What predicts international volleyball success?

There are people around the world trying to create perfect perscriptive formulas for international sporting success, the most famous of which are the ones predicting the medals for the Summer Olympic Games. In the past, only 4 factors were considered relevant for sporting excellence on the international stage – a country’s population, its GDP (Gross domestic product), its sporting tradition (usually measured by the age of its national Olympic Committee) and whether it is a current or former communist nation. Nowadays, such models are disproven if only for their simplicity. Newer, more sophisticated frameworks are created, adding more variables and emphasising on the effectiveness of the country’s elite sport system and structure, driven by the different processes which transform the financial input into the desired output, most often being the development of world-class athletes.

But what are the variables predicting success in volleyball, then? The country’s financial capabilities should be one but, as volleyball is not as popular and expensive as football or tennis, is it the most important one? How about the number of active professional volleyball players? We can also add the nations’ volleyball traditions but how easy it is to measure them? And don’t forget the factor existing in and quite often determining the outcomes of many contests – the one and only Lady Luck.

Anyway, there is no agreement on the exact combination of variables, and some data is very difficult to be found (if it even exists), therefore it is meaningless to try to create a prescriptive formula for success in volleyball. However, we at VolleyCountry decided to explore how the FIVB World Rankings would look like if we add some extra variables.

We created three new ratios through which we compared the top 30 teams in the rankings for both men and women and checked whether there are going to be some drastic changes in the top 10 and if there is going to be a surprising correlation between the extra factor and the current top 10.

The three new ratios are: 1) FIVB points per population; 2) FIVB points per GDP;  and 3) FIVB points per GDP per capita. Let’s start with the first one:

 

Population

Although there is no correlation with the official FIVB rankings, some interesting results have come up when we divided the current FIVB points of a nation with its population. Serbia are leading the pack in that category for both men and women. Puerto Rico looks like the surprise package in the top 3s, whereas both top 10s are over-represented by countries from the Caribbean, Tunisia, as well as some European nations such as Bulgaria, Belgium and Italy. Poland and Italy are the only ‘real’ top 5 members who find a place here. Where are the other powerhouses? For men, Russia is 16^th, Brazil is 21^st and the USA is 27^th. With its population over 1 billion, China can only be last in such rankings. For women, Japan is 15^th, Brazil is 21^st, the USA is 26^th and you can all guess China’s position. On to the next one.

 

FIVB Points per Population
Rank	Men	Women
1.	Serbia (8)	Serbia (8)
2.	Bulgaria (9)	Puerto Rico (15)
3.	Puerto Rico (23)	Dominican Republic (6)
4.	Finland (17)	Croatia (17)
5.	Cuba (11)	Belgium (13)
6.	Poland (3)	Bulgaria (21)
7.	Tunisia (15)	Tunisia (24)
8.	Belgium (20)	Italy (5)
9.	Australia (13)	Cuba (26)
10.	Italy (4)	Azerbaijan (29)

 

Gross Domestic Product

The next criteria for comparing the top 30 men’s and women’s teams is their accumulated points per GDP. The new standings look like this:

FIVB Points per Gross Domestic Product
Rank	Men	Women
1.	Serbia (8)	Serbia (8)
2.	Bulgaria (9)	Dominican Republic (6)
3.	Cameroon (24)	Cameroon (22)
4.	Tunisia (15)	Croatia (17)
5.	Cuba (11)	Puerto Rico (15)
6.	Puerto Rico (23)	Tunisia (24)
7.	Poland (3)	Bulgaria (21)
8.	Finland (17)	Kenya (19)
9.	Argentina (6)	Azerbaijan (29)
10.	Belgium (20)	Cuba (26)

 

The first thing that comes to mind is that this table looks very similar to the previous one. Serbia is on top once more, going hand in hand with Bulgaria on the men’s side. Puerto Rico is still in the top 10, however, the new surprising member of top 3 is now Cameroon. The grid is again dominated by teams from Latin America, Africa and the Balkans. The similarity between the two tables is predictable because of the fact that population and GDP are generally interrelated, and an increase in one gives a rise to the other. Therefore, maybe if we compare performance on the international stage with GDP per capita, we can have different results?

Gross Domestic Product (per capita)

There is a striking resemblance between the official FIVB World Rankings and how the rankings would have looked like if GDP per capita was added as another variable. In the women’s rankings, only the 9^th and 10^th seeds South Korea and Germany don’t make the new top 10, whereas on the men’s side only USA and Germany (5^th and 7^th respectively) are outside the top 10.

FIVB Points per GDP per Capita
Rank	Men	Women
1.	Brazil (1)	China (3)
2.	Cameroon (24)	Brazil (2)
3.	Russia (2)	Cameroon (22)
4.	Poland (3)	Kenya (19)
5.	Serbia (8)	Dominican Republic (6)
6.	Bulgaria (9)	Serbia (8)
7.	Iran (10)	Italy (5)
8.	Tunisia (15)	Russia (7)
9.	Argentina (6)	Japan (4)
10.	Italy (4)	USA (1)

 

So, how can this similarity be explained? Is there a correlation and is GDP per capita a powerful predictor of international success? The answer is an obvious no.

Firstly, GDP per capita cannot be considered as a major factor precisely because there are very small differences between the two rankings (‘official’ and ‘GDP per capita’), i.e. this variable has a little influence on the standings. In fact, a country’s population and its GDP were shown to be much stronger predictors.

Secondly, the differences in population and GDP between countries are huge, which decreases the strength of the first variable – FIVB points won. The differences between the countries’ GDPs per capita, on the other hand, are not so extreme which in turn adds more value to the ‘FIVB points won’ variable. In other words, international success matters more in the last classification then in the first two.

Thirdly, it is important to note that the comparison included only the top 30 teams in the world, which skews the results. This means that if GDP per capita was the major factor determining international success, then the official FIVB rankings would have been occupied by the Scandinavian countries, Australia, New Zealand, the Persian Gulf countries, the small European States and the small South-East Asian nations such as Taiwan or Singapore.

Nevertheless, through this exercise we can observe some interesting anomalies and draw conclusions from them. Some countries stand out because of their volleyball traditions (e.g. Italy) and/or attitude towards elite success (e.g. Serbia). Serbia (men and women), Bulgaria (men) and Dominican Republic (women) are the more apparent examples but Poland and Italy’s standings are even more impressive considering their higher population and GDP. Additionally, countries like China (men’s), USA (men’s), France and Germany, for one reason or another, have not used their demographic and economic potential to become more successful volleyball nations. Otherwise, they would not have dropped positions relative to their direct competitors, especially in the ‘points / GDP per capita’ rankings.

But most importantly, through this exercise we can recognise and acknowledge, if we use Barack Obama’s terminology, the nations that ‘punch above their weight’. Cameroon and Kenya, countries with one of the lowest scores in the Human Development Index, and Tunisia, a country with a population of 10 million people and small economic capabilities, are amongst the best volleyball national teams and are frequently represented in World Championships and Olympic Games. And although teams like Poland, Cuba, Dominican Republic, etc. are often put in the spotlight, volleyball nations such as Tunisia deserve no less credit.