Fredrik Aursnes and Erling Haaland
Although there are players of all sizes and heights vary depending on their position, the average height of all teams at the World Cup is surprisingly similar.
It’s a Darwinian jungle out there in the world of sport. Players with what it takes are selected, and those without end up on the bench. If you don’t have what it takes, they won’t want what you have.
This certainly applies to skill, grit, endurance and strength, but also the size and shape of the body.
What researchers call “Morphological Optimization Law” tells us that the athletes who have the right body for their sport are the ones who succeed. We saw this recently in the NBA Finals with the imposing figure of San Antonio Spurs player Victor Wembanyana (224 cm).
But what about football players? Is there an ideal height for an elite football player?
Finding the ideal height for a football player
World Cup players they seem to come in all sizes: from XS (Diego Maradona, from Argentina, 165 cm) and S (Lionel Messi, from Argentina, who suffered from growth hormone deficiency in childhood, is 170 cm) to M (Pelé, from Brazil, 173 cm), L (Zinedine Zidane, from France, 185 cm) and up to XL (Erling Braut Haaland, from Norway, is 195 cm).
The winners of the FIFA Ballon d’Or, the award for the best player in the world, have very different heights. Messi, as mentioned, is just 170cm, while Spain’s Rodrigo Hernández Cascante (better known as Rodri) is 190cm.
Also there is no direct correlation between average height of a team and its performance.
Argentina, Spain and Brazil, world champions, have been among the lowest-ranked teams over the years. Therefore, parents of aspiring players do not need to worry too much about their children’s height.
There is, however, a curious fact about the time of the World Cup teams: the average height of all teams is surprisingly similar.
In the vast majority of the 48 teams at this World Cup, the average height is between 180 cm and 185 cm.
The press reports that the two highest selections – Bosnia and Norway – have an average of 187 cmwhile the Australian team has an average of 183 cm. The shortest team is Saudi Arabia, at 178 cm.
Gamers are, on average, taller than typical men of the same age and from the same country.
What is notable is that the difference between team height and population height is greater in low stature countries and lower in tall countries.
The data suggests that all teams are looking for players who are around 180 to 185 cm tall, which could be the ideal height for a football player.
To understand why this happens, we need to analyze the dynamics of the game.
The ideal height for the function
Player height is specific to the requirements of the position.
The goalkeepers are, by far, the tallest (189 cm is the World Cup average) because need exceptional reach to block shots.
The tallest player in Australian World Cup history was the goalkeeper Zeljko Kalac, com 202 cm. At one point, the possibility of increasing the size of the goalposts was discussed, as the goalkeepers were becoming too tall.
The main function of defenders is to disturb the forwards and compete for aerial balls (mainly with heads), which is why they are also usually quite tall: 183 cm, on average.
Messi scored just over 30 headed goals in his career to date, while the much taller Cristiano Ronaldo has scored over 150. Taller players also perform better in defensive walls when a foul is called.
Attacking players – midfielders and forwards – need to be agile and have high acceleration, so tend to be a little lowermeasuring approximately 175 to 180 cm. Two of the greatest strikers of all time – Maradona (165 cm) and Messi (170 cm) – were relatively short.
It seems that World Cup teams need at least a few players tall enough to win aerial balls, form defensive walls and block opponents.
And when a team has players of this size, the others also have to choose players of similar size to remain competitive – it’s a kind of anthropometric arms race. This can be a challenge for generally low-lying countries such as Mexico and Ecuador.
In summary
Height is certainly not as valuable an attribute for a football player as other characteristics, such as ball skillresistance, agility, the ability to read the game and the perception of players’ positioning on the field – all with little relation to height.
For this reason, we rarely see extremely tall football players.
There are far fewer very tall men in the population and, consequently, fewer very tall men with exceptional ball skills.
But it can be said with confidence that it will be a team of young people with a height slightly above average.
