counterparts were developing in high-tech environments like modern academies, Diaz grew up in a region neglected by the state and devastated by a humanitarian crisis.
Between 2008 and 2016, the years of Diaz’s athletic development, thousands of Wayuu children, very much like himself, died from causes related to malnutrition and scarce access to water, as well as a lack of basic food security. His development did not take place in perfect pitches. Instead, it was a survival struggle near the Cerrejon coal mines.
When Diaz first broke into the national scene, the struggles he faced as a developing player were apparent. During his 2015 trial for the Copa America of Indigenous Peoples, Carlos “El Pibe” Valderrama witnessed this duality. He saw firsthand a player with undeniable technical skill, but the body of a child who suffered the consequences of state negligence.
At 18 years old, Diaz weighed just 50kg and was classified as “dangerously underweight,” as well as suffering from malnutrition.
Luis Diaz went from suffering from malnutrition in la Guajira, an indigenous area in Colombia neglected by the government, to being one of the stars of this Copa America pic.twitter.com/bnIwx6Fu2G
— CockyColombians☕️ (@CockyColombians) July 10, 2021
The gulf between Colombia’s player development remains wide. While European powerhouses apply marginal gains and advanced biometrics to help players reach their maximum potential, Barranquilla FC, which began Diaz’s professional development, had to implement a remedial pasta diet. This was not sports science; it was a basic health intervention, designated to help Diaz gain weight quickly to ensure he could survive a professional contract.
While contemporaries in England or Germany were being coached by elite staff, Diaz was accumulating the necessary calories from a malnourished prospect to an athlete. Luis Diaz’s story is a statistical miracle. Every time he makes headlines in Europe, he is bridging a massive socioeconomic divide that suggests he should not have survived, let alone succeeded.
His story and success dismantle the misconception of the weak mentality of Colombian players, as he is now tipped to lead the national team into the 2026 World Cup as the star man.
Colombian football needs to start innovating to start collecting silverware
The current state of Colombian football has left fans frustrated because those born before 2001 have not seen the national team earn silverware.
Soccernomics also offers an explanation for the current state of La Tricolor. In the book, the authors introduce the concept of the middle-income trap, in which they explain that middle-income nations such as Colombia can improve quickly by copying the technology and methods of high-income nations, but they eventually hit a ceiling. To overcome the ceiling, the authors say, nations need to become innovative.
Colombia has not been a poor football nation for a while now. The country consistently exports talent to Europe and has, for the most part, copied basic professional standards. Now we are in the middle of football’s middle-income trap. To become an elite team, the models say we cannot rely on more overachievement or more copying of current European styles of play.
Now is the time to have a shot at winning. Lorenzo and his technical team need to start innovating based on the squad’s unique strengths. The current national debate around the national team often says the players need to be more serious, have more discipline, or have a better mentality, even suggesting dropping captain James Rodriguez, as, according to some, the modern game has “become too physical” for him.
This train of thought, the models suggest, is wrong. The Colombian national team needs to become more Colombian in a scientific way. Colombia needs to exploit its unique indiscipline and joy on the football pitch to have a shot at stopping overachieving and punching above its weight, and start collecting trophies.