Spain’s collectivism, England’s hero worship and how a nation’s societal norms can shape its football (Mark Carey, Aug. 9, 2026, The Athletic)
Football can shape the culture within a city, region or country, but the relationship works in both directions.
As Iraola implies, society impacts football as much as the game impacts society.
Expanding on Iraola’s comments, there are methods to measure how different countries integrate individuals into groups. One method is to look at the sociological differences between ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’.
Individualist societies typically focus on independence within social groups, encouraging personal expression, and are more accepting of differences — and are typically found in Western countries, according to studies.
By contrast, collectivist societies focus more on social harmony and prioritise the group over individual goals, with decisions made based on what is best for the wider community. These have been found to typically be most prevalent among African and South Asian nations.
The research on this topic is extensive and widely debated, but a 2026 study has re-modelled a global individualism-collectivism scale to measure where each country falls.
Across a sample of 102 nations, Nordic ones (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland) come out as the most individualist. Spain’s index score still falls within the upper echelons of an individualist culture, but is lower than some of its fellow major footballing nations, including France, Germany, Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and the Netherlands.
If cultural norms do shape footballing identities, that gap may help explain why the Spanish game has historically placed a greater premium on collective structures than some of its European neighbours.
David Winner’s Brilliant Orange is excellent on how Dutch culture shaped the clockwork Orange era of teams
