World Cup glory: For country or cash?

We all know football is full of cash, and sometimes, where there is money, there is corruption (FIFA?). However, on the ‘fully’ transparent and above board side, everyone knows that players and coaches alike are well remunerated for their hard work! In line with Taylor’s thinking, bonuses tend to play a big role in football and with Cameroon’s bonus row and Ghana having $3 million in cash sent out to their players, it would be very interesting to have a look at the performance of the teams in relation to their financial incentives. No doubt, many would expect the biggest payouts to be promised to the teams who are likely to be the most successful.

However, it seems that Maslow and Hertzberg advocates will be pleased to learn that there is some evidence in this world cup that the correlation between the size of the bonus and performance isn't incredibly strong. Spain were reported to receive the biggest bonus if they retained the World Cup and England players were to each receive over $500,000 each if they won (source). Possibly the biggest individual bonus of all was to USA coach Klinsmann if they had won the World Cup, with a whopping $10.5 million. From this list of teams, all with the highest cash promises (that we know of), none made it to the last 4, and Spain and England didn't even survive the group stages.

Reassuringly, the Greeks, praised by their own media as real heroes, turned their bonuses down and asked for a new national training centre; a lesson to all the 'money grabbers'.

However, whilst the bonuses seemed to have had little impact on the success of a team’s placing, overall investment, political stability and a country’s wealth continue to have a significant impact on performance at the World Cup. With no African team ever managing to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup, on-going financial battles and political instability are more likely to blame than the quality of African footballing potential; just being at the competition can be so lucrative with $9.5 million going to every team who do not even make it out the group stage. Successfully securing one of the allocation places is also an area of contention by many. Unless you’re from Europe, where 13 places are available to the 53 European countries compared to only 5 places for the 53 African nations, things do not seem quite as fair as they could be! So, for developing the developing nations games, the phrase Catch-22 comes to mind.