Cultural Homophily and Collaboration in Superstar Teams – Non technical summary

Ever wonder if top professionals naturally work better with those from similar cultural backgrounds? Our research investigated this question by analyzing an extraordinary dataset: every pass made by professional football (soccer) players in Europe’s top five men’s leagues over eight seasons.

Why it matters:

In today’s globalized workplace, understanding how cultural factors affect teamwork is crucial for any organization. While many assume elite professionals overcome cultural preferences when working together, our findings reveal a different story.

What we studied:

We tracked over 10 million passes between players from 138 countries in 154 teams across the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and French Ligue 1. This gave us a unique lens to study collaboration in high-stakes environments, with aligned incentives, and well-defined tasks, where teamwork directly impacts performance.

What is cultural homophily:

cultural homophily—the tendency to associate with others of similar culture: same nationality, shared colonial history (e.g. France and Algeria), or same language (e.g. Germany and Austria).

What we found:

Players consistently pass 6.2% more to teammates who share their cultural background. This comes from three sources. First players from the same country (or culture) may play in similar positions (such as Italian defenders) and thus pass more. This accounts for 2.4%. Second, the coach’s decision to field these players together explains another 1.4%. Most importantly, even after controlling for all other factors—like field position, player quality, team composition and physical proximity—players still pass 2.4% more to culturally similar teammates. This “cultural homophily” premium is substantial. Passing to a player of similar culture is equivalent to passing to a player valued 10.5% higher in the transfer market (approximately €370 thousand more for median and €810 thousand more for average players). The homophily premium is higher for complex collaborative tasks (pass sequences). It’s also higher between player pairs with more shared experience: spending time together outside of games may build greater understanding.

Mechanisms:

There are two possible mechanisms, there may be an objective cost for the team as passes are easier to coordinate within a group (“cost saving”), or a subjective cost for the passer who prefers to keep the ball within his own group (“favoritism”). Our findings, although not exhaustive, point toward the cost-saving aspect.

Relevance:

Football offers a laboratory to study diverse teams with relevance for high-skilled multinational teams in areas like design, consulting or research. Our findings suggest that cultural diversity brings both challenges and opportunities. While diverse teams offer broader perspectives, they may require additional support to overcome natural collaboration barriers.