{"id":545623,"date":"2026-07-12T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T08:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/545623\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T08:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T08:30:09","slug":"ken-early-why-have-protestants-historically-been-so-bad-at-winning-the-world-cup-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/545623\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Early: Why have Protestants historically been so bad at winning the World Cup? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brazil\u2019s exit from the World Cup<\/a> always sets off a firestorm of anguished debate and hysterical finger-pointing. As the team gets worse and the exits more embarrassing, the arguments about why just keep getting better. <\/p>\n

This year saw the best yet: what if Brazil<\/a> are bad now because of … Protestantism? <\/p>\n

Some context: in 1970, when Brazil\u2019s greatest team won the country\u2019s third World Cup, the country was 91 per cent Catholic and 5 per cent Protestant. According to the most recent census, Brazil is now 57 per cent Catholic and 27 per cent Protestant, but the rise of Evangelical Christianity is much more pronounced among top footballers: 76 per cent of the 2026 World Cup squad were confirmed Evangelicals.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it\u2019s a fact that the World Cup has usually been won by Catholic-majority countries. Of 22 tournaments between 1930 and 2022, 17 were won by the Catholics with another four for Germany, which has a foot in both camps. England is the only majority-Protestant country to win it.<\/p>\n

Six World Cups have now gone by without Brazil winning at least one: the first time that has ever happened.<\/p>\n

And so for days a debate has raged: has the Brazilian national team fallen into ruin because the sexy, happy-go-lucky Catholicism of days gone by has been displaced by the gimlet-eyed, money-obsessed Protestantism that is eternally at war with joy?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s obviously a big political dimension to the discourse. In Brazil, many non-Evangelicals fear and distrust the rise of Pentecostalism for all the usual reasons you might be sceptical of rich TV evangelists. And the Evangelicals tend to vote Right (they were the core of the Bolsonaro coalition), so even the communists find themselves in a sudden alliance of convenience with the Vatican.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Catholicism has recently enjoyed a \u201cmoment\u201d on the American right, with vice-president JD Vance the highest-profile recent convert. (We fondly imagine how the staunch Scots-Irish ancestors he loves to invoke would have reacted to seeing him embrace the whore of Rome.)<\/p>\n

\"EndrickEndrick of Brazil prays as he enters the pitch following a substitution against Norway. Photograph: Buda Mendes\/Getty <\/p>\n

So American culture-war accounts who know little of football plunged eagerly into the fray. \u201cThe rise of Pentecostalism in Brazil is directly correlated with the collapse of its soccer program,\u201d declared one, leaving you to wonder what Brazil\u2019s \u201csoccer program\u201d might look like.<\/p>\n

The argument has developed in some confusing directions. Brazil\u2019s Evangelical players are simultaneously accused of worshipping individualism and forgetting the all-important team ethic, and of submitting to a dour Protestant aesthetic that is inimical to fantasy and flair. This immediately sounds like a contradiction, while the ecstatic Pentecostalism popular in Brazil is a lot more showbiz than the modest Lutheranism of, let\u2019s say, Norway.<\/p>\n

Counterexamples to the theory that Protestantism militates against flair are obvious and numerous. The Evangelical Neymar, notwithstanding his sad condition at this World Cup, is the most exciting Brazilian player of the last 20 years. The Evangelical Roberto Firmino, who played with what everyone would recognise as the joga bonito spirit, loved a capoeira goal celebration. <\/p>\n

Still, the question does linger as to why Protestants have historically been so bad at winning the World Cup.<\/p>\n

The simplest explanation is that the majority-Protestant countries tend to be on the smaller side (England, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands compared to Brazil, France, Italy, Argentina). The one really big majority-Protestant country, the USA, has been a non-factor. And the historically-Protestant countries tend to be more northerly, with worse weather for football.<\/p>\n

But this is a very boring answer. It\u2019s much more interesting to spin wild theories based on essentialist speculations. Might there be something in \u201cthe Protestant gaze\u201d that makes you worse at football?<\/p>\n

Consider the Netherlands. They could have evened things up a bit for Luther and Calvin\u2019s boys if they hadn\u2019t lost all three of the finals they\u2019ve reached. <\/p>\n

The Amsterdam-born Johan Cruyff \u2013 himself an agnostic \u2013 was football\u2019s Einstein, a revolutionary who rethought the principles of the game from the ground up.<\/p>\n

In Latin countries, Cruyff\u2019s 1970s team was known as \u201cNaranja Mec\u00e1nica\u201d \u2013 the clockwork orange. An organic entity, become a machine.<\/p>\n

\"RobertoRoberto Firmino of Liverpool celebrates against Rangers in 2022. Photograph: Adam Vaughan\/EPA <\/p>\n

Catholicism says we must live with the eternal mysteries. Protestantism began as a rejection of the church\u2019s claims of magic and mystery. Martin Luther was the archetypal \u201cdo your own research\u201d guy.<\/p>\n

To analyse, to seek evidence, to split the mysterious wholeness into parts that can be examined separately and reassembled, perhaps in different combinations \u2013 this is the Protestant way.<\/p>\n

We should notice that there is nothing unusual about Brazilian complaints that their players no longer play with joy. People all around the world have lately been complaining that their players no longer play with joy. Many have blamed the rise of data analytics (a trend led by the late-arriving Americans).<\/p>\n

And here, according to the football data scientist Dr Hadi Sotudeh, is a list of the five teams at the World Cup who brought the most analysts on their staff: England (8), Norway (6), Morocco (6), Germany (4), Netherlands (4). Are we noticing anything?<\/p>\n

According to Dr Sotudeh, Brazil only had one analyst, but that analyst\u2019s fingerprints were all over the crime scene of their exit.<\/p>\n

In the stadium nobody could understand why Bruno Guimar\u00e3es had stepped up to take (and miss) Brazil\u2019s first-half penalty, and not Vinicius jnr \u2013 and not because Bruno is Evangelical while Vini jnr is Catholic.<\/p>\n

Rom\u00e1rio raged afterwards that if he had been in Vini jnr\u2019s place, he would have grabbed the ball out of Bruno\u2019s hands. \u201cBrother, you have to have that attitude. Vini jnr is the protagonist, he\u2019s the best we have in the national team. Take the damn ball, take the penalty and it\u2019s solved.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Vini had respected the coach, Carlo Ancelotti, and Ancelotti, though Catholic, had put his faith in statistical analysis that claimed Brazil\u2019s best penalty takers were, in order, Neymar, Igor Thiago, Raphinha, Gabriel Martinelli, and Bruno Guimar\u00e3es, with Vini jnr not a recommended option.<\/p>\n

Maybe it really is time for football to shrug off the long arm of Luther.<\/p>\n

World Cup Wallchart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazil\u2019s exit from the World Cup always sets off a firestorm of anguished debate and hysterical finger-pointing. As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[213745,2956,61,60,112,4018],"class_list":["post-545623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-brazil-football-team","tag-fifa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}