Economics Professor and Former MLS Referee Shares Analysis on Shocking U.S. World Cup Elimination

Victor Matheson draws the connection between GDP per capita and a country’s expected performance in international competition, a connection that used to simply be assumed until the U.S.’s elimination on Tuesday the 10th.

So how did Trinidad and Tobago, which couldn’t have spent even a tenth the United States did, come out on top? “The idea,” Matheson says, “is that we’ve developed a lot of highly trained but mediocre rich kids while missing out on training lots of potentially fantastic poor kids.”

Read the full piece on the Atlantic website.